My long lost hobby ~ Stamp collection

The other day at work, I came across one of my colleagues at Schneider, who had recently started collecting Indian stamps. I suddenly remembered about the album that I had made out of all the stamps that my dad had collected over the years since he was young and of course, few my bro & I collected too.

So I casually mentioned to him that I shall get it one day.

In a couple of days I decided to take the album to my work place, I didn't realize how heavy it was till I put it in my bag :)

Well, I showed my colleague the album, and man did he loose it after flipping through the first few pages. I didn't leave the album alone lest I find some of the stamps missing later. So I waited, and within minutes the album gained quite a bit of limelight. I was able to explain a few stamps, most of which were imported so looking at it now, with all the appraisal happened to make me realize what a prized possession it actually was.

Knowing the reason for why the stamps were made the way they are helps learn a lot about the history of a place. At the time I had arranged the album I actually didn't realize it's worth. There was one particular stamp of the UK that dated back to 1931.!

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I had given up the hobby when I was in the 10th standard, the reason being "to concentrate on my studies" since I decided to choose Science & I wanted to be an Engineer. At that time my dad gave me his entire collection and gave me the honor of sorting them out and putting them in an album. I had soaked them, since most were used stamps my bro & I removed them one by one and dried them. My brother helped me a lot too. Many times the names of the country on the stamps used to confuse me as they were written in their own language, but a little research would help me learn about the countries.

My colleague is interested in collecting only Indian stamps, right from the time of Independence. He insisted I should start collecting again. My dad still keeps aside a few stamps for me, whenever we get snail mail. Usually these days, it's all email, so the regular post takes the back seat.

Well, honestly the stamp collection isn't an in-depth collector piece with a lot of research, rather a well indexed collection of stamps from around the world, that's it. Certain stamps are First Day covers, those are the beautiful ones, I particularly like the Jordanian stamps of the 14 stations of the Cross & the stamps of the UK. They're filled with vibrant colors and quite a few of them have interesting portraits, some pictures of lovely birds. As interesting as it may seem, the value of stamps increase with age. Just a glance through the different stamps can take you back in time, if you know the story behind the stamp.