I started as a boy. There was a second hand store near my grannies house in Tollcross in Edinburgh.
Stuck on the window were brown envelopes containing 25 stamps for 6d. On the front of the envelope 4 commemorative stamps were stuck down. The joy was that you never got 25 stamps in the envelope it was always thirty to sixty stamps.
Sometimes I just sit and think.....
When I started collecting stamps in the early 1970s my girlfriend ( later to be my wife ) were going to university in Wolfville NS. Sometimes we would hitch hike to Halifax on a Saturday morning to check out the stamp stores on Barrington Street, back when stamp stores still existed. One store had a huge barrel of stamps in the middle of the floor and I always spent at least an hour digging through them. It wasn't all junk, there was some good stuff in there! I remember the odd $20 stamp, and of course everything in the barrel was ( I think ) 5 cents. I was trying to remember the name of the store, one was Scotia Stamps and one was Bluenose Stamps, but I can't remember which one had the barrel!
We got started collecting stamps because there was a hardware store in Kentville that had stamps and stamp supplies - one of the workers was a collector. He would order stuff for you as well. That's where I got my albums and catalogs. If he was there he would talk stamps for hours if he wasn't busy. I think the store was called Rockwell's Hardware. It might still be there, it was a few years ago without the stamps. Anyone else have early stamp collecting stories to share?
re: A barrel of fun!
I started as a boy. There was a second hand store near my grannies house in Tollcross in Edinburgh.
Stuck on the window were brown envelopes containing 25 stamps for 6d. On the front of the envelope 4 commemorative stamps were stuck down. The joy was that you never got 25 stamps in the envelope it was always thirty to sixty stamps.