Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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10:19:08am
It s not something I consciously do. There were periods in my life I set aside my collection and pursued other interests (in fact, often years at a stretch), but eventually the urge returned and there awaiting me were my stamps. When you have to force yourself (even slightly) to take on a task it is called a job. Stamp collecting is a hobby, meant to provide hours of pleasant activity.
Stamp collecting is like any other hobby, subject to waning interest and, in some cases, complete abandonment of interest. Perhaps your lull in interest is temporary, perhaps it is permanent - only the passage of time will tell. Set aside your collection for now. If interest returns, you'll be able to resume, if not, perhaps one of your kids or grandkids will one day find it in the back of your closet and it will open a new world for them to explore.
Bobby
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For me, it's a seasonal thing.
I really don't have time for stamps from April through September. I have to set aside precious minutes to simply keep up.
During the depths of winter is when I can really delve into the "fun stuff" and get my collection in order.
Because I have so little time to dedicate to philately, maintaining an interest is not a problem!
Lars
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The fall for me is model railroading. That is when the shows resume, with three (one a month) in my local area alone. I generally don't go to the shows outside my area. Starting today was the first show. I am actively involved in the next two shows, so I will be working on my layout and boxing up items that I want to sell at the shows. By the time Thanksgiving comes along, I will be "trained out", and will return to my stamps.
I always work on both hobbies, but when one is in "season", the other becomes secondary, but not forgotten.
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Am I correct to assume that many of us have hobbies that are collateral to stamp and postal history collecting?
Although I am no longer active in astronomy, thanks in part to living in a large city where there are virtually no stars to be seen, I still collect astronomy topicals, which I started when I lived in a smaller community and the weather didn't permit stargazing.
I collect aviation-related stamps, especially those picturing early propeller airliners, and I also collect aviation postcards and die-cast airplane models.
If reading can be considered a hobby, I read a great deal of military history, and collect stamps and covers featuring military themes, especially the two world wars, the Vietnam War, the Philippine War, the Korean War, and most recently the Algerian War.
And you?
Bob
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When I get bored with the stamps themselves, I usually go though stamp reference books, catalogues, and other stamp related papers and magazines to see if anything sparks my interest again. If not, then I don't worry about it and leave them be for awhile.
I do have other hobbies. I also collect postcards, I do paper crafts like making my own greeting cards and scrapbooking, and I do a lot of counted cross stitch. So I just switch from hobby to hobby, until I get back to the stamps eventually.
What usually inspires me to get back to my stamps is coming here to the sight and reading what everyone else is doing. I see something new and different, and it almost always makes me want to get back into my collections and hoards to see if I have it, or something like it.
So eventually I am sure you will be interested again, but if not, as long as you are happy doing whatever it is you are doing, then that is all that matters.
Have a good day
Suzanne
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Years ago, I read with pleasure and comprehension an essay about stamp collecting by Ayn Rand, "Why I like stamp Collecting".
For years, starting when I was about 10 years old, and after a break of a 15 years or so, I had spent hours of every dayorting stamps, comparing stamps, making album pages, mounting stamps, shopping for stamps, scanning stamps, chatting about stamps, day-dreaming about stamps, etc. Then, not long after the internet became a useful new thing in our lives, I came across Any Rand's essay, and had an epiphany: to Rand, and to me, I realized, stamp collecting was not a hobby but an avocation. I have pursued various careers in my life. I was a navy hospital corpsman, a journalist, a teacher, and a photographer. But it is stamp collecting — philately — which defines me more than any of those occupations. But Ayn Rand says it better.
Bob
---
WHY I LIKE STAMP COLLECTING
by Ayn Rand
(Novelist Ayn Rand, like so many of us, collected stamps in her childhood, quit for several decades, and in
middle age resumed collecting. The following is excerpted from an article which first appeared in the Minkus
Stamp Journal in 1971. The text was obtained on the Internet; it has been abridged.)
I started collecting stamps when I was ten years old, but had to give up by the time I was
twelve. In all the time since, I never gave thought to resuming the hobby. It left only one
after-effect: I was unable to throw away an interesting looking stamp. So, I kept saving odd
stamps, all these years; I put them into random envelopes and never looked at them again.
Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I met a bright little girl named Tammy, who asked me –
somewhat timidly, but very resolutely – whether I received letters from foreign countries
and, if I did, would I give her the stamps. I promised to send her my duplicates....
Once I started sorting out the stamps I had accumulated, I was hooked. It was an astonishing
experience to find my enthusiasm returning after more then fifty years, as if there has
been no interruption. Only now the feeling had the eagerness of childhood combined with
the full awareness, confidence and freedom of age.... No, I have not forgotten Tammy: I
send her piles of duplicates every few months, and I feel very grateful to her.
In all those years I had never found a remedy for mental fatigue. Now, if I feel tired after a
whole day of writing, I spend an hour with my stamp albums and it makes me able to resume
my writing for the rest of the evening. A stamp album is a miraculous brain-restorer.
I am often asked why people like stamp collecing. So widespread a hobby can obviously
have many different motives. I can answer only in regard to my own motives, which I have
observed also in some of the stamp collectors I have met.
The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby
for busy, purposeful, ambitious people – because, in patterns, it has the essential elements
of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.... A career requires
the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate
steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression to a goal.... Purposeful people
cannot rest by doing nothing.... They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a
party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further
consequences.
The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They
are accustomed to working long-range.... Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant,
single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train – that is,
a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning. Stamp collecting
fulfills that need....
The course of a career depends on one's own action predominantly, but not exclusively. A
career requires a struggle; it involves tensions, disappointments, obstacles which are challenging,
at times, but are often ugly, painful, senseless – particularly, in an age like the present,
when one has to fight too frequently against the dishonesty, the evasion, the irrationality
of the people one deals with. In stamp collecting, one experiences the rare pleasure
of independent action without irrelevant burdens or impositions. Nobody can interfere
with one's collection, nobody need to be considered or questioned or worried about. The
choices, the work, the responsibility – and the enjoyment – are one's own. So is the great
sense of freedom and privacy.
For this very reason, when one deals with people as a stamp collector, it is on a cheerful,
benevolent basis. People cannot interfere, but they can be very helpful and generous.
There is a! sense of "brotherhood" among stamp collectors, of a kind that is very unusual
today: the brotherhood of holding the same values....
The pursuit of the unique, the unusual, the different, the rare is the motive power of stamp
collecting. It endows the hobby with the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt –
even on the more modest level of collecting, where the treasure may be simply an unexpected
gift from a friend, which fills the one blank spot, completing a set....
There is a constant change in the world of stamps, and constant motion, and a brilliant
flow of color, and a spectacular display of human imagination....
•••
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Multiple hobbies is a good thing as Martha would say.
I also embroider - free hand not cross stitch. I like to cook, garden, read, ride bikes, bead, exchange letters with all the kids and -top of the list - play with and train my schnauzers. Hubby and I also watch as many of the rocket launches as we can and love going up to the space center as often as possible.
Ahhhhh, so many hobbies, so little time! 
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As many of you, I too have a number of different things that keep me busy. As Bob says, Hard to see some dark skies (here in Los Angeles) and I really don't get enough time to spend on my telescope. It's on the balcony, under a blanket.
I keep fairly busy with photography and I work in the evenings, and trying to change careers. I do spend most of my time reading and listening to audio books. I love audio books, because I cannot spend enough time reading.
My interests/hobbies range from studying early Christianities/Judaism, Biblical Archaeology, studying the Bible to bicycling, hiking and camping. As some of you know I also collect antique scales, and I need more shelves.
I just renewed our season passes to Knott's Berry Farm, and also got season passes for two of my grandkids, I guess one of the reasons I maintain so many hobbies and interests is so that when I need a break from one, I can slide right into another.
What can peek my interest or keep me going in stamps is simply, a great looking stamp "catches" my eye. Might be wrong, may be a little easier for me because I am a "topical" collector. I'm not too concerned with what the back of the stamp (gum, hinge, etc.) Not too concerned if it's new or used. Obviously most important is seeing the picture depicted on the stamp.
But I guess for the most part, I'm just a sap and miss conversing with "adults" so I hop on sor.
Clayton
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06:37:57pm
The thing is I believe having multiple interests solves the problem.
I have built a sizable collection of postally used Machin's. Once you have all the primary numbers (About 460)and get into the minor varieties (around 1,000)that is an almost endless specialty, because the more one learns about the third level of complexity of Machins the potential number of different postally used singles exceeds 5,000.
But I also collect World Wide postally used, with a few mint that come my way.
Almost any long definitive set from Norse post horns, British Wildings, Chinese Martyrs, Hungarian overprints, and on and on, fancy my tickle.
Then here are topics: Ships, Lighthouses, Birds, flags, the South African One Penny Ship stamp and a few others.
I like postcards that show ships and covers that went through the mail from US and British vessels that took part in, and especially were sunk during, WW II. I have an otherwise uninteresting post card mailed from the USS Indianapolis in the 1930s. also one from the USS Hull as well as a group of other WW II to Vietnam era covers and letters.
Having served in the US Coast Guard as well as the US Merchant marine covers and cards relating to either service are treasured.
As a diversion I have a small fleet of 1:2400 metal waterline ship models mostly of WW II ships. And just for fun when my youngest grand children are here and need something we can do together there are half dozen shoe boxes carefully full of Matchbox sized vehicles, especially ones that are less common.
So when the urge strikes me there are lots of things to do, as if a good book were not enough to occupy the best part of a long weekend.
Then there is a collection of National Geographics, complete from around 1962 to date but for about twelve issues and also including many from the thirty years before that, magazines that I like to work my way though again to relive my youth.
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For me it's US stamps, US coins, reading, and a VERY small model railroad (4'x8') I pull out in the winter and work on with my son during the holidays.
I'm very busy with work, especially during the summer, so I may go a month or more without so much as time to read more than a chapter or two before going to sleep, so when I do get back to my stamps or coins I really enjoy it. I also tend to focus on just one of them at a time, so I haven't posted anything at the coin forum in over 6 months. When I was busy with my coins I don't think I posted here for several months.
Lars
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It just happens I read a post on stamporama about a collection , an interest or an article a member has posted so that gets me curious and I google to learn more and then the search is on to find a few samples...My main interest this year seems to be postal history which tends to tie all these individual pieces together...Of course there is family , grandkids. sewing , crafting , gardening , volunteering with the Red Cross and the list goes on....Just not enough hours in a day
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It takes friends to keep my interest in stamps. Before I joined my first stamp club my interest would come and go. I joined the Maplewood stamp club in the early 90's. At the time my main reason for joining was to find a way to sell my stuff. What I came away with was friends and curiousity about the different areas they collected. I am still a member but rarely go to their meeting since they changed the meeting day. I have found several other clubs. I am a member of the Twin City Philatelic Society, The Collectors Club, The Minnesota Postal History Society, the Northern Philatelic Society and their library and a bunch of online groups. Each one brings new friends, new information and new interests. A bunch of the people are in several of these, but some people are unique to specific clubs. I have also visited several of the other clubs in the area, but didn't join. I can only go to so many meetings.
I have had people from each of these clubs to my home for dinner, picnics, bonfire, drinks, what have you, and I have hosted picnics for most of the clubs. Stamps or postal history is always a part of it, but sometimes a very minor part. I have had the pleasure of meeting wives, partners, family members, friends and co-workers of my stamp collecting buddies.
I have been involved in Metropex and Minnesota Stamp Expo for several years.
None of this would be possible or kept my interest without the true friends this hobby has blessed me with. I would like to say I could give up the stamps and covers, but never the friends. I know that if all my stamps were gone as soon as one of you showed me something that caught my interest I would be digging through a box of dollar covers or something like that at the earliest opportunity.
When I was a young collector it was a very solitary thing for me. If your interest is fading, get out from behind your desk and meet a few fellow collectors. They come from all walks of life and they all have stories to tell.
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Last winter, such as it is here in Texas, I could be found filling albums, sorting stamps into stock pages, and printing new album pages nearly every day. When the balmy weather came, I drifted away from my stamps to other activities. Yesterday, I picked up one of my albums and flipped through it, but didn't feel the urge to work on it. How do you maintain your interest in stamps with all the other things going on in your lives?
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
20 Sep 2014
10:19:08am
re: How do you keep up your interest?
It s not something I consciously do. There were periods in my life I set aside my collection and pursued other interests (in fact, often years at a stretch), but eventually the urge returned and there awaiting me were my stamps. When you have to force yourself (even slightly) to take on a task it is called a job. Stamp collecting is a hobby, meant to provide hours of pleasant activity.
Stamp collecting is like any other hobby, subject to waning interest and, in some cases, complete abandonment of interest. Perhaps your lull in interest is temporary, perhaps it is permanent - only the passage of time will tell. Set aside your collection for now. If interest returns, you'll be able to resume, if not, perhaps one of your kids or grandkids will one day find it in the back of your closet and it will open a new world for them to explore.
Bobby
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
For me, it's a seasonal thing.
I really don't have time for stamps from April through September. I have to set aside precious minutes to simply keep up.
During the depths of winter is when I can really delve into the "fun stuff" and get my collection in order.
Because I have so little time to dedicate to philately, maintaining an interest is not a problem!
Lars
1 Member
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
The fall for me is model railroading. That is when the shows resume, with three (one a month) in my local area alone. I generally don't go to the shows outside my area. Starting today was the first show. I am actively involved in the next two shows, so I will be working on my layout and boxing up items that I want to sell at the shows. By the time Thanksgiving comes along, I will be "trained out", and will return to my stamps.
I always work on both hobbies, but when one is in "season", the other becomes secondary, but not forgotten.
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
Am I correct to assume that many of us have hobbies that are collateral to stamp and postal history collecting?
Although I am no longer active in astronomy, thanks in part to living in a large city where there are virtually no stars to be seen, I still collect astronomy topicals, which I started when I lived in a smaller community and the weather didn't permit stargazing.
I collect aviation-related stamps, especially those picturing early propeller airliners, and I also collect aviation postcards and die-cast airplane models.
If reading can be considered a hobby, I read a great deal of military history, and collect stamps and covers featuring military themes, especially the two world wars, the Vietnam War, the Philippine War, the Korean War, and most recently the Algerian War.
And you?
Bob
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
When I get bored with the stamps themselves, I usually go though stamp reference books, catalogues, and other stamp related papers and magazines to see if anything sparks my interest again. If not, then I don't worry about it and leave them be for awhile.
I do have other hobbies. I also collect postcards, I do paper crafts like making my own greeting cards and scrapbooking, and I do a lot of counted cross stitch. So I just switch from hobby to hobby, until I get back to the stamps eventually.
What usually inspires me to get back to my stamps is coming here to the sight and reading what everyone else is doing. I see something new and different, and it almost always makes me want to get back into my collections and hoards to see if I have it, or something like it.
So eventually I am sure you will be interested again, but if not, as long as you are happy doing whatever it is you are doing, then that is all that matters.
Have a good day
Suzanne
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
Years ago, I read with pleasure and comprehension an essay about stamp collecting by Ayn Rand, "Why I like stamp Collecting".
For years, starting when I was about 10 years old, and after a break of a 15 years or so, I had spent hours of every dayorting stamps, comparing stamps, making album pages, mounting stamps, shopping for stamps, scanning stamps, chatting about stamps, day-dreaming about stamps, etc. Then, not long after the internet became a useful new thing in our lives, I came across Any Rand's essay, and had an epiphany: to Rand, and to me, I realized, stamp collecting was not a hobby but an avocation. I have pursued various careers in my life. I was a navy hospital corpsman, a journalist, a teacher, and a photographer. But it is stamp collecting — philately — which defines me more than any of those occupations. But Ayn Rand says it better.
Bob
---
WHY I LIKE STAMP COLLECTING
by Ayn Rand
(Novelist Ayn Rand, like so many of us, collected stamps in her childhood, quit for several decades, and in
middle age resumed collecting. The following is excerpted from an article which first appeared in the Minkus
Stamp Journal in 1971. The text was obtained on the Internet; it has been abridged.)
I started collecting stamps when I was ten years old, but had to give up by the time I was
twelve. In all the time since, I never gave thought to resuming the hobby. It left only one
after-effect: I was unable to throw away an interesting looking stamp. So, I kept saving odd
stamps, all these years; I put them into random envelopes and never looked at them again.
Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I met a bright little girl named Tammy, who asked me –
somewhat timidly, but very resolutely – whether I received letters from foreign countries
and, if I did, would I give her the stamps. I promised to send her my duplicates....
Once I started sorting out the stamps I had accumulated, I was hooked. It was an astonishing
experience to find my enthusiasm returning after more then fifty years, as if there has
been no interruption. Only now the feeling had the eagerness of childhood combined with
the full awareness, confidence and freedom of age.... No, I have not forgotten Tammy: I
send her piles of duplicates every few months, and I feel very grateful to her.
In all those years I had never found a remedy for mental fatigue. Now, if I feel tired after a
whole day of writing, I spend an hour with my stamp albums and it makes me able to resume
my writing for the rest of the evening. A stamp album is a miraculous brain-restorer.
I am often asked why people like stamp collecing. So widespread a hobby can obviously
have many different motives. I can answer only in regard to my own motives, which I have
observed also in some of the stamp collectors I have met.
The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby
for busy, purposeful, ambitious people – because, in patterns, it has the essential elements
of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.... A career requires
the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate
steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression to a goal.... Purposeful people
cannot rest by doing nothing.... They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a
party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further
consequences.
The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They
are accustomed to working long-range.... Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant,
single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train – that is,
a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning. Stamp collecting
fulfills that need....
The course of a career depends on one's own action predominantly, but not exclusively. A
career requires a struggle; it involves tensions, disappointments, obstacles which are challenging,
at times, but are often ugly, painful, senseless – particularly, in an age like the present,
when one has to fight too frequently against the dishonesty, the evasion, the irrationality
of the people one deals with. In stamp collecting, one experiences the rare pleasure
of independent action without irrelevant burdens or impositions. Nobody can interfere
with one's collection, nobody need to be considered or questioned or worried about. The
choices, the work, the responsibility – and the enjoyment – are one's own. So is the great
sense of freedom and privacy.
For this very reason, when one deals with people as a stamp collector, it is on a cheerful,
benevolent basis. People cannot interfere, but they can be very helpful and generous.
There is a! sense of "brotherhood" among stamp collectors, of a kind that is very unusual
today: the brotherhood of holding the same values....
The pursuit of the unique, the unusual, the different, the rare is the motive power of stamp
collecting. It endows the hobby with the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt –
even on the more modest level of collecting, where the treasure may be simply an unexpected
gift from a friend, which fills the one blank spot, completing a set....
There is a constant change in the world of stamps, and constant motion, and a brilliant
flow of color, and a spectacular display of human imagination....
•••
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
Multiple hobbies is a good thing as Martha would say.
I also embroider - free hand not cross stitch. I like to cook, garden, read, ride bikes, bead, exchange letters with all the kids and -top of the list - play with and train my schnauzers. Hubby and I also watch as many of the rocket launches as we can and love going up to the space center as often as possible.
Ahhhhh, so many hobbies, so little time!
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
As many of you, I too have a number of different things that keep me busy. As Bob says, Hard to see some dark skies (here in Los Angeles) and I really don't get enough time to spend on my telescope. It's on the balcony, under a blanket.
I keep fairly busy with photography and I work in the evenings, and trying to change careers. I do spend most of my time reading and listening to audio books. I love audio books, because I cannot spend enough time reading.
My interests/hobbies range from studying early Christianities/Judaism, Biblical Archaeology, studying the Bible to bicycling, hiking and camping. As some of you know I also collect antique scales, and I need more shelves.
I just renewed our season passes to Knott's Berry Farm, and also got season passes for two of my grandkids, I guess one of the reasons I maintain so many hobbies and interests is so that when I need a break from one, I can slide right into another.
What can peek my interest or keep me going in stamps is simply, a great looking stamp "catches" my eye. Might be wrong, may be a little easier for me because I am a "topical" collector. I'm not too concerned with what the back of the stamp (gum, hinge, etc.) Not too concerned if it's new or used. Obviously most important is seeing the picture depicted on the stamp.
But I guess for the most part, I'm just a sap and miss conversing with "adults" so I hop on sor.
Clayton
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
21 Sep 2014
06:37:57pm
re: How do you keep up your interest?
The thing is I believe having multiple interests solves the problem.
I have built a sizable collection of postally used Machin's. Once you have all the primary numbers (About 460)and get into the minor varieties (around 1,000)that is an almost endless specialty, because the more one learns about the third level of complexity of Machins the potential number of different postally used singles exceeds 5,000.
But I also collect World Wide postally used, with a few mint that come my way.
Almost any long definitive set from Norse post horns, British Wildings, Chinese Martyrs, Hungarian overprints, and on and on, fancy my tickle.
Then here are topics: Ships, Lighthouses, Birds, flags, the South African One Penny Ship stamp and a few others.
I like postcards that show ships and covers that went through the mail from US and British vessels that took part in, and especially were sunk during, WW II. I have an otherwise uninteresting post card mailed from the USS Indianapolis in the 1930s. also one from the USS Hull as well as a group of other WW II to Vietnam era covers and letters.
Having served in the US Coast Guard as well as the US Merchant marine covers and cards relating to either service are treasured.
As a diversion I have a small fleet of 1:2400 metal waterline ship models mostly of WW II ships. And just for fun when my youngest grand children are here and need something we can do together there are half dozen shoe boxes carefully full of Matchbox sized vehicles, especially ones that are less common.
So when the urge strikes me there are lots of things to do, as if a good book were not enough to occupy the best part of a long weekend.
Then there is a collection of National Geographics, complete from around 1962 to date but for about twelve issues and also including many from the thirty years before that, magazines that I like to work my way though again to relive my youth.
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
For me it's US stamps, US coins, reading, and a VERY small model railroad (4'x8') I pull out in the winter and work on with my son during the holidays.
I'm very busy with work, especially during the summer, so I may go a month or more without so much as time to read more than a chapter or two before going to sleep, so when I do get back to my stamps or coins I really enjoy it. I also tend to focus on just one of them at a time, so I haven't posted anything at the coin forum in over 6 months. When I was busy with my coins I don't think I posted here for several months.
Lars
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06:31:12am
re: How do you keep up your interest?
It just happens I read a post on stamporama about a collection , an interest or an article a member has posted so that gets me curious and I google to learn more and then the search is on to find a few samples...My main interest this year seems to be postal history which tends to tie all these individual pieces together...Of course there is family , grandkids. sewing , crafting , gardening , volunteering with the Red Cross and the list goes on....Just not enough hours in a day
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re: How do you keep up your interest?
It takes friends to keep my interest in stamps. Before I joined my first stamp club my interest would come and go. I joined the Maplewood stamp club in the early 90's. At the time my main reason for joining was to find a way to sell my stuff. What I came away with was friends and curiousity about the different areas they collected. I am still a member but rarely go to their meeting since they changed the meeting day. I have found several other clubs. I am a member of the Twin City Philatelic Society, The Collectors Club, The Minnesota Postal History Society, the Northern Philatelic Society and their library and a bunch of online groups. Each one brings new friends, new information and new interests. A bunch of the people are in several of these, but some people are unique to specific clubs. I have also visited several of the other clubs in the area, but didn't join. I can only go to so many meetings.
I have had people from each of these clubs to my home for dinner, picnics, bonfire, drinks, what have you, and I have hosted picnics for most of the clubs. Stamps or postal history is always a part of it, but sometimes a very minor part. I have had the pleasure of meeting wives, partners, family members, friends and co-workers of my stamp collecting buddies.
I have been involved in Metropex and Minnesota Stamp Expo for several years.
None of this would be possible or kept my interest without the true friends this hobby has blessed me with. I would like to say I could give up the stamps and covers, but never the friends. I know that if all my stamps were gone as soon as one of you showed me something that caught my interest I would be digging through a box of dollar covers or something like that at the earliest opportunity.
When I was a young collector it was a very solitary thing for me. If your interest is fading, get out from behind your desk and meet a few fellow collectors. They come from all walks of life and they all have stories to tell.
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