~ Welcome to
Stamp
Collecting ~
Introduction
How to Learn About Your New Hobby
Finding Material for Your Collection
Taking Care of Your Collection
Introduction
Challenge. . .information. . .friendships. . .and just plain fun are part
of "the World's Most Popular Hobby," stamp collecting! For more
than 150 years, stamp collecting has been the hobby of choice for
royalty, movie stars, sports celebrities, kings, presidents, and
hundreds of thousands of other people. Why do so many different
types of people like stamps? One reason is the hobby of stamp
collecting suits almost anybody - it's very personal. You fit the hobby
to yourself, instead of forcing yourself to fit rules, as with many
hobbies. There's not much free choice about how to play golf or
softball or square dance - there are many rules.
But stamp collecting can be done in a very simple way using stamps
you find on your everyday mail and place on plain paper in a
three-ring binder. Or you can give a "want list" to a stamp dealer. He
will pull the stamps you want from his stock, and you mount them in
the correct spaces in a custom-made album that you bought.
Or you can go to stamp shows or stamp shops and spend hours
looking through boxes of stamps and envelopes in search of a
particular stamp with a certain postal marking or a special first-day
cover that has a meaning to suit your own interests.
Stamp collecting is a special mix of the structured and the
unstructured, and you can make it a personal hobby that will not be like anyone else's. It's a
world all its own, and anyone can find a
comfortable place in it.
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How to Learn
About Your
New Hobby
Organizations, publications, and other collectors can help you grow in
the hobby. The hobbies/recreation section of your local library may
have basic books about stamp collecting, and the reference
department may have a set of the Scoff Catalogue. Scoff lists every
stamp in the world and gives each one a unique number. At least in
the United States, Scoff is the standard way of identifying stamps,
and most dealers have their stock arranged according to those
numbers.
If your local library has no books on stamp collecting, you can
borrow some from the huge collection of the American Philatelic
Research Library through inter library loan or by becoming a
member of the American Philatelic Society. The APS/APSL is the
largest stamp club and library in the United States and offers many
services to collectors, including a 100- page monthly magazine,
insurance for stamp collections, and through which
members can buy and sell stamps by mail among themselves. You can contact
them directly at: P. O. Box 8000, State College, PA 16803.
There also are many newspapers and magazines in the stamp hobby,
including Linn's's Stamp News, Stamp Collector, Scott Monthly
Journal, Global Stamp News. Some can be found on large
newsstands.
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Finding Material for
Your
Collection
You can easily find everything for your stamp hobby by mail.
Stamps, other philatelic material, catalogues, albums, and so on are
easy to get by mail order. The philatelic press carries advertising for
all of these hobby needs, and stamp shows in your area also will
have dealers there. If you are lucky, you also may have a retail
stamp store nearby. Stamp shows may be small one- or two- day
events in your local area, or very large events in big-city convention
halls lasting several days and featuring hundreds of dealers and
thousands of pages of stamp exhibits to see. Stamp shows also
provide chances to meet other collectors, some of whom you may
have "met" only by mail before.
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Taking Care of
Your
Collection
Paper is very fragile and must be handled with care. Stamp collectors
use special tools and materials to protect their collectibles. Stamp
tongs may look like cosmetic tweezers, but they have special tips that
will not damage stamps, so be sure to buy your tongs from a stamp
dealer and not in the beauty section at the drug store!
Stamp albums and other storage methods (temporary file folders and
boxes, envelopes, etc.) should be of archival-quality acid-free paper,
and any plastic used on or near stamps and covers (postally-used
envelopes of philatelic interest) also should be archival - as used for
safe storage by museums. Plastic that is not arctically safe has
oil-based softeners that can leach out and do much damage to
stamps. In recent years philatelic manufacturers have become more
careful about their products, and it is easy now to find safe paper and
plastic for hobby use.
Never use cellophane or other tapes around your stamps. Even
so-called "magic" tape will cause damage that cannot be undone.
Stamps should be put on pages either with hinges (small rectangles of
special gummed paper) or with mounts (little self- adhesive plastic
envelopes in many sizes to fit stamps and covers). Mounts keep
stamps in the condition in which you bought them. Also available are
pages with strips of plastic attached to them; these are
"self-mounting" pages, meaning all you have to do is slip your stamp
into the plastic strip.
Other hobby tools include gauges, for measuring the perforations on
stamps, and watermark fluid, which makes the special marks in some
stamp papers visible momentarily. "Perfs" and watermarks are important if you
decide to do some types of specialized collecting.
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Again, welcome to Stamp Collecting!
The more you know about it, the more you will like it -- Happy Collecting!
The above is reprinted from the
pamphlet "Welcome to Stamp collecting" by the American Philatelic
Society.