Old hobbies die hard

My late father introduced me to philately, or stamp collecting, when I was about 9 or 10 years old. He was then working in Saudi Arabia, which presented a great opportunity to collect stamps (it was the 80s) from the letters that we sent him. In his spare time probably, he managed to gather stamps from his colleagues, who were also foreigners like him. I remember my curious delight when he first gave me that stamp album, which had a handsome hard cover and wax paper between the pages–like old photo albums. It was half-filled and he said it was up to me to fill it up.

my old stamp albums

Incidentally, my youngest aunt had a friend who was also an avid philatelist so when she learned I wanted to collect stamps, she taught me the things I needed to learn like extracting the stamp from the envelope, drying and mounting, and storing. I found this very enjoyable. My interest in stamps resulted in me having a number of pen pals (yes, there was such a thing back in the day, kiddies) around the world. I remember getting not just stamps but other gifts that can be sent in the mail from pen pals in the Bahamas, Australia, and Germany, to name a few.

After high school, I gradually lost interest in philately as other interests took over. From time to time, if I came across stamps that caught my eye, I extracted it and kept it in an envelope. But I never found the time to process them properly. When I looked at said envelope before writing this post, it had become fat, but still far from bursting. I will have to buy a stamp album before processing those stamps because I have no place to properly store them. My albums are already full.

Anyway, the real reason why I’m writing this post, aside from the obvious reason that my interest in philately was recently revived, is because of this new stamp series. It was released last month, in observance of heritage month. It features traditional Filipino textiles such as the Tausug Pisyabit and the T’nalak Bed Buyus. I asked my friend, whose office is close to the National Post Office, to buy for me and I received them last Tuesday.

IMO, this is slightly over-priced

My stamp collection is comprised of mostly (about 95%) of used stamps. This is one the rare times that I bought new stamps for my collection. Well, considering that people rarely send letters anymore (thanks to emails), I guess, from now on, I will have to get new stamps for my collection.

for my revived collection