Revisiting an old hobby
News Editor Bill Laforme of the Citizen Online writes he used to be a stamp collector.
After purchasing a sheet of the new James Stewart stamps, he shares some thoughts about the hobby and why he stopped collecting besides the fact his wife thinks "the hobby ranks somewhere up there with watching paint dry and collecting old toenails."
He says, "There are plenty of reasons why stamp collecting seems to have fallen by the wayside as a major hobby. Everything is electronic now, and younger people are far more inclined to be collecting the latest video games or downloading music instead of bothering with stamps. Perhaps the old Philatelic Society needs a stamp-collecting rapper or a digitally animated postage-loving penguin to be introduced to America, pronto."
"I also wonder," he writes, "if stamp collecting lost some public appeal along the way because the world has changed so much. For example, as a kid in 1982, there was a certain mystique to stamps from the Iron Curtain countries, the dreaded Soviet Union, and those offbeat African nations that had only been around for a couple of decades at the time, not to mention the former colonies that had existed before them. There are more countries in the world now than there were back then, but this hasn't done much for stamp collecting."
To read his entire article, click here.
After purchasing a sheet of the new James Stewart stamps, he shares some thoughts about the hobby and why he stopped collecting besides the fact his wife thinks "the hobby ranks somewhere up there with watching paint dry and collecting old toenails."
He says, "There are plenty of reasons why stamp collecting seems to have fallen by the wayside as a major hobby. Everything is electronic now, and younger people are far more inclined to be collecting the latest video games or downloading music instead of bothering with stamps. Perhaps the old Philatelic Society needs a stamp-collecting rapper or a digitally animated postage-loving penguin to be introduced to America, pronto."
"I also wonder," he writes, "if stamp collecting lost some public appeal along the way because the world has changed so much. For example, as a kid in 1982, there was a certain mystique to stamps from the Iron Curtain countries, the dreaded Soviet Union, and those offbeat African nations that had only been around for a couple of decades at the time, not to mention the former colonies that had existed before them. There are more countries in the world now than there were back then, but this hasn't done much for stamp collecting."
To read his entire article, click here.
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