Why Does a Stamp Collector Collect?

On the now abandoned Start Stamp Collecting blog, the anonymous creator wrote about why he and others collects stamps.

He says, "Collecting is a passion. And collecting, like most passions, has the capacity to let you live in another world for a while. If I could tell you why passion allows us to inhabit another world, I would stop collecting my stamps. I just wouldn’t need to any more. Passion is as inexplicable as magic, and magic is just one of our names for the inexplicable."

He goes on to point out, "Like a child, the collector absorbed by their stamp collection 'dreams their way not only into a remote world, but at the same time into a better one.' This means that an object, no matter how individually important, can never be as significant to a collector as one."

"Completion is both the greatest aspiration and greatest apprehension for the collector because after completion there is a possibility that there is nothing. And nothing is what collectors fear most. But with stamp collectors there is not much to worry about, for as long as stamps continued to be used for mail all around the world, then there will always be stamps to go in search for. From the time that they first decided to start collecting stamps, to the point where they have reached the end of their lives, a stamp collector will have built quite the collection that not only they can go back and look through and enjoy, but that other collectors can appreciate and enjoy the dedication the collector took to building their number of stamps they have in their possession."

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