ANDRE BEGIN

Back in my preteen years, on any given weekend afternoon, you could find me busy at work, soaking pieces of paper in a Pyrex pie plate of water for a couple of hours and then arranging them on a bath towel to air dry. Does that sound strange?

The purpose was to separate the postage stamps from the torn corners of envelopes to which they were stuck. I was an amateur stamp collector.

When the stamps were dry, I would then lick a little piece of folded paper called a hinge to carefully place the stamp into its reserved location in my collector’s album. Over time, my collection expanded nicely and brought me a great sense of pride and joy.

With postal services around the world constantly releasing new stamps, it was an exciting pursuit to keep scavenging through different hobby stores, department stores, and even attending stamp collectors’ shows in the hope of finding “the one” to complete a set of stamps or finding one that commemorated a person, place or event that was interesting to me.

Not long into my journey, I joined a Saturday afternoon stamp club at my community library, hanging out with like-minded kids my age to exchange duplicates and to share fun facts we discovered along the way.

With stamp collecting, there was so much to discover about the countries from which the stamps originated, including geography, economics and prominent figures in their history. When I think back to that time and to those meetings, what strikes me as the factor that kept us coming back to the club week after week was that we were all curious by nature. Each little picture on a postage stamp made us want to know more about that country and its culture.

Growing up in the capital of Canada, we were most fortunate in living in a city with embassies. Every now and then, I would call the embassies, introduce myself as a stamp collector and ask if they had any stamps from recent mail that they didn’t have plans on using. It was such a joy when embassy staff would generously mail me a few, which nicely complemented my growing collection.

Looking back, what I find interesting is that some of what I learned through stamp collecting was not featured in our school curriculum. My hobby was a fabulous learning opportunity and a supplement to my education.

By studying the stories behind the stamps, I acquired knowledge that extended beyond our Canadian borders, which I think made me, for lack of a better word, a more worldly young man, despite never having traveled very far to that point.

Later, I noticed how some of that information prepared me for my career with a strong memory for world currencies and their relative value. This proved useful in my line of work.

Also, whether watching documentaries or reading a biography, it brought a smile to my face when the mention of a political or historical figure instantly generated a picture in my mind, having first seen their face on a postage stamp.

And even while watching competition shows like The Amazing Race, I often felt like I had points of reference in my mind that would make challenges involving geography, flags, currency, and historical events a bit easier.

What a great hobby it was for a young mind, when each stamp added to the collection offered another learning opportunity. For that, I’ll always be grateful.

Even though I haven’t added to the collection in my adult years, I still wonder if there might be something worthwhile in my collection that might be worth bringing to a professional appraiser, just out of curiosity. Either way, stamp collecting brings back many fond memories of a hobby that helped feed my appetite for knowledge beyond the school curriculum and beyond our borders.

Did you enjoy this post? If you did, your likes and shares are most appreciated.
If you haven’t already, please check out the rest of my blog at andrebegin.blog. From there, you can click on the “Follow” button to receive future posts directly in your inbox.
Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André