I am a proud stamp collector, despite the fact that almost every time I tell people about this hobby, they laugh and look at me as if I’m crazy or just extremely nerdy. Nerdy it may be, but I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with that. I really believe that stamp collecting is an exciting and worthwhile hobby.
I started collecting in elementary school around the second grade because my friend Katie’s dad was the postmaster for our post office. She would talk about stamp collecting and I gradually became interested. I would clip off the corners of every envelope that we got in the mail so that I could have the stamp. I remember being quite proud of myself when I finally had 100 stamps to show off.
Of course, now I have over 5000 stamps from hundreds of different countries, past and present. I have stamps covering all kinds of different topics ranging from architecture to world leaders to dogs to toys to rock stars. Presently I am trying to get at least one stamp from every current stamp issuing country approved by the Universal Postal Union. It’s quite a daunting task but I’ve managed to get a good chunk of the countries crossed off my list.
