Collecting Stamps: My School Days Hobby

When I passed my 6th standard, I came to Pune for further education. My paternal uncle was a teacher of English and Maths in a High School called Fattechand Jain Vidyalay at Chinchwad, a town near Pune. I got admission in 7th standard in the same school where my uncle was teaching. The school was famous and a big one in this area.

My uncle's hobby was photography and he always was keeping himself up to date with the latest things happening in the world of photography. He was in touch of some of the American institutes related to photography and also with few photographic magazines published from USA, by correspondence. Because of it, he was receiving some letters from United States by airmail and seamail. Letters having beautiful stamps on it. I remember that most of the stamps had portraits of George Washington or John F. Kennedy on it. I used to remove the stamps from the envelopes and stick them in a notebook. These were the first stamps of my collection.

In my class, some of my classmates too were collecting stamps. They became my close friends because of the same hobby. We used to exchange stamps. Exchanging Indian stamps with Indian stamps and foreign stamps for foreign stamps. Small size stamps for small size stamps and large size stamps for large size stamps. If someone wanted to exchange Indian stamps with foreign stamps our 'Exchange Rate' was 2 Indian stamps for 1 foreign stamp. In the same way, exchange rate for sizes was 2 small stamps for one large stamp.

At that time a chocolate named Frutex was popular amongst us, as each chocolate had a foreign stamp inside its cover. I remember that I had eaten a lot of Frutex in those days.

To get Indian stamps, I used to visit shopkeepers and request them to give me stamps from the letters they were receiving.

We were also buying Collector's Packs available in market, but this way of collecting stamps was not so attractive for us.

When I read an article on stamp collecting in a Newspaper, I found that we were collecting stamps in wrong way. We used to remove the stamps from envelopes directly by pulling out them. Then we used to stick them into notebook with gum. This method was damaging the stamps. The scientific method was to cut the stamp with surrounding portion with a scissor, then put it in a pot filled with tepid water. Then wait until the stamp gets detached automatically from the paper on which it was stuck. Further, sticking the stamps in note books was also wrong and the right method was to put them into the special albums for stamps which were available in market.

The hobby of collecting stamps proved very useful for me as it developed my General knowledge. GK about countries and the famous people in various countries. Also about the currencies used there, famous monuments, animals and much more.

-Mahavir Sanglikar