“Stamps can make life thrilling” advised the XLCR Stamp Finder and Collector’s Dictionary. Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, we collected shells, postcards, swap cards, autographs, matchboxes, coins and even paper serviettes. But the most common was collecting stamps.
Although the Australian States initially issued their own stamps, the first one by the Commonwealth of Australia was in 1913. It cost one penny and featured a kangaroo and an outline of Australia. Apparently one printing of the stamp left off Tasmania!
Books to encourage collecting advised us that King George V was a keen Philatelist, as was President Roosevelt and the Queen. Her grandfather’s collection in Buckingham Palace is displayed in over 300 albums.
Stamps used to be in abundance. You’d receive letters, postcards and parcels from family and friends, bristling with stamps.
Offices were an excellent source of overseas stamps and you’d swap them with your friends.
It was a big production removing stamps from envelopes. After neatly cutting around the stamps, we’d take over the kitchen using every one of our mother’s baking dishes and slice trays. These were filled with warm water to dissolve the glue and separate the stamps from the paper. We’d lift them out using tweezers then lay them on tea towels for drying before being pressed under books.
Next came the sorting and working out what country they were from. We learnt that the word Magyar was Hungary, Polska was Poland, Eire was Ireland and
Helvetia was Switzerland.
Once you’d decided where you’d put them in your album, the trickiest bit was attaching them with special hinges made of ‘gummed glassine’, though lazy kids resorted to Perkins Paste.
Stamps are now almost a thing of the past, replaced by email, mobile calls and online payments. Perhaps their last major use is for posting Christmas cards.