July 1, 1847

A wise friend of the family once told me “Collecting is great for kids.” And despite its apparent decline as hobby for young people, it still is a great way to combine geography, armchair travel, history, and own’s one personal view of world into a single pastime. My childhood stamp collection was lost in the Northridge earthquake of 1994. I sure would have loved to share it with my kids.

How to Avoid Common Beginning Mistakes
“The first rule of stamp collecting is: If you collect for fun, you will have lots of it. But if you collect for profit you will have very little profit or fun.” This list of ten mistakes to avoid, published by the Junior Philatelists of America, covers all the basics. Mistake number eight says “Some stamps should not be soaked without consulting a more knowledgeable philatelist. Anything on an original cover that is more then 20 or 30 years old might be worth saving.” I suffered through this mistake as a young collector when a neighborhood friend soaked my collection of hand-me-down European stamps off their original pre-World War II envelopes. Urghh!

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