Before I became a world traveler my Dad introduced me to maps and stamps to get me interested in travel and geography. We would soak stamps we got from letters and packages, mostly I think from his work, and arrange them in albums. Naturally, I loved categorizing the flowers all together and animals or collecting the last in the comic book series. It tapped into my need to organize things. And, collecting those stamps got me curious about where they come from.
Stamps originated as a receipt of taxes paid on packages being shipped by the UK. Because stamps originated in the UK they are the only country in the world who doesn’t to put their country name on the stamp. It just has the queens silhouette and you know where it’s from. I think of it as akin to the internet being invented by America and so we only put .com instead of .com.us. Pretty neat right?
For the past few years I haven’t been soaking stamps on a regular basis. But I was hoarding them in little boxes and tins with my stationery. So last weekend I soaked them and had a wonderful time sorting my US stamps from the Singapore stamps. I even found one from France! It was a great time and a neat reminder of my travels.
Singapore has a great Philatelic Museum with some awesome examples of early colonial UK stamps and beautiful contemporary stamps from around the region. Definitely worth a visit if you are even remotely interested in stamps.
