The Wonderful World of Philately
In Postmark Paris—originally published in 2005, and issued in a beautiful new edition in 2020—Leslie Jonath chronicles her childhood adventures in the City of Light, through a series of lyrical vignettes and images of the gorgeous stamps she collected there.
When I was ten, my family lived in Paris for a year. While we were there, I started collecting stamps. Friends and neighbors who knew about my collection gifted me with beautiful stamps from France, Russia, and even Japan. To me, these tiny, colorful keepsakes were exciting: a window onto the world.
Over the past six months, as we’ve all found ourselves staying closer to home, people around the globe are turning to my childhood hobby—stamp collecting—as a way to keep calm, find comfort, and dream of future travels. It makes sense: As writer and stamp collector Andrew Nelson recently noted in the Wall Street Journal, philately is a hobby “where history, graphic design, and exotic landscapes commingle on a bit of sticky perforated paper.” When Nelson spoke with the executive director of the American Philatelic Society (APS), a nonprofit dedicated to stamp collecting, he learned that interest in philately has gone through the roof, as evidenced by the fact that “online search results listing the APS roughly doubled [between March and May].” Millennials, in particular, have gravitated toward stamp collecting, in part out of an affinity for all things nostalgic (such as vinyl and cottagecore) and in part the analog nature of stamp collecting. As Suzanne Rae, the young chairwoman of the UK-based Philatelic Traders Society, told the Guardian: “Philately is tangible: it’s relaxing and unplugged.” Even John Oliver, The Daily Show veteran and host of Last Week Tonight, loves stamps—so much so that he partnered with Stamps.com to create a limited run of stamps emblazoned with popular characters from his show, such as Chiijohn and Mr. Nutterbutter. Those stamps were sold in support of the US Postal Service, and sales totaled a whopping $4 million.
Want to start your own stamp collection?
You might want to begin by finding a theme that interests you—a “topical,” in philatelic parlance. This might be birds or bridges, tigers or travel destinations. Once you’ve selected your theme, you can find the corresponding album to mount your stamps in.
Once you have a theme and an album, you’re ready to start collecting! You can steam used stamps off of your mail; buy stamps through the USPS; or scour online outlets such as eBay, hipstamp.com, thephilately.com, and mysticstamp.com. The USPS site even has a “collector’s zone,” where you can find buy stamps individually (rather than on a sheet of twenty).
Find others who share your interest—there are philatelic groups everywhere. Fellow stamp collectors can help you find more resources to build your budding collection. For more information, check out the USPS collector’s zone.
To see Leslie’s collection of tiny, colorful keepsakes—and get more stamp collecting inspiration—check out Postmark Paris, available on Indiebound and wherever books are sold.
