Stamps, Stamps, and More Stamps

When I was a teenager, I collected stamps. I remember going to the post office and buying stamps. I remember soaking the stamps from the letters from my English and Australian pen-pals. I remember ordering stamps through the mail. I remember spending hours putting the stamps into my album.

Heck, I even I remember making friends with my mailman – his name was Don. He called me a philatelist.

I still have the collection – it's somewhere in the basement. Is it worth a lot of money? Probably not. I don't have THAT many. I'm sure I thought it was an investment at the time. But that's not why I collected. I liked looking at all the neat stamps other countries had – all the neat stamps our country had. It was a fun hobby.

I do know that an un-cancelled stamp is worth more than a cancelled stamp, though (duh!). So imagine my shock when my husband's E-bay package came in the mail the other day, covered in old stamps.

How old? The eight cent stamps (Winter Olympics) were dated 1972. Some of the thirteen cent stamps indicate Colorado's centennial, so that would be 1976. But the oldest is the three cent stamp indicating Hawaii, which was issued in 1937!

It was like someone took their stamp collection and used them to mail the package. I can't imagine someone doing that, when they had been kept unused all these years.

My husband was nice and made sure not to rip the box open. And I don't think I'll ever be able to throw the box away, either.

Because that collector is still in me!