Recently, I got some stamps gifted to me. I had written an article for the December edition of The American Philatelist ("Oh Pongal! Celebrate the Pongal Festival with Us”), and in response Mr. Kishore Yalamanchili, also a collector, sent me some stamps. He sent me two albums to keep my collection in, and some stamps by themselves. I would like to thank Mr. Yalamanchili for sending these stamps, go over some of the stamps I got from him and describe the new ways I plan to collect stamps. The stamps that Mr. Yalamanchili sent were mainly from the UK. There were a lot of interesting stamps, like some about the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, stamps of some London landmarks, and stamps of British explorers. The albums have different images of stamps in black and white, and the goal is to fill up the album with the respective stamps that match the images. I think that instead of collecting random stamps, it'll be interesting to collect specific ones. I'm not exactly an experienced collector, so this will definitely be a great learning experience for me, and a way to organize stamps in a neater way than I do now. Not only that, but once I start collecting the specific stamps for the albums, I’ll be able to learn about new stamps and the history of countries I’ve never heard of. That’s actually one of the reasons I enjoy stamp collecting: it’s a great way to learn about history and geography.
Because of the new albums I received, I plan to collect stamps in a slightly different way than I do now. Before, I used to put stamps into an album without a specific pattern or grouping, but now I hope to organize them by groups. For example, grouping all the stamps of a specific country into one page of the album. Also, the albums I received have a specific order to present the stamps, so I hope to follow that order and have a more organized collection. You may be wondering why I would want to organize my collection? Well, first of all, it’ll look better, and therefore be more presentable. If I ever do a presentation of my stamps or show them to some people, I would like the collection not to look like a five year old’s construction paper collage. Not only that, but it’ll be easier to find stamps. Right now, if I wanted to find a stamp from, say, Mexico, I would have to look through a huge album. But if the stamps were organized, then I would know exactly where to find the right stamps.
So, I want to again say thank you to Mr. Yalamanchili for sending me such a great selection of stamps and albums, and I also want to encourage you to organize your stamp collection, and if you haven’t already, start collecting stamps!