Sachinthana Saranasooriya is a beginner stamp collector and APS member who loves finding different stories through postal stamps. Her collection is mainly focused on stamps from her home country of Sri Lanka (called Ceylon in older stamps). Click here to watch a video about tea stamps from the country. You may also know her from the YouTube channel and twitter called Stamps with Sara. APS did a short interview with Sachinthana to learn more about her background and plans for the future in the hobby. You can watch a video of the interview below.

Interview Video

How did you learn about APS? 

I first found out about the American Philatelic society from twitter, then I watched some of the videos on their YouTube channel. After seeing more updates from the society I was influenced to become a member. 

What inspired you to collect stamps?

I started collecting stamps around grade five. My mom really inspired me because she was already a stamp collector, one day she gave me some beautiful stamps and said that I can collect them too. That was the start of my stamp collecting journey. I remember I pasted the stamps in books since at the time I did not have any stamp albums.

What stamps do you collect?

I collected every stamp, especially local stamps. At the time my main interest was flora and fauna. I wanted to learn more about them, so now my collection had a special focus on flora and fauna.

What inspired you to start a YouTube channel? 

I studied agriculture and I did hiking as a hobby, so I wanted to share my experiences about flora with other collectors. Eventually that idea inspired me to make a YouTube channel. I should also mention Graham from Exploring Stamps. From the beginning he inspired me to make more videos, which was really great. 

What membership services do you use the most? 

The newsletters have a lot of videos and I'm enjoying reading them. As a beginner and a new collector, I'm learning a lot from the society. It's really interesting how they approach collectors and give them opportunities to share their stories. I wanted to thank the APS for giving me this opportunity to share my experiences as well.