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A brief History of Stamp Collecting Who was the first stamp collector? No one
knows for sure, but it can't have been too long after the first stamps were
issued that someone thought it would be a grand idea to collect these little
bits of postal paper as novelties or souvenirs. As more and more countries
adopted the new postal system, and the number of different stamps from different
countries began to grow, other people took interest, and the hobby of philately
was under way. Of course, it was easier to collect stamps
then There were no decisions that had to be made over what countries or topics
to collect -- nearly everyone was a world wide collector. Ten years after the
introduction of the Black Penny, only 153 more stamps had been introduced; in
1860, the total number of stamps was still under 1,000. But the number of stamps
and stamp-issuing countries and colonies increased rapidly thereafter, and today
there are well over 200,000 different stamps(!) -- not including all the minor
varieties, errors, reprints, and so forth. Then, as today, people gathered stamps for many different reasons: one woman advertised for used Penny Blacks to paper her walls; another wanted to use the stamps to decorate lampshades (They are SO DUMB! I mean why didn't they SAVE SOME PENNY BLACKS FOR THE FUTURE GENERATIONS: LIKE US!). The first known advertisement for stamps for actual hobby-collecting purposes appeared in the London Family Herald in 1851. It was probably through such advertisements that stamp collectors first made contact with each other, and formed the first stamp clubs and philatelic societies. The very first philatelic society was called the Omnibus Club, and was formed in the United States in 1856. Today, there are many different philatelic societies in many countries, and an international society called FIP-- the Federation Internationale de Philatelie, founded in 1926. As for the word "philately" to describe stamp collecting, it first appeared in an article written in 1846 by a French stamp collector named Herpin for a French Stamp magazine. Derived from two Greek roots, "philo", meaning "love", and "athelos", meaning something exempt from "taxes", i.e., a letter with postage stamps. The term gained such widespread popularity -- many people must have thought it described exactly the way they felt -- that it was incorporated into common usage. Some people in those early days of
philately may have thought that stamp collecting was just a passing fancy, a
short lived fad -- time has proven them very wrong. Interest in stamp collecting
has grown steadily through the years until today countless people throughout the
world -- and more than 16 million in the United States alone -- turn to stamp
collecting for both recreation and pleasure, making it truly "THE WORLD'S MOST
POPULAR HOBBY. |
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Copyright © Stamps123 BY MUSHFIQUR RAHMAN. STAMPS123.TRIPOD.COM IS OWNED BY GAMERS WORLD! BANGLADESH - The publisher to Bangladesh's First Ever Free Monthly Gaming Magazine! Stamps 123 -- Your online destination to know everything about stamp collecting. If you liked this page or this website, then please click here. This page was last updated on 10/06/2006 This website was created on 19th June 2005 This website is created with FrontPage 2002/2003. Version 1.61.00
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