My Stamp collection is divided up into eight different categories:
The stamps of Bermuda
This is what started it all off. Way back when my mum and
dad were living in Maidstone there was a lot of stress in my life. One
particularly bad night, I was in the spare bedroom, waiting on a call, unable
to sleep and surfing the web. I ended up reading about Bermuda, somewhere I'd been to a few times and that had very happy memories. I don’t know what led to this but there and then
I decided that I was going to start a secret stamp collection and that my
specialism would be the stamps of Bermuda. Apart from falling head over heels in love with
Bermuda when we first visited in the early ‘80s, it was also my first long-haul holiday and the place where I
first set eyes on coral reefs. All things that would play a big part in my life. I can clearly remember when I saw my first reef fish, the Sergeant Major so the next specialism in my collection is a very small one...
Stamps featuring Sergeant Major fish
This is a bit niche as there really aren't that many, maybe ten. But it's been most enjoyable tracking them down.
Coral reef life
One thing leads to another and I started to see stamps depicting coral reefs. These colourful vibrant and wonderful ecosystems are somehow well suited to the art form of stamps. Often depicting single species rather than seascapes. This then becomes a conduit to stamps of different countries.
Malaysia
Of all the places I've visited in the world, the one that I love most is Malaysia. It felt absolutely right to include this fascinating country and its complex history into my collection. I've learned so much about Malaysia from studying its stamps.
Fantasy travel
My biggest problem with life is that there's too much world and not enough time and money to explore it all. In an attempt to mitigate that, I'm learning about far off exotic places that I'd love to go to but probably never will.
Animals of Africa
Along with diving, the most wonderful times of my life have been watching wildlife in Africa. I've done that in South Africa, Kenya and Zambia. So collecting a few animal stamps helps relive those magic encounters.
Aircraft.
As I write this in the spring of 2020, aviation
feels like a corpse. But through stamps, I hope to explore days gone by when
giant seaplanes flew airmail from Bermuda to New York, or four-engine prop-driven airliners flew into remote pacific atolls.
Remains of my childhood collection
I don't know what happened to my childhood stamp collection, which is a pity. However, I did find an old stock book which had a couple of pages of stamps from back then. This takes up the last page of my album.
Bananas (potential new area of the collection)
Not yet, but I'm thinking of collecting stamps about bananas. My favourite fruit, funny, bright, colourful and a little taste of the exotic.
The final couple of things to say about my collection is that this isn't an investment. I buy these stamps for pennies on eBay (apart from the Penny Black which is worth about £100). I also prefer to collect used stamps. I just love the unknown story of them.
