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MAY 1st 2020

We are all collectors

Collecting is living: although we may not realize it, collecting is an instinctive part of human nature and therefore of life. Man has been doing it since the beginning of time.

Man has been doing it since the beginning of time. Even the simple act of conserving photographs, as souvenirs of significant moments in our lives, is a form of collecting. Instinctively, we catalogue, organize and conserve. Although more readily associated with art, stamps, coins and antiques, collecting is a familiar act. Just think of those who enjoy admiring their shoe collection, neatly arranged by type and color, or cooking aficionados who organize their knives and utensils to best reflect their gestures in the kitchen, or even book collectors who catalogue by author, topic or publishing house. Collecting is applicable to any type of object, be it representative of one’s favorite animal to flowers and plants in a garden or on a balcony. The list is endless because collecting is limitless and the freedom of being able to do so, enriches our lives.

Even the simple act of conserving photographs, as souvenirs of significant moments in our lives, is a form of collecting.

The earliest forms of widespread collecting.

The earliest forms of widespread collecting appear in ancient times with the accumulation and conservation of funerary furniture and furnishings. Statues and frescos have customarily adorned the sacred places of numerous populations. One cannot but consider all those recurrent objects, found in the tombs or pyramids of ancient Egyptian Pharos, as private collections.

Returning to philately, it is important to note how quickly stamp collecting followed the introduction of stamps. In the later half of the 1800’s, a period in which images were rare compared to today, stamps were considered the collectibles of nobles and kings. Each important family had a collection and prided itself in it.

Books at the time contained, at most, a few black and white engravings as the world was more depicted in writing than in images.

Stamps however, rapidly began portraying regents of far-away lands, exotic landscapes or animals, only rarely seen in zoos or circuses, quickly rousing people’s curiosity about how much there was to discover in the world.