Not licked yet, an old hobby makes comeback

Date Published: 25-Mar-2010

By Denise McNamara

There is a generation of kids out there who learned about the wonders of the world and the mysteries of her diverse creatures through their precious collection of stamps.

They would swap their local stamps of writers and politicians through international clubs for samples from more exotic climes, where portraits of gorillas and elephants from Africa would create a fiercely vibrant picture of a continent they were unlikely ever to explore in the flesh.

It’s a hobby that has almost died a death since the advent of the internet and email, with only bills now coming through the letter box – often with just the nondescript stamp of the office franking machine. But now one Galway enthusiast is hoping to reverse that trend by setting up the first stamp collectors club in Galway.

A few months ago Brendan Smith dusted off his collection of stamps which he last lovingly pasted into albums as a 12-year-old schoolboy.

He was inspired to kick off again by a colleague at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at NUI Galway, Doug Foxvog, who has a phenomenal collection of 60,000.

They began to seek out rare treasures from around the world on Ebay, which has come to breathe new life into the once massively popular past-time.

“A little stamp can convey the whole ethos of a country – if you look at stamps from colonial countries you can see a way of life that has disappeared, you will see animals that no longer exist. You get a good understanding of the changes in culture – people might be wearing their traditional dress whereas now everything’s obviously more homogenous,” Brendan enthused.

“By studying the differences in these stamp images as they changed over many decades, collectors became acutely aware of how the status and values of countries could radically alter when for instance an African colony became independent. Or when once seemingly invincible empires in Habsburg or Russia broke up into numerous small nation states.”

The club had its inaugural meeting on Wednesday when a selection of vintage selections from the mid-nineteenth century as well as specialised collections on technology, space and wildlife were put on display. The club is planning to meet once a month to swap stamps and organise regional meetings in a bid to network with collectors all over the country.

For more on this feature, see the Galway City Tribune.