I want to make my thoughts known about stamp and coin collections, both of which are near and dear to me. Stamp collection or philately and collecting coins are dying hobbies.  I inherited my stamp collection from my older brother and saw them as “big boy” treasures to be appreciated and admired every so often. 

Since I was a child was big on collections in general whether it’s stickers postcards or magnets.  For some reason though stamps and coins link me back to an older bygone area.  At the time the possibilities were endless never would I have thought that the hobby itself would recede into obscurity along with regular mail which makes organic stamp collecting from actual mail received would be a memory!

Coins are another matter, as I travel I was keen to keep a sample of the local currency, and where I reside in Canada, the Canadian Mint corporation that creates the currency of the country, along with several other countries, has become very creative with new technology to press unique designs and formats of “coins”.  But the hobby is certainly more expensive than stamps.

I have come to a point where I have come to terms with the end of my stamp collecting, and whatever I currently have in my 4 large albums is unlikely to change.  I used to keep duplicates to trade and exchange with others, but I am selling those for pennies to a dying breed of amateur collectors like me.  With coins, I have similarly collected a substantial amount, along with paper money, but because of how expensive it has become and the fact that the use of money is itself making its way to digital payments is likely to go the way of the stamps as well.  My kids will unlikely inherit my collections and I doubt they are worth anything anyway. 

I just can’t let them go and they remind me of a younger innocent and curious me being mesmerized by the stamps and coins I had and the stories each could tell about their origin, the history of where they came from, and the symbolism they represent. I wonder if one day they will be revitalized in some way to their former glory, but in any case my collections will always be a part of what makes me happy.  Every time I look through them I can’t help but get a certain amount of joy reserved for special nerds and geeks like me.  I wonder if there are more of us out there