Philately as a World Wide Hobby

There is no other hobby that is as transnational and pervasive as Philately. In scores of nations, millions of people collect the postage stamp issues of not only own their country but of most of the other countries of the world as well. And collectors in different countries at different times still collect in substantially the same way. There are two things that have made philately unique in this way- catalogs and the size of the item we collect. The stamp catalogs that have been issued for over 150 years, including the Scott catalog, are the best that exist in any hobby. Every collector in the world knows every stamp that has been issued from every country. This makes it possible for collectors to know what they need and compare what they have which is a tremendous community building force that does not exist in, say, button collecting. And size does matter. Thousands of different stamps of our collection can easily fit in an album on a shelf, out of the way until desired. Try doing that with model trains. The popularity of hobbies ebbs and flows. Many very popular collecting hobbies of the past are barely thought of today. But catalogs and size have made philately the major world wide collecting hobby for over a century and we are still going strong.

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