The Playful Pursuit of Philately

Why do I collect postage stamps? by Graham C. Scott

I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not collect stamps.

By the time I was seven years old, I had a collection. My father made me a wooden box that I could use to store my stamps. I started by collecting the stamps used on letters sent to me, and eventually expanded it to include those of the countries that I have lived in. It was put on the back-burner while I was at university, but even then I still collected.

My family were always supportive of my collecting hobby, giving me any stamps that came their way. Used stamps were identified in the precious Stanley Gibbons’ catalogue, lovingly soaked off the envelope and, with the use of stamp hinges, placed in my album.

At one stage, I was able briefly to coerce my sisters into doing the soaking for me. They had no interest in stamps and gave up helping me when I started charging them for any stamps that were damaged!

It has been suggested that collecting is so common that it must be a basic human instinct, akin to hoarding. Yet it is little understood why people are driven to collect objects of little practical use – telephone calling-cards, match booklets, Pokémon cards, or stamps.

Philatelists do not restrict themselves to the collection of stamps only, but extend to the history of the production and usage of the postal system. Few can define the limits of their collecting interests. Whatever they are, the main goal is to acquire a complete set.

Non-collectors, usually professing interest out of politeness, will ask me why I collect stamps. I usually mumble something about history, and the joy of discovery, the thrill of the chase and the pleasure of purchasing a bargain. And how many stamps do you have? I’ve never counted. Many thousands.

Then they ask, what is your most valuable stamp? There is no answer to this question. Not many people are prepared to pay anything for my used Ethiopian stamps.

And finally, are stamps a good investment? No. Only a few people make any money buying and selling stamps. The days of buying stamps at the post office, putting them away and expecting their value to increase are long gone.

At this point, the topic will be changed.

I recently attended a dinner held by the Royal Philatelic Society of London. There were six collectors sitting at my table, all strangers.

“Why do you collect stamps?” I asked each of them.

“For the joy of it.” “For the history entwined in each and every cover.” “For the thrill of owning an historically important document, especially if there is a personal connection.”

“And what do you collect?” I asked them.

One answered, “I collect stamps from the Island of Zanzibar.”

“And you?” he asked.

“I collect Ethiopia and Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. I do not collect Zanzibar itself, but I do have a related interest.”

Zanzibar was part of the Sultanate of Oman, as were areas of the mainland, which later became German East Africa. Later still, after World War One, a vast portion of ‘Deutsch-Ostafrika’ became known as Tanganyika Territory and was administered by the British until achieving independence in 1961. Three years later, the independent states of Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged and adopted the consolidated name, Tanzania.

My mother was born in 1929 on a remote tea plantation, situated near the small town of Tukuyu in the Southern Highlands of Tanganyika. Travel was very difficult, especially in the rainy season. Yet, despite this and the distances involved, Sheila, the daughter of a neighbour, Hugh Bailey, was to become one of my mother’s closest and life-long friends.

Both girls’ fathers retired from the British army after the First World War. One took up farming tea; the other served in the Tanganyika police force. During the Second World War, too old for active military duty, my mother’s father served as the commander of an army training camp in Kenya. Meanwhile Sheila’s father rose to the rank of captain, serving in the police force in Dodoma, Tanganyika.

The Italians had been British allies in the First World War and had fought with the British against the Germans in German East Africa, a protracted campaign that went on for almost the entire duration of the First World War.

Prior to the Second World War, in a desire to be recognised as a great power, the Italians invaded and occupied Ethiopia, and in 1940 allied themselves with the Germans against the British.

In 1941, an expeditionary force of Allies led by the British Middle East Command, which included troops from Kenya, Uganda Protectorate and Tanganyika Territory, moved rapidly through Italian Somaliland and into Ethiopia.

During what became known as the East African Campaign and the first strategic victory of the war, British military service personnel could send mail free of charge provided they could hand their letters over to the postmaster of their unit. The post offices were constantly moving, and the date of the postmark is usually the only way of telling where the unit was at the time the letter was posted.

In 1983, I chanced upon a copy of a cover sent from Gigiga, Ethiopia to Captain H.M. Bailey, Chief of Police, Dodoma, Tanganyika. It bore an On Active Service mark, had the postmark of the unit, E.A. A.P.O.65, dated 10-VI-1941. A censor mark demonstrated that it had passed through military censors before being delivered.

Captain Bailey had retired from the police force and was living in England by the time I was born. Although my family were still in East Africa, he had helped me in starting my stamp collection and had fostered and encouraged my hobby by regularly sending me stamps from all over the world.

I was overjoyed when I came across and then was finally able to purchase this cover. With Captain Bailey no longer alive to ask, the contents of the letter are unknown. It is unclear who had sent this letter to Tanganyika from Ethiopia in the middle of a war, though it would appear that it was not a family member. That one is left with the impression that it was some police matter only adds to the mystery.

Rounding off this story, I told my listener that my parents spent their honeymoon in the Sultan of Oman’s palace in Zanzibar; and that Sheila Bailey had worked for many years as the private assistant to the Sultan of Oman.

I collect stamps because of remarkable and unexpected connections such as these. Owning this cover has brought me great joy, and I look forward to finding another such item.