Hi there! this first post in Hive Collectors. A post by the denmarkguy caught my eye about this months topic Stamp Collecting!
Stamp Collecting brings back so many good memories, my dad used to bring them home from work for us to collect. We learned to wash and sort them and even traded them with friends. Over the years we ended up with quite a big collection. I even put a bit of pocket money into it when I was really young. At one stage I was pretty keen to collect very Stamp Australia ever produced.
Unfortunately as I got older other things seemed to take over and have a much bigger priorities. Dad kept lots of them thinking he could sell them during his retirement as a hobby but eventually he gave them all back to me and I sold most of them when eBay first started and the fees were not like they are today.
I did keep the best and some of my favorites and bought a good quality album with some of the proceeds.
It is great to look through from time to time maybe one day I will finish the collection and get at least the early Australian ones I am missing.
The kangaroo on the map of Australia series was the first stamp as a country. There were early ones but they were issued by the different States.
The red ones were the regular letter stamps and the blue ones were for heavier parcels and are much harder to find.
My favorite ones are from around the 1970s after that I think they started to cut corners and tried to produce them more cheaply.
I am pretty sure they are all still in date of issue order.
Native Animals and landscapes seemed to be very popular.
I used to go out of my way to buy nice looking stamps for posts card to send home while I was backpacking, long before the internet. lucky my parents kept all of them.
I am not sure if this still happens but in 1994 while driving around Australia we had to pay for entry in one of our better National Parks. They actually gave you a stamp as part of the entry ticket. I don't think the duck was an official Australian postage stamp but still one of the better things I have hung onto over the years.