Philately

I had been a philatelist during my Elementary years. I was inspired by my mom. Also during that time, Edna also had her collection of stamps at home. Not to mention also that mom's brothers and sisters had been collecting stamps for years.

As for my philately story, I became a member of La Salle Academy's Philatelic Club by the year 1993 which was founded by Bro. Jaime Dalumpines, the school principal at that time. I can still remember that at school breaks, I go to his office to browse his stamp collections and then buy something from him which was not in my stamp collection. Moreover, as a member of the philatelic club, he had given me seven (7) addresses to write to. So during those times, I had acquired "pen-pals". Not only in school that I do exchange my stamps and/or buy stamps, but I had other outside-of-the-school friends who are philatelists too. I really enjoyed those days looking at stamps so old and new to me. My last stamp activity was during my first year in highschool. At 2003, Ian gave me a set of Vatican stamps which was a gift for me after his tour at Triest for a Physics conference.

Hanging out at istorya.net really amuses me that there are still people who collects stamps as a hobby. I was really envious at Jack on his messages that almost every other day he would receive stamps from other countries in exchange of empty Marlboro cigarrette packs. 200 empty packs of Marlboro cigarrettes(which was just acquired for free from stores, friends, and in streets) plus just a rough amount of 210 Php will be exchanged with a thousand assorted stamps. Pretty cool huh? Just like turning base metals into gold (alchemy).

I'm so glad that there still exists stamps today. Moreover, I'm still glad that there are still philatelists in this world. I'm even amazed on these New Zealand stamps: