Do You Need to Know History to Collect Stamps

Stamp collecting is as old as the first stamp and is surrounded in history and historical events, but that doesn’t mean you have to know any of it to start collecting for your own interest.

There are as many ways to collect stamps as there are interests in the world. Stamp collectors have collections of sports, birds, places, faces, colours, countries and more. They cannot tell you the year the stamp was published, or where for that matter. It is just a beautiful piece of art that is worthy of collecting.

If you want to go deeper into stamp collecting then understanding and knowing history can help and this depends on how far down the rabbit hole of philately you want to go but it is not a pre-requisite to begin. Choose something you like, say birds or cartoon characters. There are hundreds of stamps in either of these categories that you can begin to collect.

Will a collection of an interest be valuable? That depends on how you define value and worth. If it brings you joy then who cares? Joy is one of the most valuable things we have as humans. If you want to collect for monetary value, then you will probably need to know some history both of the stamp and of events surrounding it.

Knowledge of history can enhance your collection and help you determine which stamp is more valuable than another in terms of market value if you are collecting for monetary gain. The deeper you understand the subject of the stamp and the political history surrounding it, the more you will make from a stamp in your collection or the entirety of the collection, depending on how you assemble it.

For example, there are many collections around the world of prisoner of war stamps, covers and philately. There is deep historic knowledge surrounding these collections and the significance of certain pieces in the collection. Also there are many collection of birds on stamps. A knowledge and liking of birds is essential to these to be able to identify the bird and its significance to the environment and why it landed on the stamp.

This is all for your own entertainment. It doesn’t have to mean anything to anybody else or be a sellable commodity if you don’t want it to. People collect golf balls, posters, coins, magazines, all sorts of things just for the sheer joy of collecting. Stamps are another avenue to express the joy of collecting for the sheer pleasure of it. So no, if you don’t like history you don’t have to know it to start a stamp collection.