Stamp Collecting Month + A Giveaway!

Good news, friends! We start a new month today. One step closer to rounding out this crazy, whacky, awful year! Also, October is National Stamp Collecting Month.

Stamp Collecting also goes by the fancier name of Philately. The word was coined by Frenchman Georges Herpin, who took the Greek root word φιλ(ο)- phil(o)-, meaning "an attraction or affinity for something", and ἀτέλεια ateleia, meaning "exempt from duties and taxes" to form "philatelie".

Stamp Collecting a fantastic hobby because there’s no point to it… but I mean this in the nicest way possible! It’s something people do purely for the enjoyment of it. Stamp collectors are continuously learning and therefore growing. There are no rules to how it’s done either; what may be appealing to me is not appealing to others, and vice versa.

I am a collector of Olympic stamps, that is: stamps with the olympic rings printed on them. Almost every country has these, so it’s a fun trip around the world to collect them all. I sort my collection by olympic year, so I will have multiple countries represented on each page. Would you believe me if I said it’s fascinating? actually, don’t answer that!

Anyway, to kick off stamp collecting month, I’m doing a giveaway of a strip of the 1986 Stamp Collecting postage stamps. These were issued to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American Philatelic Society. You can enter the giveaway on my instagram but I’ll have a few available in my shop as well.