The last thing I need is a hobby. I can barely post photos to my flickr account, I can hardly finish a lexulous game on facebook, I often forget to call my mother.. and yet, the allure of the tangible physical hobby was never real for me until i wandered into a stamp show at the
Oregon Stamp Society's clubhouse on NE 33rd. I've got an envelope of stamps at home from when I was a kid, I used to soak them off of my correspondences with my aunt, and I admit to digging deep into the stamp-filled trunk at Flutter but I never thought I'd look farther than right under my nose. The best thing about stamp collecting is this line that exists dividing people concerned with cancellation, perforation and rarity, and those who like pretty stamps. I fall squarely in the latter category, and the guys at the stamp club were very pleased to sell me all their less valuable but very lovely stamps. They made it very clear to me that the stamps I liked weren't always the most valuable, and I made it clear that I didn't care at all. Lola and I walked away with our own collecting binders full of manila stock pages and 50 lovely stamps for $6. The guys all promised to come visit Flutter's stamp box to hunt for square centimeters of treasure. I had a lot of fun that evening putting my other stamps in the book, giving Lola the doubles, inventing categories (nurses, buildings, Iran, ships, birds, etc) basically dorking out on philately, aka stamp collecting, my new hobby. Check out the photos below, we have (or had) all the crazy Hungarian ones. The blue one of the lady's head is one of the most expensive stamps ever sold (not at Flutter, ours are 15 for $1).
