What is the difference between a pack rat and a collector? Both are scavengers; both believe that what they gather is “pretty” or “useful.” My first collection was, as usual for preteens, comic books. That lasted until I left for college and their demise due to my mother’s cleaning up what I had left behind. Fortunately, she did not dispose of my stamp collection, my second attempt of gathering what might be “pretty” and even, at times, “useful.”
I collected both US stamps along with a “topical” collection of sports stamps, i.e., stamps from around the world that included athletics in their design. Although I still possess those sports stamps, I stopped adding to them when I left high school. I did continue to collect postage stamps issued by the United States.
My US albums, with unused or “mint” stamps, date back to 1924. However, my personal trips to the post-office for the earliest issues I have, began about 1950 when I entered high school and could easily walk between the two sites during my lunchtime break. Back then, regular stamps sold for a mere three-cents. I managed to stop by the post-offices in each town where I lived after that, even though it was difficult to find the time during my eight years of higher education. Nevertheless, I persisted. When we lived in New Hampshire, my collecting stamps became an excuse for Karen and me to go for drives up and down the Connecticut Valley. At that time, I was interested in collecting “plate blocks.”
Each pane of stamps had a unique number, a plate number, printed on one of the four corners of each “plate.” There might be as many as four or five different numbers for each design that was issued. As a result, there could be more than a dozen different combinations of plate number positions. Each post-office had different numbers for the panes it sold. The challenge was to purchase as many different plate blocks (consisting of four stamps adjoining the plate number) as I could possibly find.
This effort required that I had to travel to many post-offices in order to complete a set. It was a great excuse to drive to a different village in Vermont or New Hampshire to find the desired stamps and stop for a cup of coffee and a donut, as well. I finally gave up this addiction when the cost of a single stamp exceeded ten cents. By then, the price of trying to find each different plate block became as ridiculous as the idea, itself, of collecting plate block numbers. I sold my plate block collection to a shop which would pay me only face value for them. Stamp collecting is not a good method for long-term investments, no matter what philatelists say.
In fact, collecting as an investment strategy is probably not worthwhile for any of my so-called “collectibles.”
For a limited time, I collected porcelain plates with illustrations from a Chinese literary classic: The Dream of the Red Chamber. Currently on E-Bay they can be purchased at half the price I paid for them fifty years ago. My brief collections of other plates from the Bradford Exchange have probably not done any better. However, they “disappeared” over the years, although those of The Dream of the Red Chamber still occupy a dish-collection rack on one of our walls.
A much cuter collection than Chinese plates was that of Tom Clark gnomes. Each figurine was molded from a mixture of clay and ground-up pecan shells. Originally, Karen and I were interested in images connected in some way with an “edible” (such as oranges or potatoes) as part of the figurine. Each molding had a small gnome-like person along with representations of nuts and leaves. Somewhere on it, there would also be a replica of a half-hidden coin. A gift from our daughter initiated our collection. When we finally stopped actively adding to it, we gave her all of the figures we owned, except for a pair consisting of an old man and lady surrounded by peanut butter cups and Hershey kisses. We also could not part with a third piece: an elderly bride and groom we had added to celebrate our twenty-fifth anniversary.
Another of our collections was begun when we lived in New England and had ready access to antique sales. They were ink wells. When we began to tramp through outdoor stalls during an autumn visit to antique dealers, it was more fun to focus on a particular item for the search. Most of them are figurines concealing an ink jar somewhere in the design. The container for the ink may be in a gondola compartment of a Venetian boat or the hump of a camel. In another piece, a music-stand for a violinist hides the actual inkwell. Figures with hidden ink wells were more of a challenge to identify among all of the other non-opening images on display. It was a joy to discover a figurine that did open to reveal the hidden ink-jar. After we had moved from New England, we discovered that New Orleans had a particular role in providing additions to our collection. We finally discontinued our inkwell hunts when we moved on to our nativities collection.
Items for our major, ongoing collection have been purchased from all around the world, especially on our many visits to Europe. We enjoy finding nativities. The holy family comes in a variety of costumes and materials. There are olive-wood carvings from Israel and pine carvings from Germany. There are figures dressed in 18th century Austrian garb or South American ponchos. The creche, itself, might be a coconut from a Latin source, or a garish, multicolored church from Poland. Our curio cabinet holds over three-dozen representations of Mary, Joseph and Jesus along with accompanying sheep, shepherds and magi.
A pack rat might keep something shiny or soft. I prefer to believe that our keepsakes represent memories of places and events that brought us joy.