World famous stamp collectors
Amelia Earhart has been in the news recently. She was an aviator who was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by aeroplane. She disappeared in 1937 over the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe. In the last few weeks there has been some speculation that her aircraft may have been discovered on an island in Kiribati, but researchers now think the mysterious object isn't a plane wreck after all.
What I found interesting was that this incredibly accomplished pioneer was also a stamp collector and a very enthusiastic one! She exhibited part of her collection at the TIPEX International Philatelic Exhibition in 1936. Here is a photograph of her with her display.
She also knew the commercial value of souvenir covers and sold them to collectors to pay for her expeditions. Being an aviation pioneer was expensive! So Earhart and her husband, George Palmer Putnam, came up with the idea of carrying specially-postmarked letters on flights and selling them through an agent - the Gimbel Brothers. Several of these travelled with her on her successful transatlantic flight and also on her 1935 Mexico to Newark flight. Thousands on red and blue special envelopes were carried on her plane when she went missing during her round-the-world attempt in 1937.
She clearly saw a business opportunity but it's also obvious that Amelia Earhart had a real interest in stamp collecting and this got me thinking about which other famous people may have been collectors. As I often say, Google is your friend and it isn't hard to find some very well-known people who also happened to collect stamps. Of course, most of them are known for different things and a few people on this list might surprise you.
Did you know that the novelist Ayn Rand was a stamp collector? She had collected as a child but came back to the hobby in 1971 when she was aged 66. Ayn became a very passionate stamp collector with specialist interest in Iceland and the Ryukyu Islands. She wrote in the Minkus Stamp Journal in 1971 that the US $1 Western Cattle in Storm stamp of 1898 was one of her favourites and she saw philately as a "miraculous brain-restorer" after writing and a way to "switch one's mind temporarily away from exhausting problems or burdens." As you might expect, Ayn was quite philosophical about her hobby and why she collected. She said: "The pursuit of the unique, the unusual, the different, the rare is the motive power of stamp collecting. It endows the hobby with the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt ... even on the more modest levels of collecting, where the treasure may be simply an unexpected gift from a friend, which fills the one blank spot, completing a set."
Everyone has heard of the Beatles, but did you know John Lennon was a stamp collector? He didn't leave us a philosophical essay about collecting like Ayn Rand, but when he was a child his cousin Stanley Parkes encouraged him to collect and John seems to have enjoyed it. One of John's albums is now in the Smithsonian National Postal Museum and it is a fascinating piece of history. Not only does it contain a lot of stamps, but John wrote his address in it and also seems to have regularly counted how many stamps he had as there are updates inside the front cover. He also drew beards and moustaches on the printed images of Queen Victoria and King George VI on the album's title page!
I was impressed to discover that the great John Lennon was a stamp collector and even more impressed to find out that Freddie Mercury of Queen was one too! Who would have thought? He was another person who collected stamps as a child and his collection is now in the London Postal Museum. Freddie started collecting stamps between the ages of 9 and 12. His father, Bomi Bulsara, worked in the British Colonial Office and presumably he was able to obtain stamps for Freddie from various countries. Freddie's album has a lot of stamps from the British Commonwealth, Zanzibar (where he was born), Monaco, Aden, and Eastern Europe. Interestingly, he often arranged them in shapes like the letter F on album pages! In December 1993, the stamp collection sold for £3,200 at Sotheby's. Fortunately, the winning bidder was the National Postal Museum.
Another person you might not have known was a stamp collector was Dr Sally Ride, famous for being the first American woman in space.
Again, we know about this because the Smithsonian National Postal Museum has her collection which includes seven albums. She started collecting at the age of nine and focused on thematics, especially the Olympic Games and space exploration. Wonderfully, she continued collecting stamps all of her life and her collection includes stamps about some of the projects she was involved with at NASA!
Someone who collected a lot of stamps with portraits of himself on them was King George V. He is probably the most famous of all stamp collectors. But to call him a collector is perhaps not accurate. He was an obsessive. This wasn't a small hobby of his. He built a gigantic collection of stamps - when he died in 1936 he had over quarter of a million stamps in 328 red leather albums. And this was at a time when there weren't so many stamps being issued. He was also into rare stamps. As the Postal Museum explains. In 1904, he made a record purchase of the rare Mauritius Two-Pence Blue stamp for £1,450 at an auction. It is said that a royal advisor told the king about this: “Some damned fool has given £1,400 for one stamp!” The king replied, “I was that damned fool!” Whether or not it is true I don't know, but the stamp is worth over £1million today so it was probably a sensible investment. His collection was so large that in 1913 he appointed a full-time curator, a man called Edward Bacon, to manage his collection. It was simply the biggest and best stamp collection in the world. King George V wasn't a casual collector. He studied stamps, including origins, design and printing techniques. He once described stamp collecting as "the most effective means of brief forgetfulness" from royal duties, so was probably like Ayn Rand - just more immersed! The collection has remained with the monarch as part of the Royal Philatelic Collection and King Charles III continues the stamp-collecting tradition.
Another famous stamp collector is the world chess champion Anatoly Karpov. Perhaps stamp collecting naturally appeals to people with meticulous minds? Karpov's extensive collection of Belgium and Belgian Congo stamps and postal history (covering mail from 1742 through 1980) was sold at auction in 2011-12. Like Sally Ride, he also collects thematic stamps about - yes, you've guessed it - chess. Other specialisms include animals and the Olympic Games, but he is so much more than a thematic collector and he also collects USSR/Russia, British Empire, France, Monaco and the Netherlands.
His collection is estimated to be worth around £11million. Like Amelia Earhart, Karpov has often displayed parts of his collection at international events, including at the United Nations.
Here is someone who surprised me - Maria Sharapova. Did you know she collected stamps? She doesn't fit most people's idea of a stamp collector, but that shows how most people's ideas are often wrong. Tennis star Maria started collecting stamps as a child and continued the hobby during her tennis career as a way to stay entertained while travelling. And who can blame her?
When on tour Maria made it a personal mission to visit local post offices to find and collect stamps from the different countries she visited. In 2012, The London Evening Standard reported that "Star collector Maria Sharapova leads new wave of stamp enthusiasts" and that she had become a bit of an inspiration for younger people to take up collecting. However, she also joked that people were calling her a "dork" and seems to have stopped collecting after her playing career finished.
Finally, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a well-known stamp collector. In fact, he didn't just collect stamps - he collected coins, books, prints, model ships and drawings. When the president died in 1945, his stamp collection included 1.2 million stamps - so even bigger than King George V's. He started collecting when he was eight years old because his mother suggested it, and he collected all his life afterwards. His collection was sold at a public auction in 1946.
Perhaps more importantly, President Roosevelt actively promoted actively promoted philately, helping launch national exhibitions like the 1936 International Stamp Exhibition (TIPEX) in New York where Amelia Earhart displayed some of her own collection. He also had photographs taken with his collection in the White House, not just to popularise the hobby but also to create a sense of calm and to "humanise the presidency".
Like many others, Franklin Roosevelt found his stamp collection to be a way of escaping from life's stresses. "I owe my life to my hobbies – especially stamp collecting”, he claimed. His son James recalled: “I have vivid memories of Father sitting at his desk when he had a half hour or hour with no appointments . . . with his stamp books and an expression of complete relaxation and enjoyment on his face.”
These are all very well-known people who you wouldn't necessarily know were stamp collectors, which goes to show that all kinds of people might be interested in collecting stamps. There isn't just one type of person who is a stamp collector. You might be a world leader needing a little time away from the stresses of the job, a philosopher in need of inspiration, an international sports star who likes collecting souvenirs from touring, someone whose mind loves order and organisation, or maybe just an eight year old whose mother has suggested a new hobby. You might have an enormous collection or you might just be a very casual collector. You might have hundreds of albums or you might have an old album that your cousin has given you. It doesn't matter what kind of collector you are so long as you're enjoying it.
I am impressed by these famous collectors (especially John Lennon and Freddie Mercury who are heroes of mine) but I am also impressed by many other collectors who are not so famous and who inspire others to enjoy their hobby. It's great to think we're all part of this huge family!
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