What keeps you motivated to collect stamps?

What keeps you motivated to collect stamps?

What makes you keep collecting?

For me its time with my wife and kids with out distraction like TV or phones... and the opportunity to make new friends and trade partners around the world... how about you?

 

I just find it a nice way to relax

 

Actually I am in neutral on it. Other hobbies intervene, so every decade or so, I go back to the stamps and related areas for a few years and then let them mellow for a while. Except for a few special ones, my foreign collections stopped with the International Scott, vol.1 and US to 1972. When I started as a kid a long long time ago, I thought it would be my only divergent when I retired, but new things came along.
Sometimes I can't resist buying another area. Hope to see this forum expand a lot.

 

Answer to your question simply put - now I enjoy selling them while I still can, with still all the distractions of family life.

 

Seeing or looking at stamps especially in my collection helps me feel relaxed and happy.
It was like looking at old photos with happy memories.

 

Selling them is the best moment of your life because when you earn $$ out of them, its like a big achievement to me that I think i have achieved.

 

It's relaxing . . . it's a diversion from everyday activities . . . it's a 'conquest' when I fill up a page in the album . . . it's a challenge to complete a given set or series . . . it's another way to spend my money rather than 'investing' in depreciable assets like snow machines or motor homes or jet skis . . . it's something over which I have control . . . it gives me an excuse to order 'stuff' (hinges, stamps, supplements) to get packages in the mail? . . . it's a conversation starter with people who think I'm weird to spend time and money on such an inane hobby . . . it gives me an excuse to stay inside when the weather outside sucks. Take your pick !

 

It is like having a good meal at a Restaurant.

A well satisfying meal is rewarding mentally and gastronomically which you are entitled to for the money spent.

A $50 Hamburger just would taste the same as a $5 one. Then again you would hardly get a good piece of Fillet Steak for $5.

So what is wrong making a meal out of stamps ?

 

I picked this one !

....it's a conversation starter with people who think I'm weird to spend time and money on such an insane hobby...

You may have left out the 's' ( tongue in cheek) or perhaps insane replacing weird may be take too literal.

As the song goes - in a world of our own. ♪♫.♪♫

 

Naw - -'inane' was spelled correctly. Inane: 1. empty, vacant, 2. lacking sense or meaning; foolish; silly.

But stamp collecting sure has helped me focus my understanding of history and geography throughout the years. I'll bet I can fill in the names on a blank map with the world's countries depicted and get 90+% correct. Or tell you the difference between NATO and SEATO. Or demonstrate the Wiemar republic hyperinflation period.

 

Well I guess some stamp collectors are just inane to some good humour.

 

Well it all depends on person to person and I always collect stamps as I love to collect ancient things and because of this I started stamp collection and it always help me to see people who are doing trading and exchange our collection. It also helps me to spend my free time.

 

We have several new people, so its seems a good time to revisit this discussion

I enjoy the history and geography to be learned from philately. I agree working on the collection is relaxing. I get into a "zone" doing that, like a kind of meditation.

However, I am all about the pursuit of hard to find objects. The chase and search for me is a big part of my motivation. Other people might find it frustrating, but not me. I thrive on that challenge

 

I enjoy collecting because I love learning and stamps are a great way to learn. I also love the art of the stamps. And I hope to make
some stamp friends from all over the globe! I really love the special art on a FDC too!

David

 

It is a compulsion that not even aversion therapy could cure.

 

I also like the art on stamps and some are really historical not only because the stamps aged.

 

I like the historical angle too.

 

I loved the geography aspect as a kid and was fascinated by all the tiny countries I discovered through collecting

Now its the historical aspect that interests me most. So much to learn!