The Trouble with Rainbows
What happens when this collector gets all he’s been looking for
I remember well the day I received it: a shiny, new stamp collector’s book. Produced by the Scott Stamp company, the book seemed huge to my eleven-year-old eyes; the tome boasted a fancy plastic cover and contained pages for almost every country in the world.
And while I was thrilled to move the one hundred or so stamps from my meager collection to this book, Grandma had unwittingly introduced me to an impossible hobby: worldwide stamp collecting- a pastime that brought out the completist in me, but also an appreciation for beautiful artwork.
And for many years, I fought the good fight most collectors are familiar with: trying to get my hands on more items for my collection. I grew to love stamp collecting, even if I went for months and years at a time with nothing added to my collection.
And then, one day, a 12" by 12" by 5" box showed up on my doorstep- full of more stamps than I had ever seen before…
In the interest of clarity, I should explain that in the world of stamp collectors, there are two main groups: the gatherer/completists and the investors.
The Gatherer/Completists are in it for the thrill of the hunt, stamp value secondary to seeing if they can find- for example- all the German Hitler stamps from the 1930s and 1940s, or the thousands of postal issues bearing Queen Elizabeth’s mug, said issues produced for every British Commonwealth nation large and small.
A sub-group includes collectors specializing in a single country or subject: zeppelins, trains, animals, or dinosaurs, to name a few. Opinion is split between them as to whether or not to hinge-mount the stamps. Aside from rarity, stamp values are based in large part on condition. If a stamp is unused, it is usually worth more than a canceled one, or an issue with a hinge stuck to its back.
Among some philatelists, hinges and the touch of a finger are evil; those collectors resort to tweezers and costly plastic mounts. Others, like me, are considered infidels for using hinges and fingers. Most of my stamps aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and I couldn’t care less. I like the feel of those small, textured, engraved pieces of postage. And the thrill of the hunt makes it all worthwhile.
Then there are the Investors. Usually a smaller group than the run-of-the-mill collector, the Investor has a large stash of cash which she or he expends to buy the pricey issues.
Investors are focused on protecting the stamps they have paid dearly for, and as such will never touch the stamps with their fingers, instead using tweezers, as the latter leaves no traces of the oil or dirt usually found on grubby human mitts. They’ll resort to expensive strips of transparent plastic to mount their prized possessions on the album page.
Following are three examples of prized stamps:
The U.S. 24-cent Airmail Invert
In 1918, one lucky gentleman bought a full sheet of these suckers at the post office, then turned around and sold said sheet for $15,000. Over the years, the price has fluctuated, but each copy of this printing press screwup is currently going for $1.35 million.
The Graf Zeppelins
Issued in 1930 for use on airmail sent via zeppelins (not to be confused with the “baby Zeppelin” stamp issued in 1933), many copies of the three-stamp set were printed, but only 227,000 survived destruction by the post office. Coming in green, blue and brown, these oddly beautiful stamps go for anywhere from a couple hundred bucks each to thousands of dollars for the set of three, or as sheets of mint-condition stamps.
The United States 1910–1920 regular postal issues
For the truly obsessed, early regular postal issues will do the trick; these stamps, bearing likeness of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, put the V in “variation,” and are single-handedly responsible for an upswing in magnifying glass sales throughout the world.
Of the Type III varieties, the ribbon curves contain “two lines of shading.”
Type II stamps are from rotary press printing.
And then there’s the Type I, prized (for some insane reason) because of the following:
“The top line of the toga rope is weak.”
“The fifth line from the left is missing.”
“The line between the lips is thin.”
Now, if I was filthy rich, or had an electron microscope, or was languishing in a lifer cell in state prison, I could see diving into these eleven Type groups- that is, until I discover that there are many, many other sets of U.S. stamps from 1847–1882, each with its own respective variations- and all designed to drive unwary collectors mad or blind. Or both.
And though one could say that collectors of these horrid things are both completists and investors, no amount of money in this world or any other would induce me to try collecting these. Yet there are those who make money by finding all the variations; and once all those variations are assembled, the collections go for thousands of dollars.
You can see from my meager collection that I gave up, and as soon as possible. Life really is too short to be pursuing this kind of minutiae.
But I digress.
What I’m really here to talk about is that moment in any collector’s life when he or she believes they are neaing the end of the Rainbow. The pot that those pesky leprechauns have been guarding, all this time.
In my case, page after page in my early Scott’s album was like a Museum of Shame: nearly every space was uncovered, each image a pale, black-and-white representation of the missing stamp, when compared to the few colorful issues I had attached with tiny cellulose hinges. And living in the country, far from any department store, my chances of getting my paws on more stamps was nil.
And so it was that one fine day in the late Sixties, I accompanied my mother to Eastport Plaza (an early version of a mall), where I spotted a display, several orange bags hanging from its hooks- “The Big Bag of Stamps” they were labeled.
It was an answer to this budding philatelist’s prayer; hundreds of postage stamps from all over the world. And for a measly dollar.
Begging Mom for a couple of bucks, I was soon in possession of my own Big Bag, as well as an envelope full of hinges. While other boys were out playing baseball, shooting pigeons with a BB gun, or TP-ing the neighbor’s house, I sat in my bedroom, blissed out at the sight of so many stamps spread out across a table, ready to be placed in my album.
After a time, my mother helped me send away for “approval” envelopes from a mail order stamp company, just as she had in the 1940s. I’d receive an envelope full of smaller cellophane envelopes stuffed with stamps I could pay for or send back.
The catalogue the company sent was filled with tantalizing ads, one of which promised that for the exorbitant sum of ten dollars, I could receive a stock book filled with 1,000 stamps from exotic places like Hungary, Germany, or Poland, to name a few. Getting my hands on even one stock book would have been a dream come true- as long as I didn’t run out of hinges. But I never had the funds needed to order such a plethora of postage.
Yet my collection grew- slowly but surely. And slowly but surely, I was engaging in the thrill of the hunt.
The years passed. I eventually inherited my mother's two ancient Scott’s albums- another thrill for me, to be sure. And though they were a welcome addition to my growing collection, there were still massive sections in my stamp albums that needed to be filled. But when one is collecting from nearly every country, finding all the stamps is an endless, impossible task.
I say “impossible” because I am a realist. Many of the stamps shown in the album pages will never be mine, due either to their rarity (and sky-high prices), or the fact that I find some countries’ stamp issues to be downright ugly or frivolous. I also decided long ago to only collect stamps issued until 1967, since my album pages don’t go any further into the future than that year.
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In the 1980s I started working at a stamp store, of all places- a haven where I scored hundreds of stamps for free, or in trade. But then came the lean years, when starting a family and the job search took precedence over most of the hobbies I had acquired.
After my wife of thirty-seven years passed away in January 2025, I went through a terrible period of grief, eventually moving to a new state and remarrying. And though I was beginning life anew, stamps started calling me again as I searched for dopamine jolts, anywhere I could find them.
One day I saw an online ad for stamps on approval. What the hell, I thought, so I ordered some.
A week later I received an envelope with six or seven small packets inside. I was surprised at how stamp prices had risen, but I took the plunge and paid for some, returning the others. The packets contained beautiful Russian stamps from the 1940s, and I gleefully put hinge to stamp as I found their dedicated spots on each page.
But a flyer the company had included haunted me; it spoke of a Mystery Box. For $100 I could receive a box filled with philatelic treasure. I diodn;lt believe it but decided to take the risk.
A week later, a 12" by 12" by 5" box was sitting on my front porch. Opening that box was like Christmas for me. Inside were sheets of stamps, stock pages filled with more, and scores of small envelopes stuffed with thousands of stamps old and new.
I was in heaven.
Every day during that first week, I spent hours and hours filling in scores of formerly unadorned pages with stamps- beautiful issues from France, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and on and on. And as I did so, the reason I’d started collecting, decades ago, returned again and again:
The beauty of those San Marino and Monaco issues.
The strange, otherworldly French Colonies postage.
Those weird, wild, propaganda-laden Soviet stamps.
In short, postage that teleported me to other places, other times, other ways of relating to the world I live in.
But after a few days, I felt the faint stirrings of hobby burnout. “Too much of a good thing” is a phrase that was running through my mind a little too often. Here I sat, surrounded by piles of great and not-so-great stamps, yet my enthusiasm was waning.
And with that came the fear that maybe I had gone too far, diving into a hobby knowing I would never find all the stamps, and all too soon realizing that this plethora of postage had taken the edge off of my joy.
I’d finally obtained what I’d sought for many years, but the thrill was dulled by the suspicion that these were just pieces of paper, much of which displayed the mundane.
The mediocre.
The trivial…
1965 issues from Burundi, in which the country (more likely the company printing this junk), celebrated technology they had nothing to do with or have any knowledge of.
As one of the most impoverished countries in the world, Burundi has a horrific track record of genocide, poverty and the worst case of government corruption this side of hell- concerns that would push the Space Race to the back of their collective mind. All I could see was stamps that were probably never issued in Burundi, but printed and precanceled for the benefit of collectors.
Fujeira was an Eastern Arabian emirate in 1964- when these Kennedy tribute abominations were issued- would soon flood the stamp collector’s market with what could be generously termed “wallpaper”; just another example of the kinds of stamps I was tossing in the discard box I was rapidly filling.
It was as if- at some point in my recently resurrected hobby- I was now working in reverse, tossing stamps I couldn't bear to look at, due to their mercenary and cheesy nature.
The growing disdain soon included the stock sheets I’d received in the Mystery Box- hundreds of duplicate U.S. and foreign stamps. As a young collector, I’d gazed in wonder at these commemorative issues. Now I saw them as old but fairly useless postage and marveled at how many millions of these stamps existed, having adorned countless stamp albums for fifty, sixty, seventy years or more. I was just one of a legion of collectors storing duplicates galore.
But after giving the stamp fest a few days off, I took another look at the postage I’d collected over the years…
Bring on another Mystery Box.
I’m good…
