Stamps...My passion

Stamps… My Passion

When I entered the attic, it smelled slightly damp and dusty. I could not see anything at first; it was as dark as a cellar, the only difference being the thin shafts of light piercing through where the roof tiles did not quite overlap. My hand reached for the light switch. Before me lay what my mother called Granddad’s…”things.” Within a few seconds, I was gazing over a multitude of objects. The scene reflected the life of a man who loved collecting: stuffed animals, piles of books, a stack of pictures, several hats, binoculars, stuffed birds, and butterflies. It was a wonderfully chaotic display of a grandfather's life that we all loved.

I stood there for a minute with a tear in my eye. My thoughts drifted back to those summer days when he turned up in our garden carrying a stuffed monkey on his shoulder, making us all roll on the lawn with uncontrollable laughter. Or another time, when he brought a frame of beautifully displayed butterflies pinned in regimented order, accompanied by a magnificent painting of these creatures in their natural habitat.

Stop, I thought. I had not come up here to walk down memory lane, but to select a walking stick for my mother. She had mentioned an uncontrollable desire to start walking with one of her father’s sticks. I started rummaging through a likely pile and found six of them, selecting one I thought she would like.

I was just about to leave when, at the bottom of the pile, I spotted a large, leather-bound book. I had promised my mother I would not spend time sorting through Granddad’s things, but for some inexplicable reason, I felt an immediate attachment to it. On the spur of the moment, I decided to take it along with the cane. I would ask my mother if I could look at it.

My mother was so delighted with the walking stick that she barely looked at the book.

“It looks large and heavy,” she said. “I think it is my father’s stamp collection. Sure, take it to your room.” As I disappeared down the hallway, I heard her add, “When you have finished, put it back please.”

I took it to my room, clearing my desk entirely before allowing the massive book to take over the available space. Before opening it, I let my fingers caress the fine leather binding—a true pleasure. There was no outward indication of what lay inside. For a moment, I imagined it might be the complete works of some famous author; names like Dickens, Shakespeare, Wilde, and Thomas Hardy ran through my head.

When I finally turned the cover, the surprise took my breath away. It was indeed a stamp collection. A letter was attached to the inside cover, but I was so anxious to explore the pages that I set it aside for the moment. If Granddad had put this collection together, he was certainly a philatelist of considerable merit.

The album opened with a vast collection from the British Isles. There were fifty to sixty well-defined squares on each page. Most were filled with magnificent stamps. The English section was divided into a series of thematic headings: Heads of State and Royalty, Historical Figures and Pioneers, Art and Literature, Architecture and Monuments, Animals and Plants, Landscapes, Science and Technology, and Sports and Global Events. I had never realized stamps covered such a broad spectrum of human interest. Looking at them was like looking at the world through a telescope positioned the wrong way round. The execution of the artwork was so beautifully precise; it was a feast for the eyes. I noticed that on each page, a few blank squares remained, waiting for a stamp to complete the set.

The rest of the album was divided between Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, with ten to fifteen pages devoted to each continent. I quickly saw that, just like the British section, a few spaces were still available among the extraordinary stamps to complete the collection. I was totally intrigued and fascinated by this miniature view of our world.

As someone just about to go to university, I felt a little disappointed that Grandpa had not shared the beauty and interest of these stamps with me earlier. That evening, I asked my mother if I could keep the album.

She immediately said, “Yes, your granddad would be delighted. It was one of his secret hobbies. He always regretted that he did not have the time to complete it.”

That night, as I was getting ready for bed, I suddenly realized I hadn’t opened the letter I found in the album. I quickly broke open the unaddressed envelope. The message was directed to whoever next opened the book:

Many years ago, I found this splendid stamp album in an old village antique shop. The owner told me it belonged to the Lord of the village manor. As I flicked through its pages, I was stunned by the beauty and craftsmanship of the stamps. It was not a question of whether I was going to buy the album… I had to. There were many gaps in the collection. I felt that what His Lordship started with such an eye for beauty deserved to be completed. My life has been full of other interests, and although I spent a sizable amount of time trying to honor my desire to finish the collection… I failed. The album is now in your hands. There are still a few gaps to fill.

That night, I went to bed dreaming about what the collection had meant to him, and whether I would take on the challenge. In the morning, I woke up with a very clear idea of what I wanted to study at university: education.

At breakfast, I told my parents. Both were pleased that I was motivated to follow a path of personal choice without their influence. Father did remark, dryly, that it was not a path destined for making money.

Three years later, I received my Bachelor’s degree, followed by a year at a teacher training college. I was ready to throw myself onto the job market. During those university years, I had diligently tracked down a few stamps for the album, and I frequently thought about how stamp collecting could be used as an educational tool. During holidays, I immersed myself in learning about the production of stamps and the lively global market that had developed around them. It was like observing a beehive—an incredible flurry of collecting, buying, and selling across the world. I was amazed by the prices rare stamps could achieve, a market well-supported by numerous specialized magazines. I remained convinced that stamps could become an excellent learning tool, but I had one pressing problem to deal with first: getting a job.

After a few interviews, I signed on for the autumn term as a history and geography master at a private school situated about twenty miles from my parents' house, where I was living. The school had an excellent reputation, catering to children from the age of ten up to university entrance. I was assigned to the middle school with a class of twenty-five students. The summer holidays gave me the perfect opportunity to think through my project and find a few more missing stamps.

My basic idea was to introduce a special weekly period—outside the rigorous core curriculum—devoted to stamp collecting and its potential for understanding history and geography. After considerable thought, I decided to create a small workbook by photographing thirty pages of my stamp album in full color. All the pages would show the current blank spaces, but I would attach a small clear sleeve over them so the students could insert the appropriate stamps as they found them.

Within a week, I found a local printer. I have always been amazed that, within a stone’s throw of one's home, you can find people running small businesses with immense talent, professionalism, and a smile. I found exactly such an individual. He was a large man with a stomach like a beer barrel, a kind, open face, and a vice-like handshake. He possessed a booming voice and soft blue eyes that registered everything happening around him. I explained my idea and asked if he could help.

The explosion of his voice was startling. “Sure I can, young man! But you will have to do a bit of work. I like the idea; it will teach the children to think outside of their iPads and computers.”

Three days later, he produced a printer’s proof. I was amazed at how clear and beautiful the photos of the pages looked. I shook his hand warmly. “Well done. You did a fine job.”

He smiled. “My own children thought it was a great idea, mostly because it might relieve them of classroom boredom. As a family, we also discussed your idea of putting a sleeve over the blank spaces. My youngest daughter came up with a better alternative: putting an envelope on the inside cover containing small, double-sided stickers. It will save you an enormous amount of manual work and, in our opinion, does the job perfectly.”

“Great idea! Please thank your daughter for me. Let’s go ahead and run off thirty copies. I assume you will bind them with glue?”

“Sure will. The books will be ready in two days.”

As I left the print shop, I thought how comforting it was to know there are kind, honest, and hardworking people in this world whose only demands on life are to have a good trade and the time to raise a family.

In early September, I faced my class for the first time. I was briefly introduced by the school's principal. Once he left, I introduced myself further, giving a short talk about the year ahead, the curriculum, exam dates, and my hope that our class would finish the year winning the prize for overall achievement.

Then, I came to my pet project. “Every Friday afternoon, I want to devote a period to understanding our world through collecting, examining, and discussing stamps. I inherited a beautiful album from my grandfather and was immediately captivated by it. Not only are stamps masterpieces of design, but they also show us parts of the world we tend to ignore. At my own cost, I have printed thirty copies of these pages for you. You will notice several gaps representing missing stamps. As we go through the book week by week, I will ask you ahead of time to try to find the missing stamps appropriate to the page under discussion. Are there any questions?”

Silence. It was clear the class needed time to digest their teacher’s unusual approach.

“Just one more thing,” I added. “Next Friday, we will concentrate on the first page: Heads of State and Royalty in the UK. If you find any stamps appropriate for the empty spaces on that page, you can secure them using the double-sided stickers from the envelope.”

I noticed every student took a book with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. Throughout the following week, I felt they were evaluating and judging me on a slightly different level than they would a conventional teacher.

Friday came. I had borrowed a projector so the whole class could see the album page on the wall. As the students settled into their seats, I asked for a show of hands.

“How many of you enjoyed the assignment?” Fifteen out of twenty-five hands went up.

“For the five who didn’t—was it because you didn’t understand?” Three hands.

“For the remaining students, I assume you simply didn't care for the idea.” One boy stood up and admitted it distracted from his homework and soccer practice.

“How many were able to find an appropriate stamp for the blank spaces?” Eight hands went up.

“Harold, come forward and let’s look at your pages on the projector.”

Shining on the wall was the page dealing with royalty. “There were three blanks, and you found two stamps,” I observed. “But after George V, and for a very short period, there was another King before King George VI was crowned. Does anyone know who it was?”

I could hear the shuffling of feet, and then someone called out, “Edward VIII!”

We spent the next twenty minutes discussing the Kings of England, and I reminded the class that no postage stamps existed before 1840. I then called on Rosemary to place her pages under the projector. We saw she had completed two empty spaces. I congratulated her and asked where she had found them.

“From my grandmother, who has a collection,” she replied. “She told me that throughout her life, collecting stamps had been her greatest pleasure. She adored traveling the world through them, seeing people she would never meet, places she would never go, and animals she didn't know existed.”

That Friday afternoon session, combining history and geography, ended with a lively, inspired discussion about Britain, all focused through the lens of the stamp collection.

As we progressed through the school year, the excitement over our Friday sessions seemed to have a ripple effect across the entire school; even the parents got involved.

It was now just four or five days before the end of the school year. I was sitting alone in my classroom with my grandfather’s big stamp album open in front of me. It was that quiet five-minute window before the students arrived. I looked across the empty room, missing the faces of the students I had tried to guide toward a better future in the adventure of living. I hoped I had touched their souls with the spark of lifelong curiosity about the world around them.

I looked down at the big stamp album—a true treasure and a friend that had been at my side since the day I found it in the attic. As I turned the pages, I noticed there were now very few empty spaces left. My students, throughout the year, had brought me some extraordinary stamps. How pleased Granddad would be. I would finally have the time to complete his collection.

Then, without warning, a massive pain gripped my heart. I saw the room beginning to disappear. Instinctively, I knew my time on this earth was over.

David Nutt June 2026