Yesterday was "philately day?"

Today’s generation might never know one hobby which most of us enjoyed – stamp collecting or philately. It was pretty common those days to trade stamps – exchange the “extra” stamps for those difficult to come by. The stamps of UK were most common and so were that of Nippon or Japan. The most beautiful and colorful were undoubtedly from Papua New Guinea, Mexico.

And if you had held on to your bachpan ka stamp collection, you could turn get rich. That too by selling Indian stamps. A stamp not even that old, say the one issued in 2009, costing Rs.5 then is today selling at five times the price at Rs.25. A Rs.10 Mahatma Gandhi service stamp, printed in 1948, was sold for 1,44,000 euros in 2011. For many, more than a hobby, stamp collection has now become a form of investment.

By the way, yesterday was philately day. Obviously no one knows about it greeting card companies have no way to cash in on this and social media – well, as we said, the new generation of emails and twitter does not know about this hobby. Maybe the post office could have been more proactive and promoted this day and revived this dying hobby.

Did you know that there exists Karnataka Philatelic Society, started in 1975. The members meet every first Sunday, exchange stamps, conduct workshops, hold talks and also mentor amateur philatelist. There is also a Philatelic Deposit Account (PDA) for those interested in collecting stamps. As per The Hindu, every account holder gets the philatelic material as per the order and it is dispatched once a month via registered post. The order can be commemorative stamps, first day cover, information brochure and collectors’ pack. There are currently 9,200 PDAs in Karnataka.