So, a while back now, I decided I was done with Funko. I’ve made my dissatisfaction with all things Pop known and you can go back and look at those posts if you want, I just realized that I wasn’t having any fun at all chasing exclusives and if you’re not enjoying your hobbies, why engage in them at all?

Therefore, I have one more Pop out there on pre-order, but after I receive it, it’s all getting packed away and I’m moving on. I doubt I’ll sell it, although it does take up a lot of space and I have a lot of money invested, but I don’t tend to sell collectibles that I no longer collect. It’s just not who I am.

So, I went back to doing something that I’ve done since I was a child and you know something? It’s a lot of fun!I’ve always collected stamps, ever since I was a little kid. I have no idea why I started, I don’t come from a line of stamp collectors, in fact, I don’t know of anyone in my immediate family that ever seriously did but I picked it up along the line and it’s been something that I’ve come back to time and time again throughout my life.

I gave it up back in the early 2000s, I don’t remember exactly why, and my albums have sat in a box, a bunch of boxes really, ever since. My wife got into collecting after we got married and she hadn’t looked at them in well over a decade, nearly two, but she’s back in it as well. She had all of the same problems with Funko that I did and now, she’s free.

I think one of the reasons I gave it up was because, I collected U.S. stamps and I had a pretty complete collection, barring some of the absurdly expensive ones. I had chosen, rather arbitrarily, to stop collecting in 1993, both because that was where the pages in the album that I was using had stopped, but also because the U.S. was going to self-adhesive stamps and I had, and I still don’t, no interest in collecting stickers, especially in a marketplace where the post office was focusing more on releasing as many different issues to take advantage of collectors as they could. So I signed off, I had a complete collection from the early 1900s through 1993 and not a lot of early holes, mostly high values, and I was getting bored.

Just before I quit though, I decided, largely on a whim, to pick up collecting two other countries. I don’t remember why I chose them, I have no attachment to them necessarily, I think I was just paging through a Scott catalog and thought the stamps looked varied and interesting. I’d picked up albums for both China and Australia and I’d put a handful of stamps into each before I took my long vacation from collecting. Now, I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of stamps to collect, but there’s a problem.

It’s damn hard to find dealers in the United States that really handle China and Australia.

You can get U.S. by the metric ton, of course and I’ve filled in a couple of holes already. I now have a complete set of U.S. airmail stamps, with a few notable exceptions, through 1993 and there are a couple of back-of-book pieces that I’ve picked up to fill in the very few holes. The one thing that I had started doing, again, I think, to alleviate my boredom back in the day, I was getting into U.S. revenues. That’s another place that I have tons to get and there are lots available for purchase. Some of those holes are either already filled or I’m waiting for things to show up in the mail.

Of course, that is a problem. One of the things I always hated about Funko and other collectibles is the move from physical stores to online sales near exclusively. I am not a fan of credit card exercises, I want to find things in the wild and that’s one of the things I loved doing back when physical stamp dealers actually existed. I’d go in, sit down and page through their stamps until I found things that I liked. There was no real plan, no rhyme or reason, it was the simple joy of discovery that made it fun and that’s gone. It’s why, the second I decided to get back into this, I went looking for stamp shows in my area.

Guess what? There aren’t any, at least not this year. The only one that would have been close, it got cancelled over a scheduling conflict. There’s nothing within several hundred miles of me in any direction. There are some coming up in 2022 and I’ll just be patient, it was just disappointing. I really want that experience again and if I have to go to a big show to get it, I’m fine with that. I notice that the local shows that we used to hit now and then, they’ve all dried up completely, mostly because of Covid, I’m sure, but that isn’t even an option any longer. I’ll be at the first show next year though, you can bet on it.

So now, I’m doing a lot of research and paging through my albums and filling in holes where I can. This is the first time in a very long time that I’ve been excited to be collecting. I’ve got that gene, after all. I have to collect something. The packages to the door, while it’s not my preferred method of acquiring stock, at least I do get the excitement of opening up the envelope and seeing what I have first hand. So far, I haven’t been disappointed at all and that’s wonderful. It looks like the next couple of years, at least, are going to be spent with my tongs in my hand, hunched over my magnifier. I already ordered a new one of those too. This should be fun. It’s really all I want out of a hobby. At least I know this one has some staying power and a wealth of stuff to collect. Screw Funko. Full steam ahead with stamps.