There was a time, maybe four years ago, when having a weblog was considered somewhat of a geeky pursuit. Those days are fading fast, and in my ongoing pursuit of complete uncoolness, I’ve rediscovered a most unfashionable hobby. I collected stamps for a short time in my early adolescence, and with my recent obsession with the Olympic Games threatening to become even more embarrassing, I went looking for some cheap souvenirs of the Games. Hello (again) philately!
It turns out that lots of countries issue Olympic stamps and they’re fun to track down and not usually too expensive. Plus, they’re easy to store and they bring back the thrill for me of receiving stuff in the mail, which I don’t experience nearly enough anymore.
So, off goes my nearly 40-year old geeky self onto the “World Wide Web” to see what I could rediscover about my hobby. Well, it seems to be a pursuit in precipitous decline, by most accounts. Mostly practiced by middle-aged white men, largely abandoned by the young, and shamefully underrepresented in my local book megastore (one title about stamp collecting? More than one about collecting teddy bears and “sci-fi memorabilia”?), the once-noble discipline of philately desperately needs some new blood. There are a number of good online resources, but most look like they were designed circa 1996. And by far the majority of collectors don’t have a web presence at all, an email address the only concession they might be willing to make to the twenty-first century.
I haven’t yet gone looking for “stamp blogs” but am not hopeful. Dare I start one? When geekery meets nerdiness, what can await but heartbreak and mumbling? Any day now, I’ll have to start hitching my pant waist up real high.
(apologies to any timbrophiles who might stumble across this. both of you.)