“Could I have some commemorative Stamps, please, to put on some postcards?”

The lady at the counter looked at me as if I were Hans Solo cousin or a voyager from some time warping machine.

“sorry, only general issue auto-adhesive stamps for national or international service. We haven’t seen stamps here in a long while….”

“isn’t this a post office?”

“yes, but ….stamps….”

I looked around: a postal bank counter; shelves with books to sell; people paying utilities invoices; people wanting to ship parcels, but stamps……

This is a true and recent story. It happened to me just yesterday, when I went to post a couple of postcards and some covers to friends elsewhere in the globe.

On my return to this hobby, I couldn’t believe that stamps have become so almost ethereal in their existence….

There was a time when stamps were everywhere. True that there were not that many commemorative issues and most stamps on circulation were definitive that would circulate for a lot of time, but you could start collecting them because a good deal of the correspondence you’d get at home would have stamps on it. Nowadays you may never get a stamped envelope in your mailbox in a long while. There are probably children today that have never seen a stamped cover in their lives.

I like stamps, I was never a great collector, but I marvel at all the art and skill that goes into designing a stamp.

For me, looking at stamps can be an exercise akin to going to a museum. A pleasure for the eyes; a source of inspiration; a trigger to curiosity.

True that collectors love their stamps to be pristine  or MNH as their jargon goes, but lately I’ve come to think that part of the beauty of a stamp lies in its purpose.

A cancelled stamp tells a greater story than a mint one. further to the event or situation, or place or personality, etc. it celebrates,  it’s postmark bears the sound of distance conquered; the aura of good or bad news delivered; the wear and tear of mission accomplished.

I understand that stamps are also prey to automation and most of all to dematerialisation of processes. There’s no going back in evolution (a debatable assertion, I concede), but I’m hoping that stamps live longer than my own self.

And most of all I hope that next time I go to the post office I might be able to buy…. Stamps!