A stamp featuring fish and chips - genius
Like most of you I imagine, I spent Saturday in an exhibition of stamps. Not just any exhibition mind - this was the 2005 World Stamp Expo no less. Despite having no interest in stamp collecting (apart from a brief phase when I was a boy), I've always been intrigued why people choose to collect odd things, so I paid my $5 and went inside. Firstly, the Expo was huge - there were stamp dealers from Fiji to Lithuania, and the place was full of your typical geeky-looking white males poring over catalogues to add to their collections. There were demonstrations of stamp making and perforating, an awards ceremony for stamp design, and numerous displays of the history of stamps, postage and postmarks.
After wandering around for a while getting as many freebies as I could (although no free stamps sadly) I had a look at the displays - there was every conceivable category of stamp, from every country. My favourite category were the stamps commemorating the link between famous painters and fish - which is a link close to all our hearts. The best individual stamp I saw was the one above, featuring fish and chips. Sadly it wasn't part of a series - no 'steak pie supper' on the 30c or 'mushy peas' on the 15c. Shame.
Predictably the crowd at the Expo consisted of a large number of keen collectors, and a few very bored kids dragged around for the educational value - which aside from the perforating demonstration was fairly minimal. Still, we all collect something, and it was interesting to watch the seriousness of the philatelists as they went about their hobby and handed over their money in exchange for small sticky bits of paper. Did it convert me into the world of stamp collecting? Well, no. But I did buy one - I couldn't leave empty-handed - so a bright blue stamp from Kiribati featuring a lobster was the one I selected. How many do you need for a collection?
