My Recycled Life

My Recycled Life — My Mother Turned Me Into a Stamp Collector

“Every stamp, no matter how insignificant it may appear, is of some value and should be saved.” That’s a quote from one of my mother’s stamp albums, which holds pages of stamps from the 19th century to the 1980s. Contrast this with the response I’ve got from several local dealers and clubs, who’ve collectively told me stamps from the late 20th and early 21st centuries have no worth beyond face value. They’ve advised me to just use them for postage.

My childhood memories include how my mother took care of her stamp collection, buying every new issue, tearing and soaking any odd or foreign stamps off envelopes and carefully using little gummed paper stamp hinges to attach the stamps to the album pages. 

That ended, though, somewhere in her years of getting a master’s degree and a full-time job and divorcing my father, and she only indulged her collecting habit half-way after that. She kept saving sheets of stamps, and buying guides and albums from direct-mail marketers, but she never again took up organizing and preserving her collection. Her stamp albums, along with hundreds of loose stamps, got stashed in a little Danish-modern entryway table that contains a cabinet measuring about 16 inches cubed. By the time she died, hundreds more loose stamps were all over the house, in jars, boxes, drawers and simply piled on any available surface. 

So my mother’s stamp collection is now mine, and there’s at least one upside — I haven’t had to purchase any new stamps for months. I’ve recently noticed, though, many of the stamps from the 1970s and 1980s could be put into the albums, so maybe I should do that.

I’ve thinned some of the collection by donating a few envelopes full of stamps to the ARIE Foundation, a veterans’ group that encourages stamp collecting. If you have any stamps or stamp-collecting paraphernalia you’d like to donate, their address is:  P.O. Box 64, Old Bethpage, NY 11804. Their website is www.ariefoundation.com

Some local stamp clubs have offered to evaluate my collection and suggest a proper disposition, but the collection is too disorganized to show anybody yet. I don’t know how many hours, days, months or years I’d need to put the collection in order, and by that time, I’d be calling myself a stamp collector, too.

Lyn Jensen

Lyn Jensen has been a freelance journalist in southern California since the 80s. Her byline has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Weekly, the Los Angeles Reader, Music Connection, Bloglandia, Senior Reporter, and many other periodicals. She blogs about music, manga, and more at lynjensen.blogspot.com and she graduated from UCLA with a major in Theater Arts. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

Share
Published by
Lyn Jensen

Recent Posts

County to Protect Medi-Cal and CalFresh Access for 1.7 Million Residents Amid New Federal Work Requirements

The motion also calls for the expansion of workfare and volunteer opportunities across county departments…

9 minutes ago

Governors Briefs: CalRx® Insulin, $11 a Pen, Will Soon be Available and Appointment Announced

This launch marks a significant step in the state's ongoing effort to lower prescription drug…

42 minutes ago

Purdue Student Paper Shows Solidarity With Rival

  After the Indiana University Media School fired its director of student media and banned…

1 hour ago

POLA Lead Attorney Steve Otera Named Corporate Counsel of the Year by LA Business Journal

  LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Business Journal has given a top legal honor…

2 hours ago

Ports Briefs: POLB Cargo Slows as Clean Truck Study and Air Quality Report Highlight Progress

The Final 2024 Class 8 Drayage Truck Feasibility Assessment Report focuses on battery electric and…

4 hours ago

Public Health Investigating Possible Local Spread of Clade I Mpox; Third Case Confirmed in Los Angeles County

So far in 2025, Public Health has reported 118 cases of clade II mpox.

1 day ago