During my growing up years in the 1980s, I remember reading in one of the popular children’s magazines about a man who had been collecting postage stamps ever since he was in school. His passion was such that he once wrote a letter to the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, requesting the latter to send him all the postage stamps from the envelopes that contained letters to him from leaders and dignitaries across the globe. When Panditji read the letter that was written with so much innocence, he was amused and also impressed. He actually sent the boy a bunch of postage stamps from different countries along with a letter of appreciation for his hobby.
I was fascinated with this story…and I actually wanted to have some collection of my own. Then I came to know about people who collected coins, matchboxes, pictures of actors and cricketers from newspapers and magazines (Amitabh Bachchan, Kapil Dev and Sunil Gavaskar ruled this space) and even bus and cinema tickets in an era when these used to come in different colours unlike the electronically printed ones these days.
Around that time, I too began a picture postcards collection hobby with around 50 such postcards given to me by an uncle of mine who had a lot of ‘pen friends’ across the globe. He had an arrangement with his pen friends that they would communicate with each other via picture postcards…and these postcards would essentially depict famous landmarks from the countries they belonged to. So the picture postcards that my uncle sent to his pen friends would have India Gate, Howrah Bridge, Meenakshi Amman Temple, Taj Mahal, Gateway of India and so on…and he would receive picture postcards that had the Statue of Liberty, Buckingham Palace, Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China, Leaning Tower of Pisa and so on. This hobby I religiously pursued for around 10 years by the end of which I had a collection of close to 300 picture postcards. Then college happened and gradually I lost interest…so I gave whatever I had to a cousin to carry it forward.
On a decline
Nowadays collection as a hobby is on a clear decline. Any collection that does not have the potential to earn money is not considered to be worth collecting. Recently there was an article in a newspaper about a person who had collected 7000-plus different types, sizes and brands of matchboxes. I was impressed and showed the article to a colleague who uninterestedly read it and said, “What will he do with so many matchboxes?” The understanding of the passion was clearly missing.
Another acquaintance of mine is into numismatics, not for the passion of it, but with the clear intent to monetise it someday.
Collection hobbies need to be more pleasure and passion driven. When compared with other hobbies, collecting something can be completely gripping. The excitement of the search forms a good part of the collection hobby…finding those rare collectibles can become quite an adventure which sometimes is more rewarding than the real collection. Collecting as a hobby also offers significant advantages like stress relief, improved cognitive skills, social connection with like-minded people, a sense of accomplishment and opportunities for learning about history, art or specific subjects…all this while providing personal joy, purpose and many a time a nostalgic link to the past. It creates a focused, positive outlet for creativity and passion, fostering well-being through structure and discovery.
To friends, relatives and other acquaintances, it may appear to be just a harmlessly strange and peculiar way of spending time, but in reality, collecting as a hobby is a lot more enriching.
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