Coin-age Tale

Numismatics and Philately….I knew these two words not because I used to collect stamps and coins, but they sounded very nerdy. And whenever in class one was quizzed on hobbies were, Stamp and Coin collection seemed very cliched.
And the next question would be “How do we better know Stamp/Coin collection?”

In school , almost every one used to collect stamps and coins. That was the in thing, years before WWF trump cards came in.(Which infact my brother used to be mad about)
I am talking about the second half of 80s and early 90s.

I remember days in school, when the discussion used to be “Who has Nippon Triangle doubles” or “I have the world’s rarest stamp, of Peru, anyone willing to get me a San Marino or an Ethiopia”. I used to die for these stamps. Used to beg, cajole…to get rare stamps.
Some guys used to buy stamps from the market and I used to believe that they are all fake. Still not sure if those were original or not.

Stamps without the post office seal were considered fake. That was one of the innumerable illogical logics followed.

Taking off stamps from an envelope was not so easy. The envelope had to be soaked in water for about half an hour and then the stamp had to be taken out carefully.

Figuring out the country of origin of some stamps was a difficult task those days. Those were the days without Google or Wikipedia. The only source of such information was books or friends. So a Magyar Posta or a Helvetia remained “unknown countries” till they were discovered by some knowledgeable soul.

Non English stamps like that of a Saudi Arabia,Oman or a Cyprus used to be identified by their insignias.(Though Cyprus had KIBRIS on it)

I remember how countries were made rare. One had to cook up stories like, this country is really really poor,they dont have money to feed people,and its a stamp from one of those counties. Usually, African and South American stamps fell into this category by default. But for these stamps I would have never known an Ethiopia!!!
Stamps from the Middle East was the most easy to get in Kerala, for obvious reasons.
Umm al-Quwain,Ras al-Khaimah, Ajman other emirate stamps from UAE was rare though.

I still stick to a funda, whenever a country is United, like a USA, UK or a UAE, its states/provinces will have stamps. Not sure if that gem of information is true.
And it was NOT difficult to sell such funda among friends in school.

I repent for exchanging one of the Greece stamps for I dunno which stamp.
And pride myself in having an Ethiopia , San Marino, Peru and some weird shaped(India’s Triangles, Circles).

Coins also were not easy to decipher. The value, the year and the country! It was so complicated.
I used to be fond of pre independence coins .I somehow managed to get 2 coins of British India from a Northie classmate, who had got them from his grand dad. Boy! That was some effort.

CCCP was the easiest, be it stamps of coins to decipher. After my dad told me CCCP is actually SSSR , I used to make a religious effort to correct my friends.
And then USSR broke apart, and so many stamps and coins in my collection became rare,overnight.

Stamps and coins have been collected not only from friends and relatives….but…
I have stooped to the level of asking random firangs for coins to asking neighbours for foreign stamps from posts they get from abroad.

That was the craze.

Times have changed. So many of these coins would never be minted…so many of these stamps would never be printed …. which includes all EU countries, Czechoslovakia etc ….

And I have not stopped collecting coins and stamps….recently bought some old Travancore coins from a roadside seller in Trivandrum.

PS: Will post on Match Box cover collection later