A boyhood passion, I always knew had more clout than people would readily admit; and Monocle agrees.

It was my dad who gave me my first stamp album, back in circa 1988 I guess, when I was a mere 7 years old. I suspect he hadn’t risked entrusting me with his own ageing album from about 30 years earlier until I was past the point of damaging it unknowingly or being completely disinterested. I remember eagerly but gently turning the pages to see country after glorious country’s brightly coloured gifts to the world glaring out at me. Most were brightly coloured, but I have to admit, some were incredibly lacklustre and drab – but regardless, I was hooked and philately became a passion for me.

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Then through the 80s, 90s and even 00s, I collected and collected, and the world seemed equally enthusiastic with issuing stamps and perhaps more importantly back then, people, enthusiastically sending letters, postcards, parcels and such stuff. But inevitably, emails replaced letters, Facebook and Insta replaced postcards and Amazon replaced everything else!

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But stamps continued to be designed, printed, issued, bought and collected. I certainly didn’t stop buying. I am now the very proud owner of every stamp issued by the UK Royal Mail since 1983 – in both mint and franked condition – it’s quite a collection. I also have a global collection of all the stamps issued for the Late Queen Elizabeth’s 60th birthday back in 1986 – from everywhere from Ascension Island to Vanuatu, via Fiji and Tanzania, Swaziland (as it was then) and Belize and back again.

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So, I guess what I’m saying, is I never really doubted in the value of these (mostly) smallish (mostly) rectangular (mostly) gum-backed ‘stick-ons’ – proud national products guaranteed to get your love letter, signed contract or job application to its intended destination – with minimal fuss and often with guaranteed timelines! Some places such as Tuvalu, St Kitts & Nevis or the Pitcairn Islands, for example, see stamps as a nice little revenue earner, while others including Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man and St Helena see a patriotic relevance in their philatelic postering. (If you only had to search for 2 or fewer of the 8 places mentioned above, well done you for being a geographical boffin!)

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It wasn’t at all certain that governments would persist with their production – or at least not so avidly – but in 2023 the UK issued 15 sets of commemorative stamps (celebrating everything from Iron Maiden, the heavy metal group, to Robin Hood, the Windrush migration to the UK and Paddington Bear) and 14 new definitives (the ones with just the King’s head on) – totalling a whopping 165 new stamps in that single year! Indeed, the X-men commemorative stamps had the single largest number, with seventeen stamps just for that one occasion. It's clear, it’s not just beautifully compact islands in vast blue oceans who make money from issuing stamps.

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However, it is comforting and rewarding to see an esteemed publication like the Monocle magazine remind us of the political soft power stamps can inherently yield. They can sum up a nation’s or territory’s sense of style (France or Sweden); they are often very consistent in design or layout over decades (Ghana or USA); and they can be punchy tackling important topics and/or recognising important people (UK in particular). In short, they have soft power that governments could do well to leverage more.

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This said, it’s peculiar to me, that the USA doesn’t allow individuals to feature on their stamps unless they’ve been dead for at least 5 years! It used to be a decade. So, the earliest we could hope for George Floyd to be commemorated philatelically, would be 26th May next year and then almost another 3? ?years before one of my childhood heroes, David Soul of Starsky & Hutch fame, could appear on one.

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Stamps (or at least the standard format adhesive ones we recognise today) were invented by Sir Rowland Hill way back in 1840 with the issuing of the iconic Penny Black with a charmingly youthful silhouette of Queen Victoria, who could only have been 20 years old and on the throne a mere 3! And while stamps would be very recognisable to a time-travelling Victorian who saw them today, they are as diverse in format almost as the designs that adorn them.

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Innovations have abounded – too many to list here – but a few to mention would be: triangular stamps (Cape of Good Hope, 1853), bi-colour stamps (British India, 1864), self-adhesive stamps (Sierra Leone, 1964 (!)), or over-printing with place names or new values to avoid the cost or time needed in issuing new ones (German East Africa after the treaty of Versailles, 1919 or staying with Germany, 5 billion on top of 10 million Mark stamp during the Weimar Republic and hyperinflation of 1923).

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I must confess, and apologies in advance to citizens of these otherwise wonderful nations, but I do find stamps from some places generally incredibly nondescript, monotone or simply uninspiring – it’s quite a long list actually, thinking about it. So as not to offend too many, suffice it so say it does include for me, unfortunately, stamps from Switzerland, France, USA & Japan.

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?Whoops! If you do read the referenced Monocle article, interestingly, they showcase stamps from Japan, Slovenia & Italy – and the ones they choose, unfathomably, showcase noodles, computer terminals and a little-heard of architect. Enough to induce hypersomnia. Equally, if you saw my other post admonishing Monocle for putting Bratislava, incorrectly, in Slovenia, you may well ask why I love that magazine so much – well, it’s a fabulous publication overall, frankly, and we can all get it wrong from time to time, I suppose. Equally, groupthink and echo chambers are dangerous things - right?!?!

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So, I end with the thought and partial challenge to you the reader. The next time you see a stamp on a letter or parcel, particularly one from another country to where you reside, think about the power it has, the soft power (or hard power) the entity who issued it has (or perhaps once had – or would like to have). Perhaps you’ll have a new-found admiration for the small pieces of paper you used to lick the back of to ensure your letter got to its end point – perhaps you won’t (ha!). Either way, the very real soft power and quite obvious national pride that continues to be printed on these somewhat anachronistic tokens, seems certain to preserve the existence of my beloved stamps for a few years yet!