Tidying House, Making Wishes Known - all part of looking after your business........

Browsing through a Nov/Dec, 1965 issue of Topical Time I was hooked.  This little digest size magazine spouts “knowledge through stamp collecting” and claims to be the world’s greatest topical stamp journal.  Must be good because I’m enjoying it more than 30 years after it was published.

The little publication in printed in black and white yet I still find myself awed by what it reveals: mountain birds from Czechoslovakia, world flower show flower stamp collection from Chicago.

It’s a trip to the past, around a world now vastly changed.  A veritable United Nations of peoples, places, events.  Extinct birds, fishes to cruise ships, dolls of Senegal, Bridges, trains, planes, famous people and places; all find their way onto stamps.

In my case it creates a new respect for the books of stamps that are part of my father’s legacy. My problem is that my Dad left several large plastic tubs of stamps, most in albums, which he began collecting back in his youth.  Dad died at 90 with never a word about what to do with his stamps.

While I don’t really believe that there is great monetary value in his collection, I do think that there are treasures here that will delight some collectors.  Problem is I don’t know what to do with Dad’s collection.  Don’t know who to call, what to say, how to handle it.

It gives me pause.  If only my dad had left some guidelines, some instructions who to talk to.  I live in fear that was a life long passion will not be handled correctly and be lost.  It makes me so nervous I do nothing.  My Dad’s precious collection languishes in a storage locker.

Sad really, and something I will have to deal with.  I hate to think of all of the beauty, not to mention the history and passion, being kept in the dark.  Those of us who collect should give thought to where our collections will end up.  Will them to a fellow collector, donate them to a museum or the local archives or even distribute them as memorabilia to family members.  Do what ever we must do to prevent them from being lost to future generations.