PHILATELY COLLECTION - ON A REEL, JUST CRANK IT
NEW HOBBY
Many teenagers are fascinated by stamps of different countries, their exotic designs, eye catching pictures, landscapes, & growing desire to possess, manage, display such a collection to their friends, cousins & relatives. It boosts up their delicate budding Self esteem in a positive way.
This exciting journey starts with a manageable size box, made of metal or cardboard. This box acts as a primary storage for stamps which are now being eye-spiced & frantically hunted out. The energetic teen starts raiding temples, churches, offices, local shops, to pick up the empty incoming mail envelopes from their trash cans, quickly retrieve the stamps from them by tearing away the right hand corners of these loaded envelopes. He takes extra care not to mutilate the valuable stamps while tearing them off. All these pieces go into that prized box till it fills up as a sizable lot for further processing.
BARTER OF POSSESSIONS
Since more than one teenager is into this hobby, they start comparing notes, keep track of their duplicates & exchange them for the good looking stamps which they do not have. More stamps are amassed through barter exchange of kit kats, nick knacks, lunch boxes, minor gifts from the treasure chest even from non stamp collecting friends, who are admonished to bring in all that they can.
INTERNATIONAL PENFRIENDS / PEN-PALS
Personally I went a step further to befriend & establish four pen-pals in various countries like Philippines, USA, Great Britain & Japan. After some initial friendship, requests were sent out for stamps, to which they willing & overwhelmingly obliged. In return they received sample of stamps from India & other interesting gifts too.
HAND ME DOWNS
The most rewarding method of amassing stamps in bulk was to inquire from my seniors school mates if they were fed up of their stamp collection and wished to part with it. To my surprise two out of twenty candidates readily agreed to give it away gratis, because they had grown out of it & wished to move on to newer more exciting areas of exploration of the opposite sex. My joy knew no bounds. In one year of starting this hobby of mine, I had amassed three massive collections along with two albums handed down fully complete in all aspects. A pretty good head start for a first timer in this area.
GETTING READY & PRELIMINARIES
The next logical step of stamp collection is to retrieve the stamps in good condition from their glued up state on the envelope tear ups. They are soaked in water over night in a large container. Next day they are carefully peeled from their paper backs & placed between sheets of old news papers for drying. Many floating ones are picked up first & laid out between the news papers. Another two days of wait gives the teens their fully dried stamps in pristine condition. Now these virgin stamps are transferred into another metallic box & stored in a secure cupboard under lock & key. In about six months & three to four routines of the above watery exercise, this prized box starts over flowing, which is an indicator that the time has come to affix these stamps into the albums.
AFFIXING & DISPLAY
The stamps have to go into their respective country earmarked on the pre-printed album. The stamps can be arranged or grouped together depending upon your personal choice. They can go in date-wise, size-wise, shape-wise, theme-wise, or as a work of art like a collage. The draw back of such bounded albums is that you run out of sheets of particular countries while the less famous countries are still empty & blank.
CUSTOM MADE ALBUM - STAGE - I
This predicament was tackled very smartly by putting together my custom made album, spiral bound, for additions & adjustments, with large sheets of thick paper easily available from trashed print outs of IBM computers. The printed sides were glued together to give me clean set of white thick pages for affixing my stamps on. I allocated 25 sheets for India alone keeping the future growth in view. In five to six years this home made giant album was full of beautiful stamps arranged into colorful collages & themes. The most fascinating stamps came from China, Mongolia & Russia - USSR. Soon the number of albums multiplied to nine. Now we had resorted to the use of old photo albums to hold & display our stamp collection through the transparent plastic sheets. We allocated photo albums country-wise & continent-wise to solve the growing numbers, issue.
THE ENVIOUS SCROLL ALBUM - INNOVATION BY ACCIDENT
My creativity was still not satisfied with this arrangement of display locked into, bound up photo albums. The WOW factor was missing. One day the idea of Album as an endless scroll came to my mind. I started working on it & soon the blue print for the perfect gadget was on paper. Just like the movie film projector arrangement, but this would be horizontal version of it. Two long rollers / spools spaced apart, with ball bearings to facilitate their smooth rotation. Six hundred feet of black paper would hold all the stamps which must be at-least fifteen inches wide to accommodate ten rows of separate themes. One countries theme would gradually flow into the same theme of the next country giving the viewer a sense of continuity. The typical layout of the fifteen inch wide section was finalized as follows:
Country Name
Famous personalities
Animals
Birds
Flowers
Landscapes
Art work
Sports
Transport - cars, trucks, trains.
Flying machines - space ships, airplanes, helicopters, drones
This layout was very appealing allowing the viewer to focus at the row of his interest while the scroll turned & different countries went past by him. It was also possible to slow down, back track, or go forward at will, just by turning the handle. This contraption was fabricated from wooden pieces put together very strategically. A third roller was placed in the center to raise the scroll up towards the viewer to increase the span of glance & enhance the total effect of the display. All my friends & cousins were deeply impressed by this gadget & soon it became the talk of the town. It is high time that this designers dream be commercialized for the common teenager. It is proposed to design & manufacture such a scroll album which must be collapsible & compact to fit into a bag eventually. A smaller eight inch version for the beginners & the fifteen inch full size for adults. Good luck dear stamp loving souls.
Rohit Khanna - IN-CREDIBLE & IN-FINITE
NEW HOBBY
Many teenagers are fascinated by stamps of different countries, their exotic designs, eye catching pictures, landscapes, & growing desire to possess, manage, display such a collection to their friends, cousins & relatives. It boosts up their delicate budding Self esteem in a positive way.
This exciting journey starts with a manageable size box, made of metal or cardboard. This box acts as a primary storage for stamps which are now being eye-spiced & frantically hunted out. The energetic teen starts raiding temples, churches, offices, local shops, to pick up the empty incoming mail envelopes from their trash cans, quickly retrieve the stamps from them by tearing away the right hand corners of these loaded envelopes. He takes extra care not to mutilate the valuable stamps while tearing them off. All these pieces go into that prized box till it fills up as a sizable lot for further processing.
BARTER OF POSSESSIONS
Since more than one teenager is into this hobby, they start comparing notes, keep track of their duplicates & exchange them for the good looking stamps which they do not have. More stamps are amassed through barter exchange of kit kats, nick knacks, lunch boxes, minor gifts from the treasure chest even from non stamp collecting friends, who are admonished to bring in all that they can.
INTERNATIONAL PENFRIENDS / PEN-PALS
Personally I went a step further to befriend & establish four pen-pals in various countries like Philippines, USA, Great Britain & Japan. After some initial friendship, requests were sent out for stamps, to which they willing & overwhelmingly obliged. In return they received sample of stamps from India & other interesting gifts too.
HAND ME DOWNS
The most rewarding method of amassing stamps in bulk was to inquire from my seniors school mates if they were fed up of their stamp collection and wished to part with it. To my surprise two out of twenty candidates readily agreed to give it away gratis, because they had grown out of it & wished to move on to newer more exciting areas of exploration of the opposite sex. My joy knew no bounds. In one year of starting this hobby of mine, I had amassed three massive collections along with two albums handed down fully complete in all aspects. A pretty good head start for a first timer in this area.
GETTING READY & PRELIMINARIES
The next logical step of stamp collection is to retrieve the stamps in good condition from their glued up state on the envelope tear ups. They are soaked in water over night in a large container. Next day they are carefully peeled from their paper backs & placed between sheets of old news papers for drying. Many floating ones are picked up first & laid out between the news papers. Another two days of wait gives the teens their fully dried stamps in pristine condition. Now these virgin stamps are transferred into another metallic box & stored in a secure cupboard under lock & key. In about six months & three to four routines of the above watery exercise, this prized box starts over flowing, which is an indicator that the time has come to affix these stamps into the albums.
AFFIXING & DISPLAY
The stamps have to go into their respective country earmarked on the pre-printed album. The stamps can be arranged or grouped together depending upon your personal choice. They can go in date-wise, size-wise, shape-wise, theme-wise, or as a work of art like a collage. The draw back of such bounded albums is that you run out of sheets of particular countries while the less famous countries are still empty & blank.
CUSTOM MADE ALBUM - STAGE - I
This predicament was tackled very smartly by putting together my custom made album, spiral bound, for additions & adjustments, with large sheets of thick paper easily available from trashed print outs of IBM computers. The printed sides were glued together to give me clean set of white thick pages for affixing my stamps on. I allocated 25 sheets for India alone keeping the future growth in view. In five to six years this home made giant album was full of beautiful stamps arranged into colorful collages & themes. The most fascinating stamps came from China, Mongolia & Russia - USSR. Soon the number of albums multiplied to nine. Now we had resorted to the use of old photo albums to hold & display our stamp collection through the transparent plastic sheets. We allocated photo albums country-wise & continent-wise to solve the growing numbers, issue.
THE ENVIOUS SCROLL ALBUM - INNOVATION BY ACCIDENT
My creativity was still not satisfied with this arrangement of display locked into, bound up photo albums. The WOW factor was missing. One day the idea of Album as an endless scroll came to my mind. I started working on it & soon the blue print for the perfect gadget was on paper. Just like the movie film projector arrangement, but this would be horizontal version of it. Two long rollers / spools spaced apart, with ball bearings to facilitate their smooth rotation. Six hundred feet of black paper would hold all the stamps which must be at-least fifteen inches wide to accommodate ten rows of separate themes. One countries theme would gradually flow into the same theme of the next country giving the viewer a sense of continuity. The typical layout of the fifteen inch wide section was finalized as follows:
Country Name
Famous personalities
Animals
Birds
Flowers
Landscapes
Art work
Sports
Transport - cars, trucks, trains.
Flying machines - space ships, airplanes, helicopters, drones
This layout was very appealing allowing the viewer to focus at the row of his interest while the scroll turned & different countries went past by him. It was also possible to slow down, back track, or go forward at will, just by turning the handle. This contraption was fabricated from wooden pieces put together very strategically. A third roller was placed in the center to raise the scroll up towards the viewer to increase the span of glance & enhance the total effect of the display. All my friends & cousins were deeply impressed by this gadget & soon it became the talk of the town. It is high time that this designers dream be commercialized for the common teenager. It is proposed to design & manufacture such a scroll album which must be collapsible & compact to fit into a bag eventually. A smaller eight inch version for the beginners & the fifteen inch full size for adults. Good luck dear stamp loving souls.
Rohit Khanna - IN-CREDIBLE & IN-FINITE
