The pinnacle of philately’s popularity was the 1930’s. Stamp collecting was an inexpensive hobby and the Great Depression resulted in a lot of people with time on their hands. There was no television or Internet to compete as entertainment. And two of the world’s most beloved and popular leaders, Franklin Roosevelt and King George VI were active and vocal stamp collectors.
One of the unfortunate difficulties in promoting stamp collecting today is that we have no dynamic philatelic spokesperson. In the 1980’s when then USPS did a philately promotion video they got Ernest Borgnine of McHale’s Navy fame to be the narrator. Raymond Burr (Perry Mason) and Gary Burghoff (Radar Reilly) have also been philatelic spokespersons. Not only don’t they exactly burn the charts for name recognition, Borgnine’s and Burghoff’s television characters are hardly role models- one is conniving, the other incompetent.
Until recently, I hoped that Tiger Woods would be revealed to be a closet stamp collector, but that would appear to be too tame for him. A great non steroid using sports hero or an unindicted Wall Street figure is what we need. But given the short time between fame and infamy in our world today, perhaps we are better off as we are.