The pleasures of the past can be relived. I have just finished reading the series of stamp columns which I wrote for a newspaper syndicate in 1956 and 1957. They are many years old and I had completely forgotten about them. The general philatelic topics of the series are as fresh today as they were then. In fact, I could use any of them for this column and readers would believe they were freshly written just for this one purpose.

This only goes to prove that most of what is exciting to the new collector has been repeated time and time again during the more than a century of stamp collecting history. New issues, errors, record prices, famous collectors, exhibitions, scarcity of material, stamp thefts, conventions, etc.- they have happened before and gave those collectors the same reaction that we get for today’s happenings.

It is indeed a credit to the appeal and qualities of philately that the same acts and dramas can be repeated time and again to the joy of an ever increasing following. Your great grandfather could barely await the weekly stamp club meeting back in 1901 so he could show his friends his latest find, an inverted one-cent Pan American. Now, many years later, Junior rushes to the meeting to participate in a current discussion about the lack of art in the stamps our country is currently issuing. The subject of Post Office delinquency is as hot today as it was in 1901. Philately is quite sage as long as this interest continues.