Cover Collecting

Stamps were collected from 1840 onwards and within a few decades specialized collectors were trying to get their favorite stamps used on cover as well as off cover. But the earliest collectors collected both their stamps and covers only by country and it was not until about 1920 that the first thematic cover collectors came into being. They did not think of themselves as thematic collectors and today their descendants would recoil at the idea that they are in any way related to Topical collectors. But the fact remains that, at its core, Postal History collecting is thematic collecting. Pick a Postal History specialty -say transatlantic Mail or Civil War- and its core is an emphasis of the non-philatelic story being told rather than the stamps and covers themselves. Philately developed as a picturesque assemblage of the stamps and covers of a particular stamp issuing entity at a particular era in time, whereas thematic collecting uses stamps and covers to tell a non-philatelic story about the topic itself. In this sense it has always surprised me that traditional philately has endured as the main way philatelists collect.Thematic collecting allows more creativity and individuality, as the diversity of material available to themistmatists is vast and the story can be told so many different ways. Traditional philately is more circumscribed which is probably what its adherents want. Perhaps the reason philately has thrived is that the two main branches of our hobby offer either structure or creativity (or whatever balance the collector wishes thereof)