Harry and Sally

Harry and Sally were an older stamp collecting couple that were already long established favorites at our shop when I started in the stamp business forty years ago.  They had met in their youth at a local stamp club and though they each maintained their own collections (he was a GB collector, she saved Canada) together they collected US plate blocks and they did it in a substantial way. Two or three Saturday mornings a month they came to our office to see what was new in stock and it was unusual that they left without smiles on their faces. By their own account, they had never been “blessed” with children, but their love for each other and the time they spent together seem to fill them completely. In their seventies, Sally got sick-cancer I think- and after a long period of decline she passed away. It was quite a while until we saw Harry again. He came in with his GB album and began adding stamps to his old collection. Months later I asked him about the US plate blocks and was he going to add to that. “That collection was for Sally and me, not one of us alone. We had no kids, you know, and we always said to each other when one of us passed on that the other would leave the collection just the way it was”. Harry lived quite a few years after he lost Sally. I saw him get stamps for his GB collection and I saw him add to Sally’s Canada. But he never collected a plate block again.