A good couple of years ago I visited an antique car museum in Norwich New York. I am not an old time car fan particularly and I went there with a relative who was. There was not much text to the exhibit, just 130 restored cars that were produced between 1904 and 1935 . Most of the manufacturers and models I had never heard of. The point is that this exhibit gave a pretty good education about the history of automobile design, production and evolution through the classic era, and it did by showing examples of what cars had been made and not by telling visitors in text what they should know. I thought of most stamp museums and exhibits that I have seen. Most are quite episodic, strong in some parts, nonexistent in others parts of the story of postage stamps. Most exhibits lack coherence and lack an overriding sense of trying to tell the history of stamps in a meaningful way. Either the stamp exhibit lacks rarity, or has only rarity, or the skew is too predominantly US philately or no US at all. I walked away from the car museum with tremendous appreciation of what collecting older cars is all about and convinced that this would be an exciting and challenging hobby. We need stamp exhibits that do the same.
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