Topical or Thematic collecting came of age about 1950 (The American Topical Association, a group of philatelists who collect thematically was founded in 1949). Traditional collectors save stamps and covers by country, though often specializing by era or issue or stamp type (such as plate blocks or tabs). Topicalists collect by theme such as Disney stamps, where they try to obtain all the Disney stamps that they can without regard to country. If you collect things such as Queen Elizabeth’s coronation or The American Revolution Bicentennial then you have a topical collection-one that is multinational in scope with the defining characteristic that the stamps all pertain to the same theme.
Traditionalists have denigrated thematic collecting as being simplistic-really just picture collecting. But this criticism is faulty in at least two ways. First, all philately is picture collecting. If we weren’t unconsciously attracted to the beauty of the items we collect we would do something else with our free time. And second, rather than being simplistic, thematic collecting has the potential to be far more complex than any other type of collecting. True, the little girl’s thematic collection that I saw once at an exhibit and which was entitled “Stamps I Like” was a bit simplistic though charming and comprehensive in a way that few collections can aspire. And true, specially prepared thematic new issues collections with their requisite albums (such as Royal Wedding collections) offer little satisfaction to serious collectors.
But the finest collection I ever saw was thematic. Entitled “Slavery”, it traced through postal history the early slavers entry into Africa, stamps from European and African nations that facilitated and profited from slavery, the brutal Middle Passage, sale and branding in the New World, farm labor, and abolitionist fever and emancipation. Only the complexity of the War to End Slavery, usually called the Civil War, prevented the collector from that area as well. The collection comprised postal history, stamps, proofs and essays and was wonderfully researched. With the exception of one item (the Jamaica slavery essay), this collection had been made on a lifetime budget of under $10,000 which is scarcely the price of a high quality mint set of US 1893 Columbians.