When Stamp-Collecting Hits a Dead End

As stamp-collecting goes, let me keep you posted.

I’ve been a serious philatelist for half a century of my adult life, another 10 years as a child. Philately is a fancy name for this hobby, but there’s nothing really elaborate about it.

At the end of the year, I update my collection through the post office. What they don’t have through supply and demand is secured through various commercial outlets. I have a dealer on the East Coast and another out west. Between the two of them, I’m usually well covered.

Except this year. No matter how hard I tried, there was nothing available in the “hot rod” series. The United States Postal Service is fresh out. Both my retail sources and the various post offices in the area told me, “Good luck.”

One suggested I take my search to eBay and Amazon. The hot rods commemorate a lifestyle that developed in the 1930’s, if you can imagine. It embraced automotive enthusiasts who modified their cars to race on the dry lake beds of Los Angeles.

The first cars chosen were 1920’s Fords with removed body parts for reduced weight. Subsequently, engines were modified or swapped.

By the 1950’s, such cars were being modified for looks as well as performance. Featured on the two booklet stamps are images by John Mattos of the classic hot rod—the 1932 Ford Roadster. The stamps were issued last June in Los Angeles.

Okay, that said, why would that be the only void in my collection since I started ordering stamps more than 50 years ago for my White Ace albums? Nobody could tell me. They just became very popular, was the answer I received.

Could it be people have a fanaticism over hot rods and antique cars? I once attended a classic car show at the beach and got to ride in a white Chevy Impala convertible with the top down. Mercy! It was like being transposed back to the 1950’s.

Elvis was blaring on the radio with “Heartbreak Hotel” and people seemed more modified than the cars they were displaying. Admirers stood on the side of the road and were whopping it up. My wife and I were in a classic world.

As a teenager, I drove those cars. I always dreamed of getting a Ford Thunderbird, but that never occurred. I bought hot rod magazines and drove off into another world. Even today, when I go to classic car shows, the music is memorable.

We baby boomers are a breed of another generation for sure, and we grew up in an eclectic era where the music and cars conformed to the fashions of yesteryear. I danced the twist one night with Chubby Checker at the microphone. And I got to interview Fats Domino and Roy Orbison when they appeared at the Hampton Beach Casino.

Okay, back to the stamps and the hot rods. Last year (2014) produced 26 different subjects to commemorate. The hot rods shared company with Charlton Heston, Shirley Chisholm, songbirds, the Civil War era, farmers markets, vintage circus posters and Batman, along with basketball giant Wilt Chamberlain, celebrity chefs, and the usual Christmas venues.

All worthy choices, I’m sure, but who would figure hot rods? And who would ever suspect they would become as rare as a Kohinoor diamond of India?

Now, according to my sources, stamp-collecting was among the most popular hobbies known to mankind back when. Not any more, sad to say.

I also collect coins, but they have taken a back seat to stamps. I remember when postage stamps were 3 cents back in the 1940’s.

My sources tell me that today’s generation doesn’t use mail. They have no stamps in their possession. My son is one of those; his children will consider a United States stamp a foreign element like vinyl records and easy music.

I delved a little further into hobbying and found that stamp-collecting was not even listed among the top 50 hobbies. Here are the first five choices of today’s generation: reading, television, family time, movies, and fishing. Books are still popular (maybe electronically).

I like all of these, and probably do more television and movie watching than I do with my stamps. I have every commemorative stamp in mint condition dating back to the 1890’s.

My dilemma is this. It’s not the hot rod stamps per se. But to whom do I leave this collection after I pass? With three children, none of them have shown an interest. More with coins. Money still talks volumes.

So with six grandchildren waiting in the wings, they are also eligible recipients when the BIG day comes. One of them will be a benefactor.

And, I’m afraid, they will receive my collection without the distinctive hot rod series.

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Tom Vartabedian

Tom Vartabedian is a retired journalist with the Haverhill Gazette, where he spent 40 years as an award-winning writer and photographer. He has volunteered his services for the past 46 years as a columnist and correspondent with the Armenian Weekly, where his pet project was the publication of a special issue of the AYF Olympics each September.

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