Stampmania 2009 to hit city in December

“The passion for stamp collection is anyway on a downswing. Also,collections of the young collectors are haphazard,as they do not prepare for exhibitions. The international trend is to be more thematic and have exhaustive and chronological collection in one particular topic. It is more like telling a story of something or someone through time,” said Prashant Pandya,president of Baroda Philatelic Society.

In one frame exhibition,the collector can display a catalogue of 16 sheets of stamps. “One can exhibit up to five or eight frames. But what we are focussing on is not how many stamps one has,but how comprehensive the collection can be,” said Pandya,who has been collecting stamps for the last 30 years on the theme of ‘milk’. His other collections are on postal stationery and on the history of Baroda and Rajpipla.

“There are stamps available on any imaginable topic. Less number of frames will be an incentive to the young collectors to focus on their collection as well. Through the process to make a comprehensive frame,the collector will gain enormous historical and socio-cultural knowledge on the topic,” Pandya added.

The exhibition will also focus on schoolchildren. “The younger generation is completely devoid of the passion for or knowledge of stamps that we had. But we are visiting every school to promote philately and have a category for them as well. We have set 20 simple topics like bird,aeroplane and the like and have asked the students to find one stamp each per topic. We are also explaining them on how to collect,preserve and exhibit the stamps,” said Pandya.