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Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Novelist Ayn Rand Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter.
Herself a philatelist, says in her essay, “Why I like Stamp Collecting”:
The pleasure of stamp collecting lies in a certain special way of using one’s mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people...because, in pattern, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world....
Stamp collecting can become a real passion: the more stamps you get the more you want. When one turns to stamps, one enters a special world by a process resembling a response to art : one deals with an isolated and stressed aspect of existence...and one experiences the sense of a clean, orderly, peaceful, sunlit world...
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"The pleasure of stamp collecting lies in a certain special way of using one’s mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people...because, in pattern, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.."
I like this! I had a conversation with someone just last week that people with a hobby make for better employees. Hobbyists are people who are interested in the world around them, those who will seek knowledge in areas just for the purpose of satisfying their thirst for knowledge. People who dig into the details and are perfectionists with their end results. Most important, people who use their time for pursuits instead of lying in front of the television!
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(Novelist Ayn Rand, like so many of us, collected stamps in her childhood, quit for several decades, and in middle age resumed collecting. The following is excerpted from an article which first appeared in the Minkus Stamp Journal in 1971. The text was obtained on the Internet; it has been abridged.)
Here's the entire essay:
WHY I LIKE STAMP COLLECTING
by Ayn Rand
I started collecting stamps when I was ten years old, but had to give up by the time I was
twelve. In all the time since, I never gave thought to resuming the hobby. It left only one
after-effect: I was unable to throw away an interesting looking stamp. So, I kept saving odd
stamps, all these years; I put them into random envelopes and never looked at them again.
Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I met a bright little girl named Tammy, who asked me –
somewhat timidly, but very resolutely – whether I received letters from foreign countries
and, if I did, would I give her the stamps. I promised to send her my duplicates....
Once I started sorting out the stamps I had accumulated, I was hooked. It was an astonishing
experience to find my enthusiasm returning after more then fifty years, as if there has
been no interruption. Only now the feeling had the eagerness of childhood combined with
the full awareness, confidence and freedom of age.... No, I have not forgotten Tammy: I
send her piles of duplicates every few months, and I feel very grateful to her.
In all those years I had never found a remedy for mental fatigue. Now, if I feel tired after a
whole day of writing, I spend an hour with my stamp albums and it makes me able to resume
my writing for the rest of the evening. A stamp album is a miraculous brain-restorer.
I am often asked why people like stamp collecing. So widespread a hobby can obviously
have many different motives. I can answer only in regard to my own motives, which I have
observed also in some of the stamp collectors I have met.
The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby
for busy, purposeful, ambitious people – because, in patterns, it has the essential elements
of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.... A career requires
the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate
steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression to a goal.... Purposeful people
cannot rest by doing nothing.... They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a
party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further
consequences.
The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They
are accustomed to working long-range.... Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant,
single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train – that is,
a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning. Stamp collecting
fulfills that need....
The course of a career depends on one's own action predominantly, but not exclusively. A
career requires a struggle; it involves tensions, disappointments, obstacles which are challenging,
at times, but are often ugly, painful, senseless – particularly, in an age like the present,
when one has to fight too frequently against the dishonesty, the evasion, the irrationality
of the people one deals with. In stamp collecting, one experiences the rare pleasure
of independent action without irrelevant burdens or impositions. Nobody can interfere
with one's collection, nobody need to be considered or questioned or worried about. The
choices, the work, the responsibility – and the enjoyment – are one's own. So is the great
sense of freedom and privacy.
For this very reason, when one deals with people as a stamp collector, it is on a cheerful,
benevolent basis. People cannot interfere, but they can be very helpful and generous.
There is a! sense of "brotherhood" among stamp collectors, of a kind that is very unusual
today: the brotherhood of holding the same values....
The pursuit of the unique, the unusual, the different, the rare is the motive power of stamp
collecting. It endows the hobby with the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt –
even on the more modest level of collecting, where the treasure may be simply an unexpected
gift from a friend, which fills the one blank spot, completing a set....
There is a constant change in the world of stamps, and constant motion, and a brilliant
flow of color, and a spectacular display of human imagination....
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Not sure what this post has to do with Australia or Oceania. Perhaps it should be added to the link below:
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=17947#134476
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BenFranklin1902
I agree, I see myself as a perfectionist as I spend hours a day in front of my stamps accompanied by one very big luminous free standing magnifying glass. I am also very particular about the condition of my stamps.
At the moment I have committed myself to the continuance of researching and recording the progression of 1938-49 ½d kangaroos. Although I already have a collection of varieties and have catalogued them, it wasn't until I bought two collections dedicated to the ½d kangaroo which were former research studies of two philatelists, Bryan Young & J.C. Thompson (45 MC Lachlan Ave, Rushcutters Bay), that I was asked to continue with the research, which I agreed to do without hesitation.
Thompson is mostly known for creating FDCs of great value, one such FDC of a thin paper 10/- Coronation Robe dated November 17, 1948 is one of only several examples known, it is considered very rare and is currently listed for $6,500. The collection and research of the varieties are dated from 1952.
The two collections consists of 449 ½d kangaroos, mostly blocks of 56, and all with unlisted varieties and rare progression of varieties such as the colour on a branch behind the kangaroo and the vertical lines from the 'O' in 'POSTAGE' to the kangaroos ear.
It came with a professionally made custom book detailing all the research varieties and valuable information about plates, sheets, perforations, where the variety can be identified on the sheet etc., etc.
For example, all the varieties are from Sheet B, Electro A.
I'll be posting the varieties on Stamporama the moment I sort them out and catalogued.
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Thanks Bob for that information, I enjoyed the read.
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"Not sure what this post has to do with Australia or Oceania. Perhaps it should be added to the link below"
Hi Jill
I didn't realise there was an earlier post about Ayn Rand, if I knew, I would definitely have added the information to that post.
Rob
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As mentioned, the article quoted above was abridged. One interesting detail not included in it was that Rand had a photographic memory. She was a general collector, used a Minkus Master Global album and never needed to take checklists to dealers or shows. she kept a perfect mental record of what she had and in time she had that album pretty full.
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I would like to have seen her collection, having a photographic memory helps considerably, I have somewhat a photographic memory, I can remember all 5,000 stamps including their details, and what albums they are in (the albums are not labelled).
Rob
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"Not sure what this post has to do with Australia or Oceania. "
I thought I read somewhere that she had 3 stamps from Australia and 1 from New Zealand.
So maybe it still fits?
Dave.
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Interesting to learn that not only nice and (sometimes) nerdy people collect or have collected stamps.
Stampcollectors, people just like any of us 
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Novelist Ayn Rand Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter.
Herself a philatelist, says in her essay, “Why I like Stamp Collecting”:
The pleasure of stamp collecting lies in a certain special way of using one’s mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people...because, in pattern, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world....
Stamp collecting can become a real passion: the more stamps you get the more you want. When one turns to stamps, one enters a special world by a process resembling a response to art : one deals with an isolated and stressed aspect of existence...and one experiences the sense of a clean, orderly, peaceful, sunlit world...
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re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
"The pleasure of stamp collecting lies in a certain special way of using one’s mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby for busy, purposeful, ambitious people...because, in pattern, it has the essential elements of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.."
I like this! I had a conversation with someone just last week that people with a hobby make for better employees. Hobbyists are people who are interested in the world around them, those who will seek knowledge in areas just for the purpose of satisfying their thirst for knowledge. People who dig into the details and are perfectionists with their end results. Most important, people who use their time for pursuits instead of lying in front of the television!
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re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
(Novelist Ayn Rand, like so many of us, collected stamps in her childhood, quit for several decades, and in middle age resumed collecting. The following is excerpted from an article which first appeared in the Minkus Stamp Journal in 1971. The text was obtained on the Internet; it has been abridged.)
Here's the entire essay:
WHY I LIKE STAMP COLLECTING
by Ayn Rand
I started collecting stamps when I was ten years old, but had to give up by the time I was
twelve. In all the time since, I never gave thought to resuming the hobby. It left only one
after-effect: I was unable to throw away an interesting looking stamp. So, I kept saving odd
stamps, all these years; I put them into random envelopes and never looked at them again.
Then, about a year-and-a-half ago, I met a bright little girl named Tammy, who asked me –
somewhat timidly, but very resolutely – whether I received letters from foreign countries
and, if I did, would I give her the stamps. I promised to send her my duplicates....
Once I started sorting out the stamps I had accumulated, I was hooked. It was an astonishing
experience to find my enthusiasm returning after more then fifty years, as if there has
been no interruption. Only now the feeling had the eagerness of childhood combined with
the full awareness, confidence and freedom of age.... No, I have not forgotten Tammy: I
send her piles of duplicates every few months, and I feel very grateful to her.
In all those years I had never found a remedy for mental fatigue. Now, if I feel tired after a
whole day of writing, I spend an hour with my stamp albums and it makes me able to resume
my writing for the rest of the evening. A stamp album is a miraculous brain-restorer.
I am often asked why people like stamp collecing. So widespread a hobby can obviously
have many different motives. I can answer only in regard to my own motives, which I have
observed also in some of the stamp collectors I have met.
The pleasure lies in a certain special way of using one's mind. Stamp collecting is a hobby
for busy, purposeful, ambitious people – because, in patterns, it has the essential elements
of a career, but transposed to a clearly delimited, intensely private world.... A career requires
the ability to sustain a purpose over a long period of time, through many separate
steps, choices, decisions, adding up to a steady progression to a goal.... Purposeful people
cannot rest by doing nothing.... They seldom find pleasure in single occasions, such as a
party or a show or even a vacation, a pleasure that ends right then and there, with no further
consequences.
The minds of such people require continuity, integration, a sense of moving forward. They
are accustomed to working long-range.... Yet they need relaxation and rest from their constant,
single-tracked drive. What they need is another track, but for the same train – that is,
a change of subject, but using part of the same method of mental functioning. Stamp collecting
fulfills that need....
The course of a career depends on one's own action predominantly, but not exclusively. A
career requires a struggle; it involves tensions, disappointments, obstacles which are challenging,
at times, but are often ugly, painful, senseless – particularly, in an age like the present,
when one has to fight too frequently against the dishonesty, the evasion, the irrationality
of the people one deals with. In stamp collecting, one experiences the rare pleasure
of independent action without irrelevant burdens or impositions. Nobody can interfere
with one's collection, nobody need to be considered or questioned or worried about. The
choices, the work, the responsibility – and the enjoyment – are one's own. So is the great
sense of freedom and privacy.
For this very reason, when one deals with people as a stamp collector, it is on a cheerful,
benevolent basis. People cannot interfere, but they can be very helpful and generous.
There is a! sense of "brotherhood" among stamp collectors, of a kind that is very unusual
today: the brotherhood of holding the same values....
The pursuit of the unique, the unusual, the different, the rare is the motive power of stamp
collecting. It endows the hobby with the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt –
even on the more modest level of collecting, where the treasure may be simply an unexpected
gift from a friend, which fills the one blank spot, completing a set....
There is a constant change in the world of stamps, and constant motion, and a brilliant
flow of color, and a spectacular display of human imagination....
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09:06:51pm
re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
Not sure what this post has to do with Australia or Oceania. Perhaps it should be added to the link below:
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_main.php?action=20&id=17947#134476
Login to Like
this post
re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
BenFranklin1902
I agree, I see myself as a perfectionist as I spend hours a day in front of my stamps accompanied by one very big luminous free standing magnifying glass. I am also very particular about the condition of my stamps.
At the moment I have committed myself to the continuance of researching and recording the progression of 1938-49 ½d kangaroos. Although I already have a collection of varieties and have catalogued them, it wasn't until I bought two collections dedicated to the ½d kangaroo which were former research studies of two philatelists, Bryan Young & J.C. Thompson (45 MC Lachlan Ave, Rushcutters Bay), that I was asked to continue with the research, which I agreed to do without hesitation.
Thompson is mostly known for creating FDCs of great value, one such FDC of a thin paper 10/- Coronation Robe dated November 17, 1948 is one of only several examples known, it is considered very rare and is currently listed for $6,500. The collection and research of the varieties are dated from 1952.
The two collections consists of 449 ½d kangaroos, mostly blocks of 56, and all with unlisted varieties and rare progression of varieties such as the colour on a branch behind the kangaroo and the vertical lines from the 'O' in 'POSTAGE' to the kangaroos ear.
It came with a professionally made custom book detailing all the research varieties and valuable information about plates, sheets, perforations, where the variety can be identified on the sheet etc., etc.
For example, all the varieties are from Sheet B, Electro A.
I'll be posting the varieties on Stamporama the moment I sort them out and catalogued.
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re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
Thanks Bob for that information, I enjoyed the read.
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re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
"Not sure what this post has to do with Australia or Oceania. Perhaps it should be added to the link below"
Hi Jill
I didn't realise there was an earlier post about Ayn Rand, if I knew, I would definitely have added the information to that post.
Rob
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this post
re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
As mentioned, the article quoted above was abridged. One interesting detail not included in it was that Rand had a photographic memory. She was a general collector, used a Minkus Master Global album and never needed to take checklists to dealers or shows. she kept a perfect mental record of what she had and in time she had that album pretty full.
Login to Like
this post
re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
I would like to have seen her collection, having a photographic memory helps considerably, I have somewhat a photographic memory, I can remember all 5,000 stamps including their details, and what albums they are in (the albums are not labelled).
Rob
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this post
re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
"Not sure what this post has to do with Australia or Oceania. "
I thought I read somewhere that she had 3 stamps from Australia and 1 from New Zealand.
So maybe it still fits?
Dave.
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re: Novelist Ayn Rand (February 2, 1905 - March 6, 1982)
Interesting to learn that not only nice and (sometimes) nerdy people collect or have collected stamps.
Stampcollectors, people just like any of us
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