Stamp collecting

I may have iterated about this before -- does one iterate about or just iterate? My father collected stamps. Not many, but enough that he had a beautiful collection which was passed on to my brother Mark.

He especially loved to collect British stamps, and he had someone that got him the new stamps as they were printed by the British government, and he was also able to get some older, out of print stamps from that same source. I think he liked the way they were printed and the colors that were used by the Brits.

He also had a complete collection of all US stamps from the 1/2 cent stamp up through the 30 cent stamp. That collection included the standard stamps and the special stamps.

I recall being called into his bedroom where one of his desks was housed (the one he used at home was this particular desk -- a beautiful two-tiered cherry desk with a slant front, book case above, three drawer's below). My brother also got the desk. Anyway, he would call me in and encourage me to look at any new stamp he received through the magnifying glass so I could see the fine lines that made up the picture on the stamp.

Most of his stamps were newly issued, he did not like to get stamps that were cancelled -- that means they went through the postal system and were stamped so they couldn't be used again. But, in rare cases when he couldn't get that particular stamp without the cancelling stamp on it, he would purchase the used stamps.

All stamps he purchased were in pristine condition, and he had special tweezers which he used to place them in the pages that held them and to remove them if he wanted to view them through the magnifier. Those pages had slots so the stamps would slide in and you could get probably 20 stamps per page. He received such pleasure out of his collection.

I may be wrong, but I believe it was his father -- Charles Drexler -- that got him started on that hobby.

Such small items and they gave him such great pleasure.