Why do we “collect”? More importantly why do I “collect”?
One of the things that I notice about being 68 years old is that I spend a lot of time looking back. And as a historian of sorts, I spend a lot more time looking back than the average person of my age.
I collect…”stuff”. Not just stamps, coins, postcards. I collect …well “stuff”. I would not call myself a “hoarder” because hoarders seem to be a fire hazard. I emphasise that I am not a fire hazard.
I have been thinking a lot about why I am a collector of…”stuff”.
And just lately I have been thinking about a small corner shop in Balaclava Street in Belfast circa 1957. For some reason, I remember it was a dark, wet night. My father bought me some chewing gum which had a free picture of a football team. Oddly I don’t remember really collecting these cards but around 1958/59, I recall coming home from school and often putting a penny in a gumball machine and there was a free picture of a footballer. I recall my father sent off a postal order for the album.
The odd thing is that my mother did not approve of chewing gum “a filthy American habit” and I gave away or threw away the gumballs and the pink slabs of gum. They tasted horrible.
Yet my recollection of these two football card sets from the late 1950s is sketchy. But I remember a set of 80 Flags of the World in 1959. I almost had the full set.
A few years ago I bought a few of these chewing gum cards in London. Actually they are slightly smaller the cards I had. Seemingly a second smaller series was produced in 1963.
These cards are literally snapshots from around 1960. Ceylon became Sri Lanka in 1972. IndoChina would go thru Hell in the 1960s and be South Vietnam and after the defeat of South Vietnam and United States of America would be absorbed into North Vietnam as Vietnam. Tibet had already been annexed by China in the early 1950s so the inclusion of this flag is a little surprising.
As well as the picture of the Flag, there is some stereotypical images. The back of the card contains information about the country…capital, area, population, type of government, miles from London (!), currency unit, language and main product. For the record, the main product in Ireland is…potatoes!
There is also some phrases in the language of the country.
My father encouraged me to collect these cards. They were considered “educational” and “general knowledge” was looked on as a good thing. But I think my father saw that I was doing something that he himself had been doing some thirty years before…collecting cigarette cards.
Between the First and Second World Wars, the cigarette manufacturers produced cards on various themes. My father used to tell me stories how relatives and neighbours used to save the cards for him. Around 1990 (some years after my father died), I bought some loose cards at a Stamp Fair. John Player produced a set of 50 Flags of the League of Nations in 1928.
Like the 1959 chewing gum cards, these are a snapshot from 1928. The Irish Free State was the official term for Ireland. Abyssinia is now Ethiopia. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes became Yugoslavia before breaking apart. Persia is now Iran. The imperial flags of Japan and China are shown. The Canada flag is now changed as is the old “Union” of South Africa and of course India is now independent.
In 2015, I bought a full set of these League of Nations cards and some loose cards (Famous Jockeys) , produced by Gallaher Ltd (a Belfast firm).
Again this is literally a snap shot from 1936. But I do recall that E Smith (bottom row centre) was still riding in the 1960s.
My interest in cigarette cards and bubblegum cards is limited but I was delighted to pick this up in 2016.
So incredibly more than five decades after nearly having a full set of 80 cards, I now have all of them in an album. Now there are 193 members of the United Nations plus five (Taiwan, Vatican, Palestine, Northern Cyprus and Kosovo) which are de facto nations. So it is difficult to think that only five cards in this set are from the continent of Africa and that one of them (Algeria) was not independent.
But it brings me back to the question. “Why do I collect?”. Certainly there is a sense of History. A sense of Archive. A sense of Nostalgia for a dark, wet night in Balaclava Street, Belfast circa 1957. And a sense of Emotion for my father and other relatives who tolerated and encouraged me.
Or maybe it is in my genes.
Collecting Stamps of Ireland 