Actually, the collection belongs to my grandmother, but she gave it to me when I returned home from Japan this year. I was so excited to sort through and organize these little pieces of history.
Last Thursday, I visited
Treasure Island Stamps & Coins in Palo Alto to find out a little more about these old stamps and how to best preserve them. After talking to the owner of the shop about the value of the stamps (the most expensive ones are worth from $25-$30) and how to keep them looking nice, I bought a small blue album with inserts for the stamps.
I loved looking at the different stamps and guessing what time period they were from. I especially liked seeing old images of Miyajima and other places I have visited in Japan printed on the stamps. Luckily, my grandma had preserved them well, so it was really easy to remove the stamps from the sheets and place them in the album. My grandmother said that she had only given me two pages out of many albums of stamps (it was a hobby she enjoyed with her mother), and that I should look at her other stamps, too. I have a feeling I'll be visiting that stamp shop again soon!
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My grandma gave me the stamps on sheets like this. Many of the stamps had fallen off, so I first removed all of them from the sheets.
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| Then I tried to organize them by year, style, and/or shape. |
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| After a few hours, all the stamps made it into the book! |
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| This is one of the most valuable sheets in the collection. According to the man at the shop, it's worth $25-$30. |
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| This is the other most valuable sheet, also worth $25-$30. |
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| This is the most recent addition to the collection - I received these "Japan Sports 100th Anniversary" stamps from a teacher friend of mine as a gift before leaving Japan! |
