Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Reflexions about ourselves

Gauthier Toulemonde's editorial in French Timbres magazine of June 2007, makes Claude Jamet run some reflexions and thoughts about philately and stamp collecting on his site Ma Philatélie. All of this is aimed at us, philatelists and/or collectors : have we to collect new stamps of our country's post, all of them, none, how, why ?

Two articles followed the analysis of Toulemonde "open letter to the [French] President" :
* « Timbres à collectionner ou timbre de collection » (stamps to collect or stamp of collection) is a question about some recent issue of prestige. Are they aimed at stamp collectors, the general public looking for special occasions, or what ?
* « En finir avec une collection systématique » (to end the systematic collection, i.e. collection of all the stamps your post is issuing), Claude Jamet write in order to transform the all-stamp-of-the-year collector into a philatelist, discovering stamp creation or postal history.

I have kept some marking sentences from this reading :
* « La collection systématique mène à tout, à condition d'en sortir. » (systematic collection ends everywhere, if you stop doing it (sorry for the rude translation)).
* Comparing stamps printed by machines and commemorative stamps : « La voiture n'a pas tué les balades du dimanche à vélo dans la campagne. Au contraire, elle les rend encore plus nécessaires. » (cars didn't kill sunday bike trips at the country. In the contrary, cars made them ever more necessary).

Through British Stamp Magazine reader's mail, my looking at the Australian and United States' stamp program, Claude Jamet's questions seem to be interesting farther than the Gallo-French philatelic pond.

Note :
Claude Jamet is a former philatelic journalist who wrote in Timbroscopie, a magazin that united with Le Monde des philatélistes and Timbroloisirs at the beginning of the 2000s to form Timbres magazine.

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