THE VIRTUOUS CIRCLE OF STAMPS
Mr Tan’s fascination with stamps began at the tender age of 11. At the time, he said, stamp collecting was quite the hobby de rigueur, not the niche interest it is now.
Stamp collecting was all the rage in 1950s Singapore. Children swopped stamps, built albums and chased new issues, while clubs and competitions gave the hobby a real sense of excitement. Kids today have Labubus; Mr Tan and his generation had stamps.
“Almost everybody collected stamps, whether you were serious or not,” he said.
Without the global connectivity of the internet, for Mr Tan, those small perforated rectangles were portals to new worlds. Through each sheet and edition, he learnt about countries he had never seen before, and their storied and complicated histories.
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