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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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n 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.<\/span><\/p>\n “Almost everybody collected stamps, whether you were serious or not,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “For example, at that time, we didn’t learn so much about Malaysia. Like the state of Perlis in Malaysia, it’s not something everyone will know about \u2013 but I learnt (about) it through stamps.”<\/span><\/p>\n By the age of 14, Mr Tan worked out a scheme to keep expanding his collection and still make a quick buck.<\/span><\/p>\n He began buying packets of 500 stamps that could be broken into five packets of 100 each and sold off, advertising his offers in the school magazine. He used the money he got from selling stamp packets to buy new stamps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This practice is called \u4ee5\u90ae\u517b\u90ae, which directly translates to “using postage to support postage”. Philatelists make money by transferring, selling or exchanging surplus or duplicate stamps. They then use these funds to purchase stamps they desire or lack, thus achieving a virtuous circle of reducing collecting costs and enriching their personal collections.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He soon began printing his own first-day covers. Avid stamp collectors often purchased their envelopes in advance before queueing at the post office on the morning a stamp was released to have it postmarked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Collectors who missed out printed their own, also known as private first-day covers. These “unofficial” versions weren’t very popular and thus were cheaper, recalled Mr Tan, but still managed to sell as their official counterparts often sold out.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n THE VIRTUOUS CIRCLE OF STAMPS\u00a0 Mr Tan’s fascination with stamps began at the tender age of 11. At the time, he said, stamp collecting was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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