An old Carnaval song said that confetti are "colored pieces of memories". What are stamps, then? Besides memories, they're colored pieces of history, geography...
In these times of instant communication , when people talk on their mobile phones even in the restroom and receive their e-mails while they walk (or even worse, while they drive), traditional mail has lost a lot of its importance. But not very long ago, it was almost the only way of communicating at great distances. And stamps, more than being a mean for paying postal fees, were show windows to their countries.
I've never been a "serious" stamp collector. I didn't know about the values of the stamps, or how to identify a stamp with good philatelic quality. I collected, or should I say, I gathered stamps because they made me curious, for their colors, for the pictures of animals, planes, historic characters, whatever...
I had a Japanese neighbor who would always call me to the backyard and throw me, from her window, beautiful stamps from Japan, still glued to the very thin envelope paper. And the stamps from other countries, my mother would buy them downtown, in parchment paper envelopes, always with the legend: "All different and authentic"...
Looking at these stamps today, I see countries that no longer exist, Dictators and kings who no one misses, advanced technology that today belongs in museums...
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