Stamps have been collected for approximately 140 years. People began taking interest in these small slips of paper soon after the issuance of the first stamp on May 6, 1840 in England.

One of the earliest indications of stamp collecting is an advertisement in an English newspaper in which a young woman sought as many used stamps as possible with which to wallpaper her room. It would be interesting to know whether she obtained the necessary amount. At today’s market value, this "wallpaper" would have been worth an enormous sum: nowadays a single "Blackpenny" costs around 2,000 Austrian shillings. Just how would this room have looked? As the name says, the first English stamp was black. The 2-pence stamp issued a short time later was dark blue - likewise not much better.

Initially, collectors sought to gather stamps from all over the world. Up until the turn of the century a general collection of this kind included only a few thousand specimens. Few such collections could be completed, as there are only two dozen of the "Blue Mauritius" and indeed just one single specimen of the "Red British Guyana".

As stamps became more and more numerous, collectors limited themselves to individual countries: known as country collecting. Most obvious is to collect stamps from one’s own country. Only a handful of Austrian collections are truly complete. Just a few specimens remain of the "Zinnoberroten Merkur", one of the rarest Austrian stamps.

Soon post offices discovered stamp collectors to be a good source of revenue, and an unprecedented surge began. Only a few countries remained serious, Austria being one of them. Collectors reacted with motif collecting. No longer did they strive to complete country-specific collections, but rather collected stamps according to their pictures: dogs, flowers, locomotives, ships, paintings, weapons, buildings, or beautiful women. One could once again collect "world-wide": the golden eagle from Austria, the honey-bee from Spain, the sea eagle from Senegal, and the humming bird from Jamaica. However, amassing many similar stamps with butterflies, birds, or busts had a monotonous effect and conveyed little. In addition, postal administrations (mostly in smaller countries) soon discovered that motif collectors allowed themselves to be taken advantage of more readily with all the colorful little pictures than country collectors.

Documentary was superseded by thematic motif collecting. Here a theme is taken up, a story is told about it, and the stamps (along with entire letters and special cancellation marks) provide the corresponding illustrations. An example can be seen in Mozart’s biography: his house of birth is portrayed on a stamp, his sister Nannerl on a special cancellation mark, his piano on a postcard, etc. - if these indeed exist. The collector can sometimes search for quite a while.

Certain collectors smirked, totally unjustifiably, at these "mini-picture-collectors". Once again they looked to the post office and explored history. In demand are letters from the period of time before the introduction of stamps ("pre-philately"). One can reconstruct postal history: postal trends and fees. The very latest thing is home collecting, whereby everything involving postal delivery is collected and explored that relates to one place, region, or district.

This is indeed the pinnacle of philately, comparable to the world championships in ice skating or Gerhard Berger in auto racing.

What should the average person collect?

In addition to definitive stamps, which are meant for normal mail, there are also commemorative stamps. Commemorative stamps appear on special occasions, show an appropriate illustration, and are elaborately printed. Once a year a supplementary stamp appears. It costs only a few shillings more, and the proceeds go toward an area of philately - thus indirectly benefiting all collectors. Blocks also appear on special occasions and contain only one or several stamps presented in their "Sunday best", for this the picture carries through to the border.

Along with stamps one can also collect whole articles. Presently in Austria there are domestic and international postcards, envelopes, and aerogrammes on which the stamp is already printed. Formerly these were the normal definitive stamps. For a few years pictures have been used which do not exist as "normal" stamps. Earlier there were many more types of whole articles.

Those wishing to collect not just newly-issued stamps can also collect in reverse - those stamps of past years. Still older stamps can be obtained at many post offices. Larger post offices have their own collector’s counter, where the selection is often quite large. Stamps can be found here that are thirty or more years old, of course at the (low) prices of those days.

Stamps put aside for longer periods or those which are out of print can best be purchased at a stamp dealer. Names and addresses can be found in the telephone book. Even at a dealer, stamps from the last thirty years cost not much more than their face value. Rather expensive, however, are those from the fifties.

New stamps, even foreign ones, can be obtained at stamp collectors’ societies. Here the new ones are often less expensive than at a dealer, though it often takes a long time. One can also trade stamps and in this way make use of any duplicates. Societies have catalogues, give advice, and offer expert examination of rare stamps. Many societies also have extensive libraries. Addresses of societies in your area can be obtained at the Association of Austrian Philatelist Societies, located on Getreidemarkt 1, A-1060 Vienna.

The Association’s newspaper is called the "Briefmarke" ("postage stamp"). It contains all information related to stamps, special cancellation marks, events, as well as valuable specialized articles in all areas of philately. A monthly one-year subscription costs just 330 shillings.