This aspect of stamp collecting has become popular. It means that a stamp collector can spend time sorting his stamps into various topics, but how does one go about starting to sort stamps topically? I’m going to tell you how we went about starting our topical section on the website.
We had to decide on a topic to start with. It is important to think not only about what stamps we have in our collection, but also to select a topic which interests us. As we love birding and have spent many of our camping holidays at bird hides and seeing birds on our trips, we decided that this was a good place to start. But …. How to create a topical page on our website and know where to find the stamps which depict birds?? We have stamps from more than 400 different territories on the website.
This is where technology comes into the picture. These days technology is amazing and can help with just about anything. We used the search feature on our catalogue which jumped to all the countries from A – Z where the words, bird, birds or birding appeared. I was then able to go to the page on the website and find the actual bird stamp. I then copied the stamp and placed it on our “special” Birds page. This way of searching is not foolproof, as many birds are described by their name and in that instance the word “bird” does not appear. The only way past this obstacle is to go through each country on the website and when we see a bird, we can then check whether we put that bird onto the Topical page. This would be extremely time consuming, so for the time being I must be happy that the “bird” page has about 580 stamps with birds, real or otherwise. Maybe “otherwise” needs a bit more explanation:
For example, the Garuda bird is a legendary bird of Burma, the archnemesis of the serpents, Nargas.
Turul is a mythical bird of prey from Hungary and is believed to represent power, protection and guidance, making it a very powerful symbol for the people.
The kalavinka from Japan is an immortal creature in Buddhism with a bird’s body and a human head.
In focussing on birds on the website, our general knowledge has also increased and obviously there will be more birds that can be described as “not real”, but that is where the fun lies when researching the various subjects shown on the stamps.
Now I have to think about the next topic. Maybe Oscar Winners??? Who knows??
We hope you enjoy looking at our “Bird” page which you can access from the Birds button on the B index page.
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