This title was originally a book title that was proposed 20 years ago, and there are about 30 sub-titles. I don't have the capacity to write a book now, but the philatelic past that lingers in my mind is enough to write a short essay of a few thousand words.
The threshold for philately is very low, and anyone can collect stamps, regardless of age, rich or poor. When I was in elementary school, I was fond of stamp collecting, and my family never gave me pocket money, and my sister was the eldest and she controlled the pocket money. Most of my shabby dozens of stamps were stamped old stamps from my neighbor's brother, and I glued them to my notebook as if they were treasures. I happened to turn out a small notebook from more than 30 years ago, and there is a piece that is very suitable for use here, which can support my first journey of philately, "I started collecting philately in March 1986, in fact, I also collected it when I was a child, there are two small books, the cover of a small group of paintings, and later I gave it to Lao Cao when I was righteous. In order to collect stamps, I bought the "Stamp Encyclopedia" and the "World Concise Stamp Handbook" at the Sanlihe Small Book Pavilion, and bought the "Chinese Stamp Catalogue" at the Wangfujing Bookstore.
Going to the post office to buy new stamps for stamp collecting was after I was 30 years old. The post office is right next to the unit where I work, and the monkey ticket (issued in February 1980), which is now as expensive as gold, was a sight to behold many years later. The three major benefits of philately are "increasing knowledge, pleasure, and saving wealth", and the performance of "80 monkeys" in saving and increasing wealth can be called a classic. In 1986, I bought a monkey ticket for 32 yuan, which was 8 yuan a piece, which was 100 times higher than the original face value of 8 cents. In 2007, I sold the monkey stamp quadripartite at 12,000 yuan in the stamp market (at that time, my friend advised me not to sell, saying that it had to appreciate, and sure enough, he said it), although it was not the first time I sold stamps, but the significance of "80 monkey stamps" is extraordinary, which means that my shy philatelic history is almost over.
The reason for the above-mentioned "stamp collection started in March 1986" was that there was a color printed newspaper at that time, "Life Counselor", which was very popular in Beijing, and there was a column on the special collection page called "Records of the Ups and Downs of the Post Market", and the style of writing was like that of a stamp dealer and mixed with the experience of a philatelist who was not inferior to that of a philatelist. There is a title called "do not look at the ticket under the lamp", which is that it is not suitable to trade stamps when the light is bad, and if you return home and find that the stamps are flawed, generally speaking, it is not refundable or exchanged. Suffice it to say, I was deeply moved by the phrase "don't look at the stamps under the lamp" and entered the door of philately, and immediately went to Xidan shopping mall to buy a philatelic album, and at the same time subscribed to the "Philately" magazine and bought a stamp catalog, armed myself, ready to go into battle with real knives and guns.
Decades later, memories are always blurred, but this small book, Philatelic Grandpa's Mailbox (first edition, August 1985, Beijing, China Prospect Publishing House), faithfully restores the details that were almost forgotten. On the title page is a passage I wrote on the evening of March 18, 1992: "It seems that this book was purchased in 1986 at the Book Kiosk on Shijuma Street, and it was with it that I bought all the new JT tickets one by one. "Philatelic Grandpa's Mailbox" explains what JT stamps are: "Commemorative stamps after 1974 began with the word "J" ("J" is the pinyin prefix of the word "Ji"), and special stamps began with the word "T" ("T" is the pinyin prefix of the word "special"). "Commemorative stamps and special stamps before 1974, commonly known as "old Jite", correspond to the "new JT" after that, which is the name of the stamp market, easy to understand. I'm a newbie, so let's go ahead and save up from the JT ticket.
The "general ticket", "text ticket" and "numbered ticket" other than the old JT and the new JT are not popular due to the small number of people who play, and the "80 monkeys" mentioned above are "T46" in the new JT. I know several post-sellers, one of whom is a neighbor who lives downstairs from me (I often go to his house to buy stamps), these people are not highly educated, but they can say the corresponding stamp names of J and T backwards, and they have the ability to simplify the complex, such as the T16 ticket name "Chinese mountaineering team climbs Mount Everest again", they are referred to as "Mount Everest"; T95 "Yangtze River Gezhouba Water Conservancy Project", referred to as "Gezhouba". The name of the J ticket is generally much longer than the T ticket, and the longest is about 30 words, such as J13 and J61, which seems to be simple, and the postman can also find out the key words to delete the complicated and simplified, this skill may be a means of making a living, or maybe it is just the hand of the "oil seller".
At that time, the post office only sold newly issued stamps, so if you want to collect stamps that are not newly issued, where to buy? Most of my JT tickets were available at the small market in the post office compound on South Lishi Road. Every day off with the "philatelic grandfather mailbox" to visit, this booklet is attached to the "new China stamp catalogue", you can "according to the map", my method is to buy a kind of on the catalogue to draw a tick, to a trip sometimes can be drawn on twenty or thirty ticks, the closer to complete, the less the outline. The J ticket to J111 and the T ticket to T105 recorded in this booklet are only in the early 200s, and it took me about a dozen days off to get it done. At that time, my daughter was four years old, and I took her to the small philatelic market, and soon my wife told me, my daughter said, "Why does my father always give money to others?" It's ridiculous to think about it, this person buys a set of tickets, that person buys a set of tickets, and pays for it more than a dozen times in a row. No wonder some people say that collectors are selfish, and for their own hobbies, let their daughter follow me in the mail market, and now I still feel guilty when I think about it.
In order to facilitate the management of stamp trading, Yuetan Park has opened up a more formal stamp trading market, the ticket is one yuan, there are market administrators, there are fixed shack-style stalls, there are first-come-first-served stalls, and then there are mobile postal dealers who shuttle through the crowd (this kind of people should be more vigilant and do not trade with them). In the most popular years of philatelic fever, the postal market was crowded with people, and it was even difficult to move an inch. I never took my daughter to visit again, even though the Yuetan Post Market was nearly half the way from my home than the South Lishi Road Post Office.
I became a frequent visitor to the Yuetan Post Market, which opened my eyes and increased my postal knowledge. There is a famous saying in the Western philatelic world: "It is better to tell me about stamps than to give me stamps." We have a similar saying: "It is better to give a fish than to give a fish." "The regular postal market is hidden in the dragon and crouching tiger, there are many clever postal merchants, and the business characteristics are also incomparable to the retail market, and there are all kinds of rare stamps here, which is dazzling, and it is simply a folk stamp museum. I also switched from collecting JT tickets at the beginning to thematic philately, slightly widening the distance from "mass philately", and the difficulty of collecting has increased a lot, and the fun is directly proportional to the difficulty, and there is no fun at hand.
I chose the small topic of "Inscription of Words". "Text factory name" is a kind of factory name, the factory that prints stamps prints the name of the factory on the side paper of the whole page of stamps, which is the text factory name. There is only one factory inscription for a full page of stamps, and no more than four, and that's why you rarely encounter a factory inscription when you buy stamps with edge paper. Scarcity is expensive, and the price with the factory inscription is much more expensive.
I have roughly counted that before the completion of the Beijing Stamp Factory, there were more than a dozen kinds of inscriptions on the text of the new Chinese stamps, involving hundreds of stamps. They are: Shanghai Commercial Press, Shanghai No. 1 Printing Factory, Beijing People's Printing House, East China Taxation Bureau Printing House, Sany Printing Company Printing, Dadong Book Company Shanghai Printing House Printing, Beijing Chinese People's Printing House, Guanghua Printing House, Central Trust Bureau Printing Office, Zhonghua Book Company Yongning Printing House, Shanghai People's Printing House, etc.
Sometimes the inscription is printed across two stamps, and such a inscription has a beautiful name - "Riding the sewing inscription", I have a special preference for the inscription of the riding sewing, sometimes even if I buy a heavy weight, I will not hesitate. In the early days of the new Chinese stamps, I was addicted to seeing one and collecting one, seeing two and collecting two. The name of the sewing factory is often torn open and sold by the seller, making it "in a different place", spoiling good things, which is not pity. For example, "Shanghai Printing Factory Printing", a tear, the factory name that becomes this ticket is "Shanghai Printing", that ticket is "Printed by a factory", and the word "brush" in the middle is divided. Ji 17 "The 25th Anniversary of the Founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army" stamps, a set of four, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are the inscriptions of the riding sewing factory, and the first is not, you should pay attention to when collecting tickets.
Factory Ming in a set of more stamps, is not easy to get together, finally get together, the position of the factory name asymmetry is still a troublesome thing. Special 13 "Strive to complete the first five-year construction plan" is a set of 18 sets of large set of stamps, the famous stamp designer Sun Chuanzhe designed, is the "Shanghai Printing Factory" of the sewing factory name, extremely difficult to find, more than 20 years of boating in the sea of mail, only to see once, the opportunity can be missed, at this time my ticket Kung Fu has already been practiced at home, of course, there will be no hesitation.
In the winter of 2000, I sold all the JT tickets in order to scrape together money to buy used magazines at a used bookstore, but I didn't sell a single set of factory tickets. JT tickets can be easily replaced, while factory tickets have little chance of "being lost and regained".
The search for philatelic books and periodicals is also a small topic for me, and I am more proud of the 125 issues of the old "Philately" magazine (January 1955 to June 1966), and the "Quintessence of Philatelic Magazine", "Postal Art Monthly", "Modern Postal Periodical", "Stamp Dictionary" magazine, etc. in the 1940s. Philatelic books include "Treasured Stamp with Value", "Rare Stamp in China", "Sixty Years of Philately" by Jiang Zhifang, "Illustrated Guide to the Survival of the World Examination of Red Printed Small One Yuan" by Huang Guangcheng, and "Tales of the Postal Sea" by Tetsuo. Tetsuo is the pen name of Zheng Jiechu, who in 1945 was a middle school student in Chongqing, and accidentally bought 50 full-page stamps at face value "New York Edition Second Circle Center Inverted" stamps, and his legendary philatelic experience has accompanied him throughout his life.
After 30 years of boating on the sea, now the sail is anchored, and the thoughts are a bit like Li Shangyin's "Gift of Willows", "the bridge is about to be broken, and the embankment is far away".
Text丨Xie Qizhang Editor丨Lu Lina