During the 1980s my sister used to send me First Day Covers from the Post Office near her office. Every couple of months, I’d eagerly await the coming of the latest set of stamps my sister had graciously affixed to the First Day Cover envelope during her lunch break. In those days, Great Britain’s Royal Mail probably issued about 6 or 7 sets of commemorative stamps each year. My sister moved country and I eventually found other interests outside of stamp collecting.

Until…

I started thinking about those First Day Covers and looked on eBay to see if anybody had them for sale. On eBay, there are lots and lots of First-day Covers. Only the First Day Covers in pristine condition, with a minimal address label, seem to have any value. The rest, well they are available for much less than it cost to buy them all those years ago. In the end, I bought several sets of FDCs covering the whole decade of the 1980s that has probably cost me less than £20. The FDC album to keep them in cost me more.

So, after I’d bought my FDCs, I decide I wanted a Penny Black and a Two Penny Blue. So I bought those from eBay. They are not perfect examples, but good enough for me. They are the two stamps, that I wanted to own since I was 9 or 10 years of age.

When I had those, I wanted to see if I could find a complete album of 1980s stamps. I looked on eBay and found a seller who was selling a nearly complete set of stamps from the reign of Queen Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2004. That was three Lighthouse albums – 1952-1970, 1971 – 1989 and 1990 – 2004. Apart from the phosphor issues in the 1960s, some Wilding’s watermark variations and post-1978 Machins and parcel stamps, the collection was complete. Then, I started thinking about extending my collection all the way back to 1840 onwards. I looked on Youtube and found @johncollectsstamps – He’s a British collector who specialises in Great British stamps and has a very impressive and beautiful collection. Watching John’s video inspired me to get a stock book and start looking on eBay for some partial collections of older British stamps.

That was the start of my journey, I’ve made a video about the beginning of my collection and there are a few more videos after this.