I remember when stamp collecting was used as a cliched shorthand for dull, boring, and obsessive.
In fact, the history of philately has plenty of room for big personalities.
And the greatest stamp collectors in history include some extremely notable figures.
With achievements - alongside outstanding stamp collections - that most of us can only dream of.
So, when you pick up your tweezers, browse a stamp collecting site, or look for a gift for a stamp collector, remember what wonderful company you're in.
Because collecting stamps is collecting, categorising, organising and understanding history itself.
No wonder these 12 collectors were so enthralled by it.
1 - King George V - the 2d blue king
George V loved stamps so much he'd sometimes pinch them from his own printers.
No modern survey of stamp collecting is complete without the UK’s Royal Philatelic Collection.
It is the most complete British and British Imperial collection in existence.
Its value has been estimated at £100 million.
There’s been talk of making it more available to the nation, or even nationalising it.
The first stamps were adorned with Queen Victoria’s profile, and her son Alfred was the royal family’s first committed collector.
He sold his albums to his older brother, who became Edward VII, who passed them on to his son, George V, who made the collection an internationally important treasure.
An unkind historian once wrote that the quiet, private royal wasn’t good for much beyond his stamps.
And George wasn’t above taking advantage of his position to get his hands on proofs and rarities.
His legitimate purchases could also raise eyebrows. In 1904, the £1,450 sale of a Mauritius two pence blue outraged one courtier, who told the king about the extravagance of some “damned fool”. “Yes,” the king replied, “I was that damned fool!"
His collection filled 328 albums, and a full-time philatelist is still on the royal family’s staff.
Should the collection ever be sold it will turn the world stamp market upside down.
His own reign - as you would expect - produced some very fine stamps, in which he took a keen interest.
The Seahorses series is among the most popular and collectible of George V issues and the 1935 Jubilee issue Prussian Blue surely one of the prettiest British stamps ever created.
2 - John Bourke - the pre-stamp stamp collector
You can see Bourke's collections today in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.
One way to get into stamp collecting is through your work.
So John Bourke, “Receiver General of the Stamps Duties” for Ireland, had a head start.
It may surprise you to learn that the man considered the world’s first stamp collector was long dead by the time the first Penny Black was stuck on an envelope.
Bourke's collection was started and finished in 1774.
His “collection of impressions of Irish stamps from £6 to one halfpenny, made on vellum” is now a treasured public document at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin and acknowledged as the world’s oldest stamp collection - even if it contains not a single example of what most people today consider a stamp.
3 - John Edward Gray - the first proper stamp collector
Gray played a role in the birth of the modern stamp, and bought some of the first to keep forever.
Like Bourke, Gray was professionally interested in stamps.
In fact, he tried to invent them.
Gray’s proposals for postal reform were a foundation on which Rowland Hill built.
When Hill’s Penny Blacks were released Gray went out and bought a block of four to keep.
And, that makes him a very good contender to be the world’s first collector.
He loved classifying and ordering things. In his day-job as keeper of zoology for the British Museum he described many newly discovered species.
And he published some of the world’s first stamp catalogues to celebrate his other great obsession, for which he is now probably more famous.
4 - Count Philipp la Renotiere von Ferrary - the market maker
Forgers made fakes aimed directly at the eyes and pockets of Philipp von Ferrary.
There were times when Count Philipp wasn’t just a player in the European stamp scene, he pretty much was the European stamp market.
Von Ferrary was an obsessed and obsessive collector with the bonus of a massive inheritance to get him started. He wasn't an investor, he bought for the thrill of it, and to preserve the greatest pieces for posterity. He wanted the crown jewels and would do anything to get them.
Given enough time, he probably would have got through the 120 million francs his parents left him.
Stanley Gibbons reported that the Count was spending up to £4,000 a year with them - that’s more than £500,000 in today’s money.
Among the many shining lights of his collection, (including the Swedish Treskilling Yellow, and 1856 British Guiana 1c Magenta) the only example of a cover with both values of Mauritius "Post Office" stamps has been called the greatest item in the history of stamp collecting.
Ferrary was such an important buyer that fakes specifically aimed at him are a recognised type of stamp forgery.
His collection was probably the greatest ever. He wanted to keep it together, willing it to the German state. But history was against him, and when he died, it was seized and split up by the French state and sold.
The money went towards Germany’s bills for World War I war reparations and the resulting sales helped build many other major collections.
A small tragedy in a world that was ripped apart by a much larger one.
5 - Thomas Keay Tapling - the complete collector
Tapling died tragically young, but perhaps that preserved his mighty collection.
Cricketer, stamp collector, Conservative MP... you might invent Tapling’s biography as a cliche of a Victorian English gentleman.
He had means too, and was able to indulge in his passion for stamps by buying up many other complete collections.
But perhaps most important is his early death.
Because it might be that - at the age of just 35 in 1891 - that means his collection was never split.
Instead of selling it off, he willed it to the British Museum. It’s now in the British Library, with parts of it on permanent display.
Tapling’s collection was global in scope and contains a huge number of sought-after rarities that will now never come onto the private market. It’s believed it includes almost every stamp issued until 1889: an extraordinary collecting achievement.
It is usually valued at £10 million, but that may be a huge underestimate.
It contains the 1854 4 annas blue and pale red, with error head inverted - a unique example, and the first stamps from Europe: the Zurich 4 and 6.
A fine memorial for such a short life.
6 - Arthur Hind - the industrialist
Hind bought with the power of his business behind him.
Waiting to pounce as the von Ferrary collections went up for auction was Arthur Hind.
Hind was an American (though born in the UK) whose business in upholstery boomed alongside the burgeoning US car market.
What his company made, Hind spent on stamps.
At the Ferrary sale Hind sailed off with the British Guiana 1c Magenta (paying a then world record price) and a load of very fine and rare US stamps.
He was so keen to own the only British Guiana 1c Magenta that he may have bought both known copies and destroyed one, according to one source.
He also later owned the Bordeaux Letter, Ferrary’s unique Mauritius cover.
And these weren’t even his specialism. He focussed most on American stamps.
Hind's collection didn’t survive his death. His American stamps were sold in 1933 (for what is around $21 million in today’s money) before his nephew secured the rest of them, which he brought to England.
7 - Benjamin K Miller - the older collector
A late-comer to collecting, Miller's first buy was astute: the Inverted Jenny.
The Benjamin Miller Collection is a landmark, and more so than Mr Miller, who among our collectors stands out for his relatively ordinary life.
He started collecting late in life, as a 61-year-old, early in the 20th century, after a career in law in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
All very dull really.
But, from that start Benjamin put together what has been recognised as the first ever “complete collection” of US stamps.
Now, it probably wasn’t quite that - though he may have managed a complete set to 1925 according to some - but it was extremely close and contains some extraordinary rarities, including the Z Grill 1 cent stamp, of which there are only two known examples. A stamp that many on our list have chased.
His first serious purchase was a 1918 Inverted Jenny. He was able to buy the stamp essentially new for a relatively cheap price by today’s standards. An example of the US’s most famous error stamp recently sold at auction for over $2 million.
There’s no doubting his dedication because just a few years later he had pretty much completed the Scott catalogue collection of US stamps.
On his death in 1928 (he collected for just a decade) Miller donated his collection to the New York Public Library.
It is known as the Crown Jewels of American stamp collecting, and has attracted millions of visitors and a few thieves, whose successful raid in 1977 (153 stamps were stolen - only 81 ever recovered) saw it put behind closed doors again.
8 - Robert Zoellner - the investor collector
The Zoellner Art Centre at Lehigh University is where some of Zoellner's money went. And a lot went into stamps.
Behind Miller comes Zoellner, who died in 2014.
Zoellner came from a fairly prosperous middle class background, but became rich through working in investment.
He gave away a lot of cash to good causes, including education, and to his personal interests - there’s a model railway show in his name in New York. And he spent a lot on stamps.
By 1985 he had the cash and time to turn a childhood interest into a world-class collection that was the second complete US set after Miller’s. It was a task he set out to complete after consulting with an auctioneer who told him it was probably possible to achieve.
He spent a fortune on doing it - a $418,000 record for a 1c Z Grill in 1986 - but completed the set with the gift from a friend of a 30c grey black from 1873.
When his collection was sold off, long before his death, it required a 391-page catalogue.
And it was shown to be a great investment. That Z Grill nearly doubled in value to $935,000.
9 - Bill H Gross - the billionaire philanthropist collector
They called him the Bond King, and he knew how to buy and sell.
Bill Gross could buy anything. His investment company is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
And he bought - and then sold - a lot of stamps.
Gross is the third man to complete a 19th-century US collection.
He paid nearly $3 million for a whole block of Inverted Jennys, just to trade them away for that Z Grill (the one Zoellner sold) to complete his selection.
That’s dedication.
From around 2018 he started to sell off his collections, largely to the benefit of charities such as Medecins Sans Frontieres.
These sales have helped to put a figure on the value of what he assembled - $26 million for his non US collections, then $10 million in a single day for just the first part of his American collection.
One of the beneficiaries of the sales was the Smithsonian, where you can now go to the National Postal Museum's William H. Gross Stamp Gallery and see the world’s largest stamp museum.
So, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Bill and his collection.
10 - Warren Buffett - the passion collector
Warren Buffett, true to form, happily chatting stamps at a philately show in 2019.
Warren Buffett is the go-to name for investment advice.
And he’s a stamp collector.
Though, it’s not something he’s used his enormous wealth to pursue, and one of his most famous stamp buys became a big investment failure for him.
“It’s a great, great, great hobby,” he told Linn’s Stamp News in 2019.
He revealed that a childhood hobby led him to try to collect the “big blue” Scott international album.
He even ran a stamp business for a while, advertising Buffett’s Approval Service to collectors while he was still a teenager.
He’s hung on to the blue album, and a decent sized set of first-day covers too.
His big attempt at stamp investments fell flat though. He thought that a 1954 US 4c Airmail stamp was attractive enough to become a collectible. Knowing it was soon to be withdrawn promised to add scarcity to the mix, and so Buffett set out to try to buy as many as he could to corner the market.
He ended up - with a friend - buying around 400,000 stamps for $16,000 (around $100,000 today).
And he was wrong.
The Blue Eagle never took off as a collectible stamp.
He sold his Blue Eagles at a loss and today rarely offers investment advice that strays outside his core interest in equities.
You can now buy stamps with Buffett’s own face on them, courtesy of his Berkshire Hathaway investment company, and you can pick up Blue Eagles being sold on the novelty connection with his name.
Like Gross, Buffett could have bought up any number of the world’s greatest stamps. But he didn’t, while still getting pleasure out of the collection he did assemble.
There may be a lesson there. And even if he got his one big bet wrong, from a young age Buffett knew that stamps had investment - and rewarding personal - potential.
11 - John Du Pont - the murderer collector
Du Pont went off the rails badly.
The first word in Du Pont’s biography is usually “murderer”.
He died in prison in 2010 while serving 30 years for shooting a wrestler named Dave Schultz dead. Reportedly, Du Pont was still bidding to add to his beloved stamp collection from behind bars.
Unusually, the death of a prisoner resulted in a world-record stamp auction, as Du Pont’s British Guiana 1856 1c Magenta was sold.
It made 10 times the $935,000 he’d paid for it in 1980 and set a $9.5 million record at the 2014 auction.
You’re spot on if you’ve clocked the Du Pont name. John was heir to the Teflon fortune.
Maybe that didn’t suit him. He had varied interests, alongside stamps he loved nature and sport - particularly wrestling. Schultz was a coach on his private team.
The reasons for shooting Schultz never became completely clear, though Du Pont’s defence was that he was mentally incapable of being held responsible.
He was certainly a troubled man. He reportedly lost his testicles after a horse riding accident as a 30-year-old, and family and friends had become concerned about his behaviour long before the murder.
He was also a talented philatelist, and even won an international award for one of his displays.
12 - Catherine Manning - the first lady of stamp collecting
The keeper of the nation's stamps, with a stamp collecting POTUS as her friend.
Let’s finish on a high note, and with our first and only woman collector.
Catherine Manning was a professional philatelist - a job many of us dream of.
She had responsibility for the US’s “national stamp collection” from 1922 to 1951 and was a female pioneer at the Smithsonian where it is kept.
She was the first woman elected to an office in the American Philatelic Society and is now in their hall of fame.
An enthusiastic academic of philately, she wrote widely on stamps alongside her role organising one of the world’s greatest stamp collections.
President Roosevelt - also a well-known stamp collector - invited Manning to visit him at the White House many times.
Her collections were donated to the National Postal Museum. Fittingly, her own stamp collections included a focus on women on stamps.
Who would you add?
There are many more famous philatelists we could have included in this list.
Both John Lennon and Freddie Mercury spent time stamp collecting.
And there are any number of distinguished pioneers to consider. Do you know who invented the term "philately"? Georges Herpin, the great French collector who could easily be added to this list, alongside Frederick Philbrick, who bought Herpin's collection.
Chinese stamps have been a huge boom market - but who is the Chinese Count von Ferrary?
