When was the last time you received something that looked like this?

Receiving anything that is not a bill or advertising is rare enough, but something with an actual stamp on it?!? That’s getting almost short of miraculous. So the other day, when I received a package that was covered in stamps, I experienced an old fashioned kind of joy that I realised I hadn’t felt for years. Seeing so many stamps, all of them familiar, was like taking a little voyage into the past. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of email, and would rather send something electronically if I can avoid snail mail. Which is evidence that, like most people, I am part of the problem, not the solution. Snail mail is becoming increasingly redundant, and in the same way, stamps are seen as cumbersome relics of the past. At the post office now, instead of getting out those delicious sheets of stamps and tearing off the right amount, then finding smaller denomination stamps to make up the correct amount, it’s a no brainer that they just print off a sticky label showing the relevant amount. But it’s not romantic, is it? Soon the post office won’t even keep stamps.

And what of the bound collection of stamps that the post office would release at the end of each year? So much went into the design of the year’s stamps, and it made me glad that so many photographers, graphic designers and artists were getting work that would leave a lasting legacy. If stamps are no longer the currency, then artists and designers have lost another avenue for their work. And I know, I know… other avenues will be created. I should stop sounding like a change-averse dinosaur.

And yet, the charm and romance of the stamp is undeniable.

I remember years ago, when sending gifts to young relatives or friends overseas, I would ask the postal worker to put stamps on the package instead of that soulless and generic sticky label. Because I know that children love getting packages from overseas, and the pleasure is intensified when the stamps are strange and exotic. After the package has been opened, they seem too precious to throw away.

That was how I felt receiving this package that was wallpapered in stamps. I just can’t bring myself to bin it. I mean, who can throw Dame Nellie Melba, Toni Collette as Muriel, and a couple of furry marsupials in the bin without a pang to the heart?

So I think I will need to put this somewhere with other keepsakes. How long before stamps become the stuff of collectors’ stalls and will no longer be useful except as  a reminder of how things used to be? Parents growing bric-a-brac shops will pause for a moment when their child points to the pretty, paper rectangles with lacy edges and asks, ‘What are these?’

How to explain the stamp in a digital world… Perhaps it would be harder than we think.