Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles! ... Ten thousand thundering typhoons!... Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, Thompson and Thomson..... A mention of any of these character names, one immediately associates it with the comic series called The Adventures of Tintin.
As a young reader, I was introduced to these series (along with Asterix) by my childhood friend, Anirudh, who had a good collection of these comics. Reading these comic series always made me laugh and in 2001, when I was diagnosed and treated for Malaria (which almost took my life if not for a timely treatment) these helped me while away the time in the hospital and also recuperating too.
When I first started Postcrossing in 2015, I was part of an exhibition in May 2016 and met many Postcrossers with whom one made some good friends. Som, one of the guys whom I met, is a fantastic and an avid stamp collector. He once showed a portion of his vast collection, and in that I saw a couple of Tintin stamps. Like the Asterix set, I was taken to it. As I was doing a bit of some search on these stamps, saw that there are several more of these released by very few countries.
As luck would have had it, Som had the one below for sale and I immediately grabbed it. As they say, a journey of thousands stamps begins with the first stamp, I guess this started the collection of another new theme - Tintin.
Early 2017, WOPA - World Online Philatelic Agency, an online site which has collaborated with several countries to help collectors (like me) to purchase postage stamps and other collectibles from various countries from one single site through a single currency, had come out with an unique offer. For £28.00 (approx), they were having a few Tintin stamps for sale. This site was recommended to me by Som, again. Finally after much deliberation, I finally decided to plunge and go for it.
What arrived a couple of weeks later, blew my mind as I never thought such beautiful stamps existed! I was glad that I made the right decision then. These stamps are mostly from Belgium.
I then started looking for more of these Tintin related stamps and one day, I happened to have a swap with a wonderful Belgian lady. The swap was for Belgian Europa 2017 stamp with that of a Poona Horse stamp (from India, of course). As usual, by a force of habit, I enclosed a small letter to her mentioning my philatelic interests, that included Tintin. A few weeks later I was surprised to her letter to me with a few of the older Europa Belgian stamps and along with that was these 2 beautiful stamps. I was delighted as I never expected someone to actually read my letter carefully and send something back to me!
At the end, I'm pretty pleased as a punch that my Tintin thematic collection is slowly growing and I hope to exhibit at least one frame of these stamps soon.
Vinay G
30-11-2017
1120 hrs IST
As a young reader, I was introduced to these series (along with Asterix) by my childhood friend, Anirudh, who had a good collection of these comics. Reading these comic series always made me laugh and in 2001, when I was diagnosed and treated for Malaria (which almost took my life if not for a timely treatment) these helped me while away the time in the hospital and also recuperating too.
When I first started Postcrossing in 2015, I was part of an exhibition in May 2016 and met many Postcrossers with whom one made some good friends. Som, one of the guys whom I met, is a fantastic and an avid stamp collector. He once showed a portion of his vast collection, and in that I saw a couple of Tintin stamps. Like the Asterix set, I was taken to it. As I was doing a bit of some search on these stamps, saw that there are several more of these released by very few countries.
As luck would have had it, Som had the one below for sale and I immediately grabbed it. As they say, a journey of thousands stamps begins with the first stamp, I guess this started the collection of another new theme - Tintin.
Early 2017, WOPA - World Online Philatelic Agency, an online site which has collaborated with several countries to help collectors (like me) to purchase postage stamps and other collectibles from various countries from one single site through a single currency, had come out with an unique offer. For £28.00 (approx), they were having a few Tintin stamps for sale. This site was recommended to me by Som, again. Finally after much deliberation, I finally decided to plunge and go for it.
What arrived a couple of weeks later, blew my mind as I never thought such beautiful stamps existed! I was glad that I made the right decision then. These stamps are mostly from Belgium.
I then started looking for more of these Tintin related stamps and one day, I happened to have a swap with a wonderful Belgian lady. The swap was for Belgian Europa 2017 stamp with that of a Poona Horse stamp (from India, of course). As usual, by a force of habit, I enclosed a small letter to her mentioning my philatelic interests, that included Tintin. A few weeks later I was surprised to her letter to me with a few of the older Europa Belgian stamps and along with that was these 2 beautiful stamps. I was delighted as I never expected someone to actually read my letter carefully and send something back to me!
At the end, I'm pretty pleased as a punch that my Tintin thematic collection is slowly growing and I hope to exhibit at least one frame of these stamps soon.
Vinay G
30-11-2017
1120 hrs IST
