COURTNEY BURKE
RHINOCEROS stamps play a big part in Riverland Philatelic Society president Chris George’s extensive collection.
Mr George, a member of the society since the millennium, was unable to say what the most valuable stamp in his collection was – for security related reasons – but revealed that his oldest stamp is South Australia and dates back to 1860.
“It’s nothing financial, it’s just good fun,” he said.
While Mr George has a small variety of American stamps, he generally only collects Australian or rhinoceros stamps and has been collecting them since he was 10 years old.
“Young boys like to collect things,” he said.
The Riverland Philatelic Society has been around for more than 60 years and currently has approximately 10 members.
“You aim to have a complete collection of Australian stamps,” Mr George said.
“We collect mint stamps which are unused stamps and people also collect used ones – so you have two options or both.
“We used to have an auction of these things and they went to the highest bidder, now we just do a swap,” he said.
Mr George said that while he has no plans to sell his collection, he is unsure of their fate once eventually passed down to his children.
“It’s a little bit of problem actually because we collected stamps but our kids aren’t particularly interested in it,” he said.
“They’ll probably end up with a problem, but they can worry about that.”