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What better way for a youngster to learn about geography, nations and famous people of the world, royalty, sports, space events, plants and animals than to find them all depicted on postage stamps. Far off places like Iceland, Falkland Islands, Sri Lanka and Ivory Coast suddenly become real places, where real people live and write letters, placing stamps of their country on their mail envelopes. One also learns that in addition to dollars and cents, other countries use pesos, marks, euros, francs, centimes, centavos, pounds and rubles for their own currencies. The stamp-collecting hobby teaches all of these things.
The WESTPEX Youth and Beginner Area have numerous activities to get one started in this time-honored hobby. There are bins of stamps, U.S. and foreign that one may pick through to find stamps of interest. Special games have been created, allowing one to search for particular stamps to match the game. Fun worksheets, like crosswords, matching games, coloring, are available.
Starter kits consisting of albums and tongs along with starter packets of stamps and instructions of how-to collect, mount, and save stamps have been designed for the young beginner stamp collector.
The field of collecting stamps on their original envelopes, called covers, is postal history. A wide assortment of U.S. and foreign covers are available to examine and to select to keep.
There are drawings every day for additional prizes of 50 U.S. and 50 foreign stamp packets for the children. On Sunday there is a Grand Drawing for a first prize of 5000 stamps, a second prize of 2000 stamps, and a third prize of 1000 stamps. Kids just need to come to the Youth Area and sign up. Prizes are mailed if winner is not present at the show for the drawings.
A special Boy Scout merit badge program is held on Sunday. A local Scout Master, an avid stamp collector, leads this program. Stamp collecting basics are covered along with the necessary requirements for the merit badge.
Adult volunteers to help in the Youth Area are always welcome. The fun and joy of seeing young people get excited about collecting stamps becomes a memorable reward. Donations of stamps and supplies for the youth program are welcome and acknowledged with a receipt from WESTPEX, Inc. a 501c3 non-profit organization devoted to promoting the hobby of stamp collecting and philately.
For more information, contact Gary Jensen or Judy Jarvis on the WESTPEX website contact page.
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