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Coming in from outside.

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries.

Scott English wasn't a stamp collector and didn't know much about stamp collecting when
he became executive director of the American Philatelic Society two years ago. That's
the biggest stamp collecting organization in the U-S. His previous career was
behind-the-scenes in politics. Since becoming A-P-S executive director, he's traveled
all over the country to get to know the people who collect stamps.

"It's an incredibly open community of people who want to share everything they know about
stamps with you the minute you meet them, and you get to hear a lot of great personal
stories that way."

LdeV: "How has your time in politics helped you in this job?"

SE: "Well, I mean, you always have to have diplomacy and the ability to do outreach, and
that's what drove me to do some aggressive outreach with collectors on the road."

LdeV: "Are there new skills you had to learn because this is different than politics?"

SE: "Well, you have to understand the language of the collectors, so you have to pick up
how you talk about a stamp, describe a stamp, understanding what it takes when they're
evaluating the value of a stamp, so you can be sensitive to what they're doing."

LdeV: "What's the most amazing thing you've learned about stamp collecting, coming in from
the outside?"

SE: "It's that every collection is a perfect reflection of the individual who does it,
so if you're passionate about a certain subject area or country, then your collection really
does reflect it. So if you listen carefully to a collector talking about what they have,
then you're learning a lot about them."

We'll talk more with Scott in a future report.

I’m Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more on stamps and stamp collecting,
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com.

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