Welcome to A Stamp A Day, a blog on which I highlight a different stamp from my collection on each and every day. More than 400 different stamp-issuing entities, past and present, are represented — along with the occasional local post or fantasy issue — and holiday or commemorative dates as well as topicals are highlighted, matching stamps with the subject matter portrayed thereupon.
As for myself, my name is Mark Joseph Jochim and I have collected stamps off and on for more than forty years. I grew up in the United States but relocated to southern Thailand in late 2004. My collections while living in the States centered around the classic period of 1840-1940 Great Britain and the United States. I also had a few other country collections, namely Åland, the Faroe Islands, and Pitcairn Island.
Since my move to Thailand, I have dabbled in Thai stamps but my main concentration at the moment is what I call “Stamps From (Almost) Everywhere”. I had set out with a printed “A Stamp From Everywhere” album but quickly realized that the most difficult part was choosing just ONE stamp to include from each place. I began designing my own album pages to include a sampling of available issues from each stamp issuer, which makes for nicer-appearing pages and allows me to show different eras, etc.
I write about these collections on a blog I call Philatelic Pursuits but found that my writings were becoming rather sporadic. My job as a teacher intrudes much of the time and I often have to force myself to decide on something to write. That is why, at the beginning of July 2016, I started the A Stamp A Day blog. The idea was to go back to the single stamp from each place format with the daily choice limited to those stamps already in my collection. It is a great motivator to always knew what the next day’s entry would be about as I worked alphabetically through each using entity.
One note: I tend to prefer the terms “stamp issuer” or “issuing entity” as many stamps have been released by organizations (the United Nations, for example), occupying forces (Russian Army of the North, to name one), etc. I use the term “countries” interchangeably when it’s clear I’m referring to a group rather than an individual issuer.
Initially, A Stamp A Day featured very brief descriptions but the entries kept getting more detailed. I love doing the research.
While I don’t yet have a stamp from everywhere (and some I will never obtain due to limited finances or excessive elusiveness), I am working on it. I finished blogging the “Z” entities in February 2018. Since then, most entries have tried to commemorate various holidays or event anniversaries; as long as I have a matching stamp, I can write about it. On those days when I cannot match a stamp, I pick one more or less at random resulting in “random stamp days”. Whenever I obtain a “new” issuing entity for my collection, an issuer profile is blogged (at the time of this page update in September 2018, the most recent of these is the Free City of Danzig).
I hope you enjoy reading A Stamp A Day as much as I enjoy writing it.
Happy Collecting!
—Mark Joseph Jochim
Phuket, Thailand
29 September 2018
A Stamp A Day 