Trips back to New Ulm over the last few years have given Joel the chance to reconnect with his stamp collecting “roots.” Inheriting his grandfather’s collection meant bring multiple books, bags and boxes of stamps back to Utah. Many of the books had handmade leather covers (Joel’s grandfather was a cobbler) and handmade stock pages. This is definitely a long-term commitment as it will take YEARS to sort through the thousands of stamps, week out the inferior/duplicates and reassemble the collections.

Joel has found several avenues to donate the excess stamps – some through a local stamp club, some through a potential online connection (turned out to be a scam) and we took some south with us to donate to the US Postal History Museum in Tucson. A bit disappointing in that the Museum was not open due to the pandemic, but Joel was able to drop some off for the curator and received a “receipt” of sorts for his effort- he donated close to 20,000 stamps! Glad that I was not on the equivalency team that figured that math out!