Udupi: National Award-winning collections of postcards and stamps on different themes were exhibited at the Nutana Ravindra Mantapa on MGM College campus. Old students of MGM College, Ammunje Nagendra Nayak and Vishwesh K, displayed rare collections of stamps and postcards of 127 countries.

The exhibition included 1500 wonderful postcards and more than 100 stamps on different themes. All the postcards are used already for communicating purpose. On the occasion there were also  200 Indian coins exhibited.

Postal cards

The highlight of the exhibition were seed based post cards from Melbourne, in the year 2012, Australia released special and innovative postcards, which is made from seeds. These postcards are unique in that after usage, if  the  postcard  is kept in water for 2 days and later buried in mud turns into a plant.

Post cards with a variety of fragrances, which include fragrances of chocolates, jasmine, rose, sandalwood etc were another highlight. 3D post cards with 3D images on them, wooden postcards from Taiwan, Metal post cards from USA, Plastic post cards, CD and DVD formed post cards were also displayed. Post cards with music inside were also included in the exhibition.

Themes of the postcards included life, 7 wonders of nature, 7 wonders of the world, personalised cards, African mammals, Birds, Primates, Flowers, black and white themes, maps, flags, technology based cards, airline themes, airport, clock towers of the world, capital cities of various countries, fireworks etc.  Single topic themes were also displayed like tiger, monkey owl and so on.

Post cards on Global warming gave a message to all to have a clean environment. They also managed to display specimens of the postcards in the exhibition.

Ammunje Nagendra Nayak, philatelist said that the general perception regarding stamp collection is that, philatelists remove the stamps from post cards,  and stick it in the collection sheet. This is completely a wrong procedure, he said, as “plucking stamps from postcard reduces its value. Every stamp has postal seal on it which provides authenticity to the post card. Therefore the post card, inland letter and register cards should be preserved in their original form”.

“Most of my collections are from pen pals. Recently, the advent of internet communication has helped me to augment my collection. I also depend on my relatives who go for trips aboard”. 
UNESCO supports 1105 cultural heritage sites of which I have used 625 sites for my collection.

Stamps

Personalised stamps were one of the major attractions of the stamp exhibition. One can avail of this stamp with an application and some additional charges at the post office.

The exhibition displayed a registered letter which existed years ago, Special covers, Inland letter, and miniature sheets were also included in the displays.

The postal department has, in order to attract tourists and for study purpose, has introduced the pictorial stamp collection in each post office. These stamps contain images of famous tourist places connected with the specific city in which they are sold. For instance in  Udupi, stamps with the images of Sri Krishna are sold while in Kollur, stamps with the famous temple’s images are sold and in Karkala stamps with the image of the Gomata are put on sale. Likewise,  a pictorial stamp on St. Mary’s Island for Malpe post office and Kathale Basadi for Barkoor Post office will be released soon said Vishwesh.K.

He said stamp collection is not just limited to collecting stamps but based on themes every small single postal stationeries could be collected and used from any postal department worldwide.

To create interest in stamp collections or to give knowledge about theme based stamp collection for the children, alphabetic stamps were displayed.  Languages included Kannada, Hindi and Telugu.

Coins

While explaining the concept of the exhibition of coins in detail, Vishwesh K said “every coin has a small dot, star, and diamond shape in it underneath the value number referred, which indicate the place where the coin is minted. He added that dot / circle  suggests tat the coin is from Noida, star from Hyderabad, diamond from Mumbai. However a few coins will not have any symbols on it, which means it is from Kolkatta”.