A Classic Car Collection for the Price of Postage Stamps

Many car lovers will find this hard to believe, but stamp collecting (not car collecting) is the most popular hobby in the world. However, I would think many car collectors reading this may also have a passion for stamps as a leisure time interest of choice. Such collectors usually have little or no interest in coins; baseball cards, comic books, Barbie Dolls; political campaign buttons; classic cars; et al. Yet of all the collectibles just mentioned, many automotive enthusiasts may have come to have an interest in stamp collecting in a roundabout way by being exposed to some 'dream car' on a postage stamp!

A quick examination of the numerous automobiles depicted on stamps includes: antique; classics; exotics; sports cars; muscle and performance cars; and even an occasional every day daily driver.

In fact the relationship between cars and stamps goes all the way back to the turn of the last century when the first automobile appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1901. Quite a remarkable distinction when you consider how few cars there were at the time.

Before we get too deep into this, and since there are no images included with articles on this site, I point out that every stamp mentioned showing a car on it can be found via a Google image search.

That first auto-on-a-stamp was an electric car shown on one of the commemorative 1901 Pan-American Exposition Stamps. It's a four cent stamp with the Capitol Dome in the background. There has been some debate as to whether this stamp was the first U.S. stamp to depict a living person. But there is no doubt that this was the first stamp ever to depict an automobile. In the decades which followed, myriad cars have graced stamps all over the world.

Car enthusiasts who collect stamps might well be called "fringe" collectors by many in the stamp collecting hobby. Yes, they have some stamps, perhaps are even working on completing a series. But chances are their love of automobiles equaled, or surpassed, their devotion to philately back when gasoline was under $1 a gallon.