Well, I finally bit the bullet and joined SOR! I know some of you from other boards, past or present, and there's lots of new folks to meet on here, too!
I've been reading the discussion threads for a few months now -- I kept trying to "reply", and since I couldn't, I figured it was time to take the plunge!
I've been a collector for more than 25 years, focusing mostly on Japan, but certainly enjoying a lot of little diverse collecting areas as well. I'm now beginning the long, slow process of downsizing what I've got, with the idea of concentrating on a few small areas.
I'm no expert, but will certainly try to help answer questions about Japan and related areas as they come along.
Happy 2014 everyone!
-- Dave
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
Hi Dave!! Great to see you here. Your expertise on Japan issues will be greatly appreciated. My only regret is that I didn't steal your great handle, Philatarium, when I joined!
Great to see so many familiar names already -- Peter, Ross, Doug, Nigel, for starters.
And Mike: thanks for the encouragement! This looks like a good place, and I've been very impressed with the system/technical capabilities of SOR, including the new approval book setup. A lot of hard work clearly went in to all of this!
Kudos to all!
-- Dave
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
Great question, Sally! No one has ever asked about this before!
The "philatarium" is of course a coined word, and means to me the stamp room and reference library that, at least in my case, unfortunately exists only in my mind.
For inspiration, I like the look of old, grand libraries, and the avatar is a cropped portion of an old drawing of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. (Opened in 1602 -- still kicking today: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk )
Here's the full image:
That's some of the Philatarium staff you see there. (The coffee bar is back by the window.)
Thanks again for asking!
-- Dave
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
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What an awesome picture. That's the closest thing to heaven that I can imagine. I would never want to leave.
Welcome :-)
Kelly
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Dave, I've appropriated your term to describe my perpetually-under-construction stamp room. What amuses me is that I know it is a term you coined, and a fine one at that; however, when I tell people "I'm going to put the philatarium for my stamps in that room" they nod and go "Oh, good idea" as if they've heard that word before.
I like it because it is very "Latin" sounding; how would you say stamp room in Japanese though?
Peter: When I was coming up with the word, I debated between "philatarium" and "philatorium". I make the final choice purely by what it sounded like, rather than looking up the meanings of the suffixes. (By the way, I just tried to Google the meanings of "-arium" and "-orium", and couldn't really find anything helpful. Unfortunately, I don't have a good printed dictionary handy, where this ought to be easy to determine. And where's the OED when you need one?!)
I thought "-arium" sounded more like a big room where something took place, whereas "-orium" sounded like a big building where something occurred. It sounded kind of strange even to me in the beginning, but I got used to it and just kept using it as my username in the stamp world.
As for what this would be called in Japanese, it would just be a guess on my part, but here goes ...
There could be at least two possible routes to the term. The native Japanese word for room is pronounced "heya". And the Japanese pronunciation for the Chinese word for room, when room is the final character in a compound describing a particular room (like, in English, say, "bedroom"), is "shitsu".
Postage stamp is "yuubin kitte", and means something like "postal cut". So, I could imagine this term being (and I'm reaching here) is "yuubin kitte no heya" (where "no" behaves like a possessive "'s") -- "postage stamp room" -- or else something like "yuubin-shitsu" -- "postal room".
I'm sure neither would make sense to a native Japanese speaker, in the same way that "philatarium" doesn't really make sense in English, but is at least a bit philatelically evocative.
I can see that the next time I get a chance to speak with a collector who's a native speaker of Japanese, I should speculate with him/her about this. (Probably best conducted over a couple of drinks!)
-- Dave
(Note: I tried to write the words in Japanese, too, but they didn't show up correctly, so I've omitted them for now.)
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
Thanks for the whole picture.....I like it even more now. And the word "Philatarium", I cannot wait to use it like Peter does and see what kind of reaction I get. Hope you don't mind others using it.......