Septuagenarian’s mission to collect rare stamps

Muhammad Shafiq has been collecting rare stamps, and currency since he was a matric student

ISLAMABAD: Some people live their entire lives not knowing what they had lived for. For others, time goes by in an instant in pursuit of their passions.

Such is the story of 70-year-old Muhammad Shafiq from Islamabad who has collected hundreds of rare stamps and coins over the past 50 years.

Shafiq said that he was more than passionate about collecting these little windows of history.



The 70-year-old said that his passion began in 1960 when a he was a student of matric when you could actually hold a ‘paisa’ and an anna.

By far, however, his passion is rooted in stamps, of which he has some 3,000.

Shafiq said that he was blessed with having friends living in different parts of the world. Trying to communicate in an era when there was no email, Skype, or instant messengers and phone calls were not as cheap, letters were the only ready medium to communicate between friends.

“I used to write them (friends living abroad) letters,” Shafiq said. “Whenever a letter came in reply, I used to pick the stamps from the envelopes and saved it.”

“Nations who forget their history could never succeed,” he said. This practice gradually resulted in accumulating a large collection of stamps. Shafiq added that apart from collecting regular stamps, he also had a wide collection of stamps which were released to commemorate special and historical occasions such as the first stamp issued by the government in 1947, the one released to mark Universal Children’s Day in 1973 , the 38th  independence day of Pakistan , the silver jubilee of the Pakistan Television Network, the independence movement, triangular tickets, fourth South Asian Federation (SAF) games 1989, Seoul Olympics 1988 along with memorial stamps of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the Shah of Iran.

Continuing with his passion, Shafiq says he often visits the website of the Pakistan Post seeking information regarding the release of any new memorial stamp.

Along with stamps, he also started collecting currency — whether coins or banknotes — and amassed a collection of some 2,000 coins and 200 different types of currency notes.

One of his most prized possession was a silver coin from 1889 for a rupee which had been issued by the British Empire. Moreover, he had coins dating back to 1948 including a 2 annas (do-annay) from 1958 and an anna from 1953 apart from one of the very first coins issued after the creation of Pakistan, thin, circular coin in a doughnut shape for a single paisa from 1949.



Shafiq said that he regularly travelled to expand his collection, visiting Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan and going to foreign destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This had yielded him a collection of stamps, coins and currency from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Singapore, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United States of America, Switzerland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Denmark, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Malaysia, Palestine, Zimbabwe and Israel.

“Sometimes my limited resources became a hurdle in pursuing my passion,” he conceded, adding that no price could be attached to the pursuit of a passion.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2019.