2017-11-16 Thu

44-year-old C Tamilvanan from Gandhi Nagar, Vellore has a collection of a whopping 59,671 postal stamps from 239 different countries and has set his eyes on the Guinness World Record. He started collecting stamps coins and relics when he was only 11 years old. He became a passionate hobbyist when he started traveling across the country to participate in philatelic exhibitions.

He has been collecting stamps for the last 33 years from international philatelists associations and independent collectors. He dreams of setting the record for owning the world’s largest collection of postal stamps. Tamilvanan also exhibited his collection of stamps at Town Hall in Vellore recently.

He is going to try for the record in the presence of S A Raman who is the district collector, K Vijaya - the superintendent of posts of Vellore division and K Saravanan, the curator of Vellore government museum.

The stamps have been collected on various themes like Mother Teresa, flora and fauna, Western Germany, Eastern Germany, dead countries, smallest islands and India's princely states, stamps on United Nations, British colonies and French colonies, African and Asian countries. One of the major highlights includes the majestic Penny Black - the world's first adhesive postage stamps released by England in 1840. He has 549 stamps on the theme flora and fauna, 313 stamps on Mother Teresa, released by 40 countries.