The Pros and Cons Of Pen Pals

[Bob_and_Erick]

Erick has expressed a wish to cultivate pen pals in foreign (to us) countries, not only for purposes of exchanging stamps but also for conversational and friendship purposes as well. The Internet is a good platform for the latter, but is also fraught with danger, intrigue and misrepresentation as well, not to mention inadequate for exchanging actual stamps.

His first attempt at acquiring a pen pal led him inadvertantly to the American prison System and prisoners wishing to write to outsiders. Needless to say, we are currently in reboot mode and in need of advice pn how to proceed. This presents a quandary. How does one acquire English speaking pen pals? What do per pals discuss other than the obvious which is stamps?

I am out of my area of experience in answering the lad's questions in this regard and I wonder if others may have some thoughts on the subject.

What say ye? :)

Bob and Erick

[tallanent]

Bob ...

Not sure there is an easy answer to this but you may try the following ...

contact a local or national stamp assoc .. they may have members that will help young / new collectors in this way.

contact a local church - they may have contacts in other countries that may be intrested ..

not sure this helps much .. but worth thinking about ..

[Bob_and_Erick]

Bob ...

Not sure there is an easy answer to this but you may try the following ...

contact a local or national stamp assoc .. they may have members that will help young / new collectors in this way.

contact a local church - they may have contacts in other countries that may be intrested ..

not sure this helps much .. but worth thinking about ..

Your suggestions turned out to be worthwhile.

I have contacted The Salvation Army (a Christian church) in my city and that official has friends stationed outside the United States. It appears that there are Salvation Army posts in 118 countries around the world, including some fairly collectible islands.

This is a developing direction. It will be interesting to see where it leads.

Great advice.

Bob and Erick

[tallanent]

Hope it all works out well for you .....

[SOShaposhnikov]

Gentlemen,

You have started an interesting discussuion. May I add some words?
1. For me this forum is a platform for communication with stamp collectors on issues related to stamps. This is not (and shall not be) a club of pen pals.
2. If some young collector is interested in your country, why not send him/her some duplicates from what you have? I do not mean any rare stamps, and young people usually start with bright stamps (animals, sports, etc). In my opinion, helping young collectors this way we make them more interested in this wonderful hobby (I mean a real hobby, not a practical investment). Later they may come to their unique areas of interest (I love standard or oficial stamps which are not bright but tell a lot about a country history). And your friendly help will give them a good impulse to develop this hobby.
Kind regards,
Sergey

[tallanent]

Sergey ....

You are correct this is a forum for stamp collectors on issues related to stamps ...

Thus encouraging a young collector in the art of letter writting which will lead to greater communication and understanding - enhance their knowledge of the wider world and at the same time if we are lucky get them a few stamps on some letters from distant places ... then I really don't see what the problem is ...

[Bob_and_Erick]

I may have been unclear in the use of the term "pen pal."

Communication by letter for the purpose of cultivating a stamp collecting friend with whom one could swap stamps was what I meant in using this term (possibly incorrectly).

To that end, Erick has been able to initiate friendly exchange with phitalatists from The (former) Soviet Union, Sri Lanka and Tunisia, though the speed of international post has slowed the process a bit.

Erick's misunderstanding of the purpose of correspondence was due to inadequate explanation on my part and that has since been corrected.

So for purpose of clarification, "pen pal" in this context denotes friendly stamp swapping activities.

[philactica]

Getting penpals for the sake of stamps just google for STAMP EXCHANGE and you can pick out of thousands.