Tiago Machado
About

Tiago MachadoBelo Horizonte / Minas Gerais / Brazil

Stamp collector

I started collecting stamps as a child. My father bought a set published by Editora Planeta — the green volumes of Selos do Mundo Inteiro (“Stamps of the Whole World”). In the 1990s, I built a thematic collection devoted to horses and spent many Saturday mornings at Mr. Sebastião’s stamp shop in the Galeria do Ouvidor, in Belo Horizonte. I could stay there for hours.

Coming back

Time passed, and the hobby faded into the background. I only returned to stamp collecting decades later, in 2023. This time, I started two collections: Brazilian stamps and stamps related to Scouting.

I chose Scouting because I wanted a theme that would also interest my family — especially my wife and daughter, both Scouts with Group 23, Escoteiros do Baleia, in Belo Horizonte. I needed their support as I spent weekends tucked away in my study, researching and cataloguing stamps.

This site

I built this site to share my work toward assembling the largest and most complete catalogue and collection of Scouting stamps that I can.

It has been slow, careful work, drawing on many different sources. Special thanks go to SOSSI and Scouts on Stamps of the World, 7th edition; Dennis C. Shields’s PDF Worldwide Scouting on Stamps, with its extensive updates through 2014; Colnect and StampWorld for their Scouting stamp listings; and the Domfil thematic stamp catalogue.

The catalogues often disagree with one another. Whenever possible, I have tried not only to identify each issue, but also to record a little of the story behind it.

For years, the collection lived in a Google Drive spreadsheet. As it grew, the spreadsheet became increasingly difficult to maintain. I decided it was time to document the collection more carefully and give it a proper home here.

A living collection

My hope is to give something back: to help other collectors of Scouting stamps and, perhaps, to make the hobby feel a little less solitary today.

I know very few stamp collectors — and even fewer who collect Scouting stamps. It has often been a lonely road. If this site helps me connect with collectors around the world, and if some of them can help me find pieces that are still missing, I will be grateful.

Feel free to write to me by email. I can provide a postal address for anyone who would like to donate stamps to the collection.

Hundreds of sets, stamps and varieties are still missing. Any help is welcome as I work toward building the largest living collection devoted to Scouting on stamps.

Regards,
Tiago.