Golden Stamp Books

Some months ago I purchased this for only $3.50 at a local antique store:

This was quite a find, not only because it’s Australian, but because I owned this exact book in my youth!

It’s a picture book of reptiles that came with a sheet of gummed stamps. The lucky owner would separate the stamps and stick them into each entry like they were putting a postage stamp on a postcard. The stamps in my copy have been stuck, but the back cover shows what the unused sheets would have looked like:

And here’s the charming instructions for the reader:

The book is 48 pages long, almost all of which are dedicated to a single animal with a picture and several interesting paragraphs. As a child I would have loved this. All the famous and well-known reptiles are included, like crocodiles, goannas and this old favourite:

But the true wonder of this book is that it also includes many lesser known – and possibly even nigh-unknown – beasts such as the Tryon Gecko, Master’s Snake and the good old Scrub Mullet:

I can vividly remember in the schoolyard, when my lesser-educated peers were yapping on about crocodiles and frilled lizards and I started dropping facts about Curl Snakes, Dtella Geckos and Krefft’s Tortoises! Immediately they recognized a master herpetologist in their midst, and rightly admired me for my knowledge 🙂

This book was first published in 1973, but I would have of course got it years later. I had other titles as well. I don’t remember exactly which ones, but I believe I had at least a sea life one and one about fossils or minerals. A quick search online reveals that many titles in the series were printed well into the 1980s. Here’s a selection:

The Golden Stamp Book series was popular not just in Oz but also in the USA and England, and no doubt other countries as well. Educational, fun, and lovely to look at: these were great books to have when we were kids 🙂

One Response to “Golden Stamp Books”

  1. mycroft says:

    Those things! People would cannibalise them for school projects. And by “people”, I mean spoilt rich kids ;-P