At the age of 13, Nasser Bin Ahmad Alserkal is the youngest member of the Emirates Philatelic Association and already an award-winning collector.
He has a collection comprising thousands of UAE stamps, many of them rare, and has won international awards, medals and certificates.
Nasser was only eight when he got bitten by the stamp collecting bug.
“My father once gave me an envelope with some stamps on it. That was my initiation into the world of philately. At that very moment I decided I wanted to take it up as a hobby,'' said Nasser.
Noticing his obvious interest in stamp-collecting his father, Ahmad Bin Eisa Alserkal, himself a philatelist, started encouraging him to pursue his hobby. He even presented his own collection to Nasser.
His passion for the hobby bore fruit when his collection fetched him a bronze medal at the Washington 2006 World Philatelic Exhibition in Washington DC.
Nasser has also won a prize at an exhibition in Qatar where the theme of his collection was “Errors of Dubai''.
“I have about 100 stamps in that collection,'' says Nasser, who explains many UAE stamps are no longer in circulation because of unique printing errors which make them rare and valuable. The young philatelist surfs the Net every day looking for stamps.
His father, Ahmad Bin Eisa Alserkal, told XPRESS: “He spends at least an hour on eBay buying stamps.''
It was on eBay that an amazing coincidence occurred. “I bought a very old stamp from eBay. It was stuck on an envelope.
“On closer inspection the envelope turned out to be a letter my grandfather had sent to a friend in Sweden way back in 1965,'' Nasser said.
Added his father, “When Nasser showed me the envelope on eBay, I instantly recognised my father's handwriting. It was such a pleasant surprise to know my son had tracked down my father's letter decades after he had mailed it to his friend.''
The eldest of four brothers, Nasser is a grade eight student with an eye on the future.
“When I am 30 years old, I think I will stop collecting stamps. I want to teach my kids things about philately, just the way my father supported me,'' he said, suggesting that the family tradition will be kept alive.
