Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0151013969, Hardcover)

From the author of Mauve, an obsessively readable
memoir that brings the mania for stamp collecting to life
From the Penny Red to the Blue Mauritius, generations of
collectors have been drawn to the mystique of rare stamps.
Once a widespread pastime of schoolboys, philately has
increasingly become the province of older men obsessed with
the shrewd investment, the once-in-a-lifetime find, the one
elusive beauty that will complete a collection and satisfy an
unquenchable thirst.
As a boy, Simon Garfield collected errors—rare pigment
misprints that create ghostly absences in certain stamps.
When this passion reignited in his mid-forties, it consumed
him. In the span of a couple of years he amassed a collection
of errors worth upwards of forty thousand pounds, pursuing
not only this secret passion, but a romantic one as his marriage
disintegrated.
In this unique memoir, Simon Garfield twines the story
of his philatelic obsession with an honest and engrossing
exploration of the rarities and absences that both limit and
define us.The end result is a thoughtful, funny, and enticing
meditation on the impulse to possess.