A stamp collecting enthusiast who loves collecting stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh.

Mr. Tran Huu Hue, from Thoai Son commune, An Giang province, has been passionate about collecting stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh since his youth. Although he lives in a provincial town, Mr. Hue is very well-known in the stamp collecting community for his valuable stamp collections and rare stamps.

Mr. Tran Huu Hue is passionate about collecting stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh.

This year, at 74 years old, Mr. Hue still cherishes his passion as he did in his youth and inspires the younger generation. In his small house in the peaceful neighborhood of Thoai Son commune, looking at his 24 massive stamp collections, each with its own theme, we understand why he is known among stamp collectors as "The man with the most stamp collections in the Mekong Delta."

He collects stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh, the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa islands, patriotic heroes, famous figures both domestic and foreign, and landscapes of his homeland...

He arranged the stamps and envelopes into separate themes according to time periods, and the collection that Mr. Hue cherished most was the set of stamps about President Ho Chi Minh, with more than 2,000 stamps and envelopes.

Mr. Hue slowly flipped through the pages of the stamp collection featuring images of President Ho Chi Minh, which he had collected since his youth. Mr. Hue recounted that when he was in middle school, he enjoyed collecting stamps and searching for his favorites.

At that time, Thoai Son was a small town, so acquiring a stamp he liked was a great pleasure for the village schoolboy. From his village, he sent letters to make friends and connect with people who shared his passion for stamp collecting.

Through stories about President Ho Chi Minh during his school years and through books, Mr. Hue came to admire the beloved leader of the Vietnamese nation who tirelessly sought a way to save the country and liberate the people. Therefore, he began searching for and collecting stamps related to President Ho Chi Minh's revolutionary life.

He wrote letters asking friends everywhere to exchange stamps about President Ho Chi Minh or to buy them for him and send them to him. As Mr. Hue recalls, until July 1998, the former An Giang province did not yet have an An Giang Philatelic Society, so he participated in exchanges with the Can Tho Philatelic Society.

One of the stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh that Mr. Hue collected.

By 1998, after more than 30 years of carefully collecting stamps, Mr. Hue had his own stamp collection about President Ho Chi Minh, with over 300 stamps featuring the President, along with more than 50 postal items.

Recalling the past, Mr. Hue never forgot the joy of winning the prize in the stamp exhibition competition about President Ho Chi Minh at the 2nd National Postal Stamp Exhibition held in Ho Chi Minh City in April 1998.

Mr. Hue recounted: "I named the stamp set I submitted to the competition 'Ho Chi Minh - The Most Beautiful Name' and won a Bronze Medal. This is a great honor for a stamp collector."

The images of beloved President Ho Chi Minh that Mr. Hue collected from stamps and envelopes.

After winning the award, Mr. Hue's name attracted the attention of stamp collectors nationwide. In August 1998, the An Giang Provincial Philatelic Association was established, and Mr. Hue brought his stamp collection "Ho Chi Minh - The Most Beautiful Name" to an exhibition in An Giang, introducing to the public the life and career of President Ho Chi Minh.

Mr. Hue recounted that in 2000, he brought four sets of his stamp collection to the National Postal Stamp Exhibition held in Hanoi , and his set "Ho Chi Minh - Life and Revolutionary Career" won a Bronze Medal.

Having won valuable awards, Mr. Hue continued his search for stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh, the stamps he loved. Mr. Hue estimates that, after almost a lifetime of collecting stamps about President Ho Chi Minh, he now owns 2,000 stamps and envelopes bearing President Ho Chi Minh's image, issued by Vietnam and many other countries around the world such as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, India, France, etc.

Among his possessions, he owns a precious stamp: a stamp featuring President Ho Chi Minh and Zone V, issued by Hoai Nhon district, Binh Dinh province in 1951-1952. He confided that he was very fortunate to have this stamp, considering it a stroke of luck for a stamp collector.

Mr. Huu owns a valuable stamp featuring President Ho Chi Minh and Zone V.

Mr. Hue showed us this valuable stamp and explained: "This stamp is also known as the rice stamp; the value of one stamp is 300 grams of rice. It's an official stamp for government agencies." According to Mr. Hue, the stamp was printed and issued by the Post Office of Zone 5. At that time, the country was in the midst of the resistance war, so the quality of the paper and printing wasn't as good as it is now.

At that time, this stamp was printed manually, and the four corners of the stamp did not have perforations, making it very precious and priceless in terms of its historical value. Mr. Hue said that he has been collecting stamps for a long time and noticed that the number of stamps featuring President Ho Chi Minh and the Fifth Inter-Region is very small, so stamp collectors both domestically and internationally are very interested in them.

Mr. Hue confided that, in his youth, the image of President Ho Chi Minh was deeply imprinted in his heart as a moral example of selflessness for the country. Collecting stamps about President Ho Chi Minh helped him understand more about the President, thereby increasing his respect for him. He also learned many things from the President about diligence, simplicity, patriotism, and compassion for others.

Tran Thanh Dung

Source: https://nhandan.vn/nguoi-dam-me-suu-tap-tem-bac-ho-post893622.html