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21st January 2009 [Wednesday] 10:51pm
In this update, I shall continue to teach readers ways to begin the phonecard collection.
One of the ways to increase your phone card collections, or even get a first card, is to keep your mobile phone aside, especially if you are using a pre-paid card. It is the most meaningful when hobbyists themselves are contributing to the collection. Do not fret if you are using a post-paid mobile phone plan with a monthly subscription fee. You can still use the phone cards when you feel you have exceeded your monthly call limits.
One can also choose to purchase brand new cards to collect. However, this type of collection is very cost inefficient, and is recommended only to those who have the extra bit of budget allocate to leisure use. This method of collection is for hobbyists who collect the phone cards for their colours and designs. Prolonged usage/exposure of the card surface to other surfaces would result in the deterioration of the cards' surface image. Therefore, if one day you find a card whose design you really adore, it is alright to purchase it and keep it in its original state. Having said that, there are also card protectors available so that the phone cards will not be damaged when it is carried around in wallets or bags. The key idea is to handle the cards with care as you would your mobile phones and other gadgets.
If you wish to quickly increase the size/prospective size of your phone card collections, do be on the lookout for book fairs and similar exhibitions in your country. Most book fairs also have other miscellaneous items on sale such as phone card collections. Take the "World Book Fair" for example, it is held in Singapore once a year and you can often find a booth that sells hobby items such as stamps and phonecards amidst the sea of books and stationery. In addition, hobbyists would be delighted to find rare card collections at these exhibitions. However, hobbyists would have to be willing to part with their cash as these rare items do not come cheap.
In the next post, I will talk about various themes in phone cards' designs, as well as what purposes some of them have.