George's box room collection

George in his box-room with - what else - a collection of post boxes.

When people go to the Post Office to make a collection they usually come away with a letter or parcel. Hemel Communication Engineer George Kar­vounakis often ends up buying the post box itself.

He started his off-beat col­lections two years ago last month and currently he has a hefty selection of I00 toy miniatures and eight genuine ones.

The 'real' ones he buys from the Post Office at any­thing from £220 upwards for a pillar box, £60 for a wall box and about £45 for a lamp box.

The oldest one he has is a Victorian wall box he bought from a Post Office in Essex.

The boxes are usually in poor condition and George first has to deliver them to his garden shed for a face-lift. Once he has got them back to near original condition he deposits them in his spare bed­room with the rest of his col­lection.

"My wife thought I was mad at first," he says, "but she's got used to it now. I didn't realise there were so many different types of boxes until I started collecting them."

George writes to all the Post Office regional head­quarters asking to be put on their 'mailing lists' for post boxes.

The toy miniatures he finds in shops and on market stalls. "Sometimes I just jump in my car and go out pillar box hunting."

George, who also collects pictures of pillar boxes, went to his native Greece last year for a holiday and even managed to find a post box for his collection over there.

He is also a keen stamp collector but his number one hobby is post boxes. "With stamps you know exactly what you are looking for — it's all in the catalogue. But with post boxes you never know what is going to turn up," he says.

George still has plenty of space left in his spare bed­room to increase his collec­tion and so if any readers have a post box or a picture of a post box, he would be delighted to get a letter from them.

Taken from BP Oil News - January 1983