The Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington DC holds the childhood stamp album of which of the Beatles?

The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum announced that it has acquired John Lennon’s childhood stamp album. In addition to more than 550 stamps from around the world, the album’s flyleaf bears the name, address and signature of a young John Lennon. On the album’s title page, beards and mustaches were drawn in blue ink on the likenesses of British monarchs, including Queen Victoria and King George VI.

Years before his rise to fame as a musician and member of the Beatles, Lennon was a schoolboy in Liverpool, England, when his cousin Stanley Parkes gave him a hardcover Mercury stamp album. The circa-1950 album originally belonged to Parkes, who encouraged Lennon’s interest in stamp collecting. The album has 145 pages and features stamps from several countries including India, the United States and New Zealand. Philately is the collection and study of postage stamps, postmarks and stamped envelopes and the study of postal history.