Anyone who pursues stamps as a hobby naturally wants to have their collection evaluated, to reflect the evaluation in their next entry, and to hope for better results. This is the general view among collectors who engage in philately, and it is something that the vast majority accept and follow. In that process, of course, one strives to be the best, but the results often depend not only on effort but also on a measure of luck and on who the competitors happen to be. In this sense, my receiving the Grand Prix National at this year’s PHILAKOREA 2025 World Stamp Exhibition can be said to have been simply fortunate.
Over the past several years, no matter how many times I exhibited, my scores only rose by a single point each time. This left me feeling stifled and disappointed again and again. Yet I could not hide from the fact that I knew better than anyone why this was happening. Of course, there were many reasons: grasping the changes in the new regulations and expressing them accurately in English, maintaining balance in the arrangement of each frame, carefully mounting envelopes and postcards on the leaves, selecting the right font size for sections and subsections to ensure a visually pleasing appearance—there were not one or two, but many areas that needed improvement.
