On this page I want to show you who I am.

Well, where shall I start ? OK, I was born (!) on September 22, 1961 in Linz, Austria.

Here you can observe me as a baby together with my family.

I went to primary and secondary school, and my philatelic interest was already alive.

In 1980 I took my bachelors degree and after working for one year in social service I studied English and Physical Education at University - I became a teacher !

After having finished my studies I went to the Republic of Ireland to teach German at St. Mary's College in Naas, Co. Kildare, Éire (Is aon Gaelige agat ?). Then I worked at an Austrian secondary school in Linz teaching English and Sports.

In 1991 I set out for Nicaragua where I worked as a development worker for nearly eight years. It was there I got to know my lovely wife Orlinda.

In the meantime we have got three beautiful girls: Laura, Maryuri and Tania.

In April of 1999 we returned to Austria, only to come back to Central America (Guatemala City, Guatemala) in December 2000.

I started to play Volleyball around 1978, and despite of my "advanced" age I still like this sport and practice it at least once a week.

You could call Volleyball my "young hobby", because I have been collecting stamps for a much longer time (I started at the early age of about six, inspired by my good old friend Maria Czerwa).

Here I am working on one of my first collections !

This is me working on the Homepage in my house in Managua.

One day I had the idea to combine my two hobbies - and there you are - right in the middle of this web page.

Allow me please to introduce myself:
My name is Günter Pilz, I was born in Linz / Austria, and after having lived in Naas, Ireland, Waslala, Rosita and Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, I live in Guatemala City at the moment.
I have been an active Volleyball - player for about 23 years and during some years I was the chairman of one of the biggest and most successful Austrian Volleyball clubs. So it came that I combined my dedication for sport with philately.
I created a small collection with thematic stamps of Volleyball. I began to collect postal stationery, commemorative cancels, meter stamps, FDCs, phonecards, entrance tickets etc., and one day the idea was born to make a stamp catalogue including all the stamps of the world showing Volleyball.
But I was not alone in my efforts to elaborate this book: Many collectors, exchange partners and stamp dealers helped me to get together all the stamps with that theme.

In 1999 I have issued the VOLLEYBALL WORLDCATALOGUE 1999 where I list and show all the stamps issued worldwide with the topic of Volleyball. It has got 150 pages with some 750 black & white illustrations and it is written in three languages: English, Spanish and German.

I also edit the magazine PHILAVOLLEY three times a year. In PHILAVOLLEY you can find interesting articles about Volleyball and Philately as well as all the new stamps, commemorative cancels, meters, cachet cancels, postal stationery, Maximum cards and telephone cards with the topic of Volleyball that have been issued recently.

At the moment I am working on the new PHILATELIC VOLLEYBALL HANDBOOK, which I hope to publish in 2001. This handbook will contain all the stamps, commemorative cancels, meters, cachet cancels, postal stationery items and maximum cards with the topic of Volleyball.

My special thanks go to my friends Piet van den Berg from Roosendaal, Netherlands, to Mauro Gilardi from Rome, Italy, and to Mr. Koji Ninomiya from Tokyo, Japan, who made all the translations from Japanese into English.
To all of them and to many more whom I cannot mention here my most sincere thanks for their help and cooperation.
And last but not least special thanks to my lovely wife Orlinda for all her help and understanding during the many hours it took to elaborate this catalogue.
Yours sincerely

GÜNTER PILZ

If you would like to know more about me, my family, my work and my hobbies, don't hesitate to write to me. Use the "CONTACT" button on the left hand side, that's all you have to do.