Before the hobby, the postal system came first. It was not unlike the case of the chicken and the egg. About 726 B.C., King Hezekiah instituted a "post" system in Judah. Confucius wrote of a royal post which covered the vast expanses of the Asian mainland, and in 559 B.C., Cyrus, king of Persia, utilized post riders to develop the letter-carrier system which was a novelty for that age.

The Romans also developed an imperial mail service. Caesar Augustus realized that effective rule depended upon the speed with which Rome could keep in touch with its far-flung outposts, thus establishing the first sea post for delivery of mail to foreign territories.

Kublai Khan built a postal system, dwarfing the Persian and Roman efforts, consisting of 10,000 postal stations dotting the Mongolian empire.The capital Khanbaliq became the center of all this. Aside from official mails, the system catered to secondary mails, usually transported by camels, from private citizens who could write.

On the other side, the Aztecs and the Incas had similar delivery service through trained long-distance runners carrying "quipus", a series of knotted cords, to transmit messages.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Dark Ages followed. The European postal system inched its into the lives of the common tao. It wasn't until 1837, when Rowland Hill, an inventor and teacher, began a campaign for postal reforms.