Stamp collecting was a major pastime in 1946, pursued by adults as well as kids. Mostly it was a male thing. The Sunday Times had a stamp page with a lead column featuring new and upcoming editions from around the world.
Gimbels claimed to have the world's largest stamp department. The store ran a large ad for a Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Stamp Album, the cult of FDR being in full swing. The album had space for all the stamps honoring the late president and also had pages with photos of FDR, scenes from the auction of his stamp collection and letters from President Truman and Mrs. Roosevelt. Additional blank pages provided space for collectors to include other Roosevelt mementos. The slip case was $5, the pages (printed in color) were $2.50 and the special deluxe presentation album was $15. May 6 was the publication date but the store was taking orders now. They had had only 500 albums to sell.
In its ad, Macy's featured semi-postals from Romania from 1941-44. Wartime stamps from the Axis countries were another hot item. The stamp page also carried small classified ads for and by stamp and coin collectors.
It wasn't all stamps. Albert H. Morehead had a column on bridge, another mid-century obsession, and the pages of gardening ads began here. Several ads offered the supplies needed to start a poultry farm including chicks for $4.95 per 100 and turkeys. Buying an acre or two of land out in the country and raising chicken and eggs was a fantasy escape from the rat race for many city dwellers for decades. Betty MacDonald's humorous autobiographical account of her own attempt at egg farming, The Egg and I, had been at the top of the non-fiction best seller list for months now. Small-scale poultry farming didn't require a lot of capital, but as most budding chicken entrepreneurs learned it also didn't provide much of a living.