Usually I have no hesitation about waving farewell to outdated technology. DVDs, who needs ‘em? Landline phones? Remind me, what were they?

I am, however, sad to see the passport stamp disappear. The European Union is phasing them out, joining nations including Argentina, Israel and Macau that already said sayonara to the practice of passport-stamping.

In fact, passports themselves might be on the endangered list, with Singapore introducing passport-free immigration this year.

Either way, passport stamps are on their way out, and I’m going to miss them.

This hasn’t happened overnight, of course. Here in Australia we stopped stamping passports all the way back in 2012, becoming the first country to rely on facial recognition technology and the electronic chip inside the passport.

But plenty of other countries kept inking those pages, turning your passport into a pocket-sized record of your travels. 

Flicking through my old passports I smile when I see the stamp from the Seychelles, which appears to feature a curvy bum but actually depicts the coco de mer, the nut of an indigenous species of palm. 

I love the many entry stamps for Japan not just for the image of Mount Fuji, but also for the way that every single immigration officer has placed the stamp on the page with geometric precision.

As I flick, it becomes clear that entry stamps and visas have been getting smaller for years. In my older passports, visas from China and Russia, India and Mongolia, Zimbabwe and Myanmar take up whole pages. More recent entries from those countries take up a lot less real estate.

Also scattered through my passport pages are the novelty stamps that some exotic destinations used to offer, each of them a miniature work of art. There is a stamp from Port Lockroy in Antarctica featuring a penguin, and one from the Galapagos Islands, the Chilean archipelago known for its remarkable wildlife. Its striking design features a giant tortoise and a hammerhead shark. 

I find an entry stamp from Rapa Nui, once known as Easter Island – technically also part of Chile, but 3700km from the mainland – but not the novelty stamp that was available at the post office featuring the moai, the giant statues that made this island famous.

Also missing from my passport is the stamp from Machu Picchu, Peru’s remote Incan citadel. I’ve been there a couple of times now and considered getting my passport stamped at the entrance to the site but honestly, I couldn’t face the queue. 

One country that isn’t phasing out stamps anytime soon is the conservation minded island nation of Palau. Known for its amazing diving, Palau’s lovely passport stamp is in the shape of a jellyfish. 

That’s not the only way they mark your passport. When you arrive in this Micronesian nation, your passport is stamped with the Palau Pledge, a commitment to sustainable tourism, and the immigration officer will watch you sign it before they let you enter. 

Among other things, visitors pledge not to “take what is not given” and “tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully”. 

Who wouldn’t want that in their passport?

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