The First Stamp Collectors

In the October American Philatelist it states that the first stamp collectors were women and children and that it took only 20 years before wealthy men wrested the hobby away from them and took control. The APS realizes now with membership at lows..that if the stamp hobby is to survive...women collectors are needed..it can no longer be just an "old boys club " !

I say Women and Children first in increasing the current ranks of philatelists.

I finally got my wife to start collecting. She just likes "cutie" stamps.

If you go here: [Post below Leadenhall packet scan]

https://goscf.com/t/5533&whichpage=5

You can read about a very special Lady Collector.
But was she the first......maybe.

Londonbus1....God bless the girls !

And let's not forget that someone has to keep you old boys in line

Dianne

I read that last night.

Wasn't it a woman that papered her walls with thousands of stamps that would have been worth millions of dollars now?

I was hoping to get my wife involved. I'll show her a stamp I think she might like and she says in that wifely tone, "that's nice dear" and goes about her business.

I was able to get my wife into collecting World Wide Disney stamps, she kept up with it for about 5 years, then it dwindled off when our son was born. She has around 5 large albums/binders of stamps. My 3 year old son wants to look at stamps when I do and play with the castoffs/damaged stamps I give him occasionally. He uses a glue stick to place them in an old photo book with paper pages. He was asking me over the weekend if I needed glue to place my precancels on my exhibit pages and why I was using mounts & labels.

I had my daughter collecting by the time she was 2 years old. She had her cookie box full of stamps and a world wide album that a friend of mine gave her. The thing weighed more then she did. Anyhow, she would get her box of stamps and lay on her tummy on the floor and start matching pictures. It might have taken her an hour or more to find one, but she did, and I would hinge it into the album for her.
By the time she was 5 years old she was a paid up member of two local stamp clubs. When she was 7 she did her first exhibit. It was just printed out on lined paper with the stamps hinged on, but she did it herself on medicinal plants. It was for the local club and she won a gift certificate for a local fast food restaurant and a packet of 100 stamps.
From there she just kept going up and up. She has won about 27 medals, trophies and certificates. They are mostly from local clubs, (100 mile radius) Others are from farther away, including Buffalo New York, and Waukesha Wisconsin.

Then boys came along. hehehe! Don't they always? She stopped most of the stamp stuff for a few years. Got married, and had a son. But good news. She's back to collecting.
I also got my mom interested a few years ago.

So I started ages and ages ago with my grandfather, and now there are 3 generations of females collecting. But we are still outnumbered at most club meetings and shows.
In fact I used to belong to one club that had about 40 members. I was the only female.

Heres my tale ! For some reason my wife came along with me to a stamp club meeting many years ago...before you could say "Jack Robinson" they had her at the auction table keeping track of the sales..and she has had the job ever since...she has passed me by far in the quality of the collections she puts together..if she wants it..unlike me..she aint afraid to spend for it..i guess I will always be small time !!

Doodles it would be wonderul if it "rubbed off" on one of my kids..no such luck..well they all have their own interests..music, sports, art etc:

Nice to see they are finally recognizing women in the hobby. Lots of hobbies that were once male dominated are now recognizing women are active participants and will spend their money too. If we don't spend it on stamps we'll go spend it on scrapbooking or some other hobby

In my experience, working with youth collectors in the past two years... two interesting observations:

1)- The boys are collecting stamps with Dad, Uncle or GrandDad, as it is an activity to do with him.

2)- The girls are dragging their parents to the stamp show because they want to collect stamps. The parents are not pushing the hobby on their daughters.

My feeling is that in twenty years, the girls will be driving the hobby. I see more girls collecting than boys.

David

We have a youth table at the club and our shows. It's always nice to see the kids out. Usually on the meeting nights there are only one or two kids. Probably because it's a school night. The shows usually bring out about a dozen or so. I think it's split about 50/50 between the boys and girls.
There are a couple of retired teachers at our club that have set up junior clubs in the local schools. They go from school to school each week. They are usually able to get at least one teacher from each school who is interested and willing to help.
I think every club needs to start promoting the hobby to kids, or there won't be any clubs in the future. I look around our club, and the average age of the members must be in their 60's. I'm still only in my 50's, but it's strange being just about the youngest person in a room of 75 or so people.


Another thing I've noticed is it's hard for some women to break into a hobby that they think is dominated by men. They won't assert themselves. There have been a few women come to the club meetings once or twice and they say they probably won't be back because they feel strange with so many men. I've tried to convince them that the people there are "stamp collectors" who happen to be male. That they all have something in common but only a couple have ever stuck it out more then 2 or 3 meetings. We never see them again.

I'm a part time dealer as well, and I have had a table at quite a few local shows. I've also noticed that a lot of men and a few women won't come to my table if I am alone. IF a male friend is sitting with me, the same people who have passed by the first and even second time, will stop and start asking the man if he has whatever it is they are looking for. The look on the faces of the customers is sometimes quite funny when they are told that they would have to deal with me.
I just pretend that nothing is wrong and most of the time things work out. I've had a lot of repeat customers who have turned out to be really nice people come back to my table year after year. Even if I don't have anything they want they will always stop by to chat for a few minutes. That's the fun that I get out of it. I enjoy talking to the people.

I did have one man though who just refused to even ask me for anything when he found out that I was the dealer. BUT I also have a few good male friends who are dealers who just happened to hear him say he wouldn't buy from a female. I don't think he got much that day, because the dealers beside me who heard what was going on, told him they didn't have what he wanted, even before he asked, and one other dealer across the room who had found out what was going on, referred the guy back to me, telling him that I was probably the only dealer in the room that had the stuff he was looking for. The guy didn't bother to come back to me. IF I had had what he wanted, he would still have been welcome to come and sit down like a gentleman and buy whatever he wanted.