HipStamp And The American Philatelic Society Announce Strategic Partnership

If I was wrong I apologize. I referenced current APS membership data which shows a steady decline including for 2020-21. Perhaps there are other membership categories that grew?

https://stamps.org/history/membersh...torical-data

I'm pretty sure that trend will be reversed this year!

Every month, as reported in the AP, the total number of members in the APS today is less than that number a year ago. How many members in the active total are lifers like me who joined before 1975 that no longer pay annual dues?

Our membership number is comprised of two things:

Recruitment: This is the number of new applications we get each year. In 2003 and 2008, the APS increased dues twice, from $25 to $45. After the 2008 increase, recruitment dropped nearly in half. Last year, we brought in more new applications since that increase at 1,750.We'll be closer to 1,500 this year, still higher than normal, but we'll push for a better number next year.

Retention: Our retention rate averages 90 percent. For a membership organization, that's remarkable. Our biggest loss is attributable to death, second, change in life (retirement, health decline, financial instability). I'd like to have more control over those factors, but I'm not that good.

Our membership peaked in 1988, the year I graduated high school, and there have been annual losses every year since my freshman year of college. There are various factors for that, but it's not a new issue.

Hoosierboy: As of 30 November 2022, we had 3,788 life members. 1,201 are paid life members (this includes me), and 2,587 are pre-1974 members who received free life membership. We lose an average of 250/per year. This year, we project 350, and this trend will worsen over the next few years. Since 2019, the rate of free-life members converting has slowed to the point where we lose more life members than we gain. Our budget projections accurately calculate that 60 percent of member loss will not result in less dues revenue the following year. So that's the next impact.

I hope that is clear, but please let me know if it isn't.

Scott

Thank you Scott for all the details in what's going on with APS. I've been a member since 2013 and the membership discount is great to have at the APS stamp store. I'm glad its still there too. I thought it would disappear on December 1. I filled out the survey too and I'm really neutral about the ASDA merger, except it is more like APS would be absorbing the group not merging. In flyover land, there are very few ASDA dealers.

30 minutes to go.

Don

Link now posted on stamp store:
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/aps-stamp-store

Bleagh. Can no longer request and pay for APEX at the time of purchase as part of checkout, so I guess you have to either call/email and request expertization fast enough so they haven't already packed up and shipped your items, otherwise you get to pay to send them back to the APS again for expertization.

Major step backwards IMO.

Also, as expected, no option to pay for purchases from your funds on account due to your own sales on the platform.

2 functionality diminishments right off the bat.

• Broken Images
Initial page load = all images broken. Re-refreshed the page, images appeared.
Close window or tab, open new one, enter URL for the APS stamp store, all images load as broken again.

• Keyword Searches return zero results from APS stamp store listings.

The images are loading for me on the main pages but not on the other products but that should be expected. Still have no idea how member discount will be figured. But just looking was able to find cheaper versions from other sells.

@jdtrue66

I emailed the APS stamp store a couple of weeks ago regarding the member discount and received this reply:

"If you use the same email address on HipStamp that we have on file at APS you will receive the buyers discount."

Will have to see how that works, but no way to confirm now that the Stamp Store itself is off line.

Ken

Today at noon was the deadline to use legacy Stamp Store, the transition will be occurring over next 48 hours (as stated above). I would expect some issues during the next 48 hours and would wait on reporting broken things until they have migrated everything.
Don

This function is in development, but we did not want to delay the transition for it.

I've been able to pull listings by using "APS seller" and country.

Nice to see the store up and running with all the stamps. Searching and viewing available items is certainly much easier than the old store.

I just hope it's not all of the stamps, I know they said they had a lot of work to do so I'm reserving judgement, but I took a quick look and there wasn't much in the APS store that I was remotely interested in buying.