World Largest -Biggest Stamp Collection

Gibbons's efforts with stamps as investment vehicle weren't a roaring success.

Have we already forgotten about Alfinsa.

https://www.linns.com/news/world-st...-scheme.html

Agree with what some of you posted about previous frauds that was done . But as you known previous frauds don't work as well the second time around .

I need to make it clear ,the days of letting someone else handle your investment will be hard to pull off . I believe people are willing to invest if they can hold something closer to their chest {or as you say hold their own hard asset and not depend on a computer screen to know what they have }. I guess what I am saying is much like we have seen recently with Silver and gold dealers who ship directly by FEDEX to your home .
So I am saying sellers can ship your investment so you can hold it . Remember stamps are 1/10 or less than the coin market and maybe 1/100 of the precious metal market . To sum it up the stamp market is a very small market as a hard asset market and more easy to move the value up or down .

Are there any stamps that are *actually* a good investment these days?

Even the clowns running the one cent magenta show are having a tough time offloading it for the price they paid for it not so long ago.

Be aware of tax implications if you take custody of your metals.

ROGDCAM --- That is called TAX PLANNING .

All my friends only buy 1oz. or 10oz. bars with brand names/ markings on them . Try moving a 100 oz or 1,000 oz. bar and most people wouldn't touch it .
This is what could happen with the future of stamps as hard assets and be able to cross borders like the Jews did it in WWII.

So I think stamps have a future but what it is I am only guessing .Two things I am sure of is they are printing more money everyday and taxes are also going up every day .

The future of stamps is so bright that I am going to buy sunglasses .

FLOORTRADER - The real innovation in the precious metal market has not been the ability to have them shipped to your door but has been the development of ETFs. Just two precious metal ETFs, IAU and SLV, now have assets totally over 100 BILLION dollars. Sure, there are a lot of people who want to physically hold their PMs at home, but there is also a proven market for people who want the convenience of buying and selling them with just a swipe on their phone. Stamps don't have that option for investors.

The issue with holding large amounts of PMs, or rare stamps, at home is security. You either hope your hiding places are good or you better invest in a quality safe, preferably a commercial grade TL or TRTL-rated one. Even if stamps have a lower risk of theft compared to PMs, they have the added worry of fire and water damage, beyond their usual need for a temperature and humidity-controlled environment.

floortrader said




I'd say that the future for stamp collectors is bright.

I like the wise words of an old dealer from Scotland who penned this about 10 years ago:

"Many people pretend to themselves that they are investing, when in fact they are looking for a justification for spending money on their hobby.

Be a stamp collector and proud!

Philately is a great and a popular hobby, and if you have some disposable funds, there's no reason why you shouldn't spend it on yourself. It doesn't have to be logical. Many other pastimes people pursue, and spend money on, don't make much sense. But for some strange sociological reason, spending £50 on going to see a football match is not questioned, spending £50 on a stamp sometimes is."

There have been a few studies on the investment return on premium stamps (think mid-five figures and up). They all conclude that there was an annualized nominal return of 7.0%, and an annualized real return of 2.9%. The data spanned a period of over 100 years, starting in 1900. Not exactly sunglasses territory but comparable to art. Keep in mind that values for the other 99% of the stamp market have nosedived over time due to supply issues (oversupply due to ebay etc.) and less collectors (number of collectors in China being the exception).

That is a decades-old thing that failed repeatedly.




Their indices went up and up. Then they offered the investment packages and nothing happened. The whole scheme just disappeared. Then there is the total fiasco of their shared scheme for the British Guyana Magenta stamp that is another fiasco.

But SG was not the first. Afinsa is another famous one. That was a pyramid investment scheme.

Nor do I see what is "investment" about stamps. Even precious metals add value as input for all kind of technologies. Stamps have absolutely no value as input for anything that creates value. That the Afinsa plan turned out to be a pyramid game and that the SG schemes disappeared into thin air should not surprise anyone.

Lack of liquidity and fragility alone make stamps as an investment non-starters.

"I had a choice between gold bullion, oceanfront property and a Mercedes Gullwing but I ended up putting my cash into rare stamps" said no investor with half a brain EVER.

Even Bill Gross didn't make a penny on his collections and donated the revenue from the sales to charity for the write-offs which were more valuable.

And if you bought knowledgeably and wisely 20 or 30 or 40 years ago you might well make a profit in the future. But buying stamps as an investment is almost always a bad idea. Dealers are the only ones who make money consistently buying and selling stamps, and they do it by quick turnaround. Very few will buy something to sell "eventually".

Agree most collectors don't make money ,but there is a whole bunch of reasons for that .

Reasons like they are not the seller , it is the family or some estate manager after they are gone .

Another reason most collectors are hoarders and no organization to their pile .

another reason is wrong buyers , they are selling to someone who bids on it to sell to a real dealer or to a auction firm .

Another reason why they lose money is that they have started many collections and they are offering many start and stop collections not a serious study of one subject .

Another reason is never paid anything for what they have . They buy mixture lots and then claim thousands of dollars worth of stamps when you would be hard press to find anything that can be a seperate auction lot .

Another thing they spend a high percentage of their money on stamp supply and big size impressive albums with good amount on mounts .

If one has knowledge, sometimes paying actual value for an item is not required. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. I have a few items that I never would have been able to afford if I had to pay their real value.

floortrader said





One you missed:
They wasted their money on so-called stamp investment portfolios.

As Robert Murray, who ran a popular stamp shop in Edinburgh for 30+ years, penned a few years ago:

I have run a stamp shop for over thirty years. We buy stamps. We do valuations. We run auctions. In those thirty years I have never handled a stamp investment portfolio that made the investor a profit. Not one.

I have however seen good stamp collections which have made a profit on their cost price. One collection we sold quite recently through one of our auctions came with a record of the prices paid. Some of the better stamps had actually been bought through our own auctions, and in many cases we were able to resell the same items for at least as much as had been paid - sometimes adding 50%, and in some cases even doubling the price after just a few years. The important point here was that the collector had been knowledgeable, choosy, and had not over-paid.