Do You Remember Japan ?

i know I am an old guy..used to read Linns when it was the size of the Wall Street Journal...it must have been when the Japanese owned Rockafeller Center and we thought they were going to buy the USA...Linns was full of dealers Want to buy lists for Japan..Hot,Hot, Hot. I guess every dog has his day Ghana,Israel,Vatican City .they were hot and when they went cold(except for certain rare sets) they went really cold !

I came back into stamp collecting at the very tail end of the Israel hype. Some day our ship will come in, Phil, when the Central Americay hype gets going. :D

If U.S. used American series come into vogue, I'm ready!

I remember when Disney was hot! hot hot! I held out for quite a while - then decided to sell, and couldn't find a buyer even at a very low percentage of catalogue. I gave them all to a friend's 6-year old daughter who promptly stuck them all onto her bedroom wall!

Smauggie,the wife and I went to a Brazilian Jazz night put on by our local symphony orchestra...guest horn player was great..makes one think about our big neighbor to the South..it may become a hot item one day !

And here my Brazil collection barely even exists.

The same thing happened with United Nations (U.N.) stamps. They were very popular at one time and their prices were much higher. Then many got rid of their collections and their prices went down.

Thats right I forgot the U.N. I used to walk to the U.N. building post office on my lunch hour and buy the little envelopes of sets back in 1962. there were stamp shops all over mid town Manhatten where you could buy 10 cent covers...i guess the rent went up on those storefronts !

Phil:

I remember those "tabloid-sized" issues of Linn's. I wish they were still that size.

And it took almost a week to read one -- I find "harmony" in a weekly magazine that takes a week to read

Kirk, I remember they posted the circulation number on every issue...around 89,000 at one time..i used to love the current trends where they would give the retail values of all stamps from a given country !

Not many remember this but there was a real boom in the late 50's on Ghana and independent Africa. That was before they all prostituted themselves to the agencies and ruined their reputations. I doubt any of those countries will ever come back into vogue.

Personally, I love countries and areas that have gone (or are still) cold. I'm in the process of picking some eras, or sets, from countries that are not highly collected. Even to the point where the stamps are considered a glut on the market. Areas where I can pick up, for cheap, quantities to study cancels and the like. Haven't decided which ones yet though. Inexpensive stamps are a cheap/poor collectors best friend.

Spain_1850 Would you like some UN?

Germany mint hinged seems to be sort of a glut. As does more or less anything produced after 1965 from British colonies. (Postal use is doing well, though).

I personally like areas most people hadn't heard of much (i.e. Aden, Tete, Angra, Zululand, etc.)

Stamps1962 one of the guys in my club stops short of Ghana..but he has a very attractive Gold Coast collection ! I like those classic Edward VII and George 5 sets !!