What Is Going On???

I was completely shocked. I want to my stamp club's Sunday meeting and there were only 10 to 14 people there, I admit I haven't be to one in a few years, but there has always been 50+ people before. Are other clubs having this problem?

more collectors are going to online chat sites and the trend is away from local clubs were timing and travel get more difficult as many get older .

My club in Barrie Ont seems to be growing. I think (and I may be off, but I've been observing) that we get a couple of applications every few months, plus lots of visitors.
Granted some of our members have been, sadly, shuffling off this mortal coil, as they say.
But I do hear that other clubs in the Southern Ontario area are down, so we may just be lucky.

I lived in Barrie and Borden as a kid many years ago. Our house(apartment) is still at the corner of Dunlop and Albert. A garage called The Maples was right on the corner. Here I had the smell of my first gasoline. I went to Coderington School until early 1956. Around this time I started collecting.

The times I have been at our local stamp club here, there have been around 40 people, men and women. This is Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canadam pop. 300,000 +/-.

I have been told and think myself also that collectors always collect.

Maybe there is other things to collect now that promise more return for your buck but I will go with stamps no matter what.

Enduring, long-lasting, most popular hobby in the world, etc, etc. If you want to make money at them, you can. Just learn about them and how to be friendly and how to sell.

Personally I love the sorting out and figuring out what is what, the hunt, the buy and sell, the comradery amongst stamp collectors world wide.


Maybe you could suggest different ways to your stamp club to bring in more interested people and collectors?

There are threads on SCF here that suggest many ways to do this. Do a search (button top right) and read a bit.

I think our local small stamp club has been growing ever so slightly recently although I'm not a member; I live in Saint John, not far from Puzzler, and a smaller city than Halifax but large enough to support a sizable philatelic community. Been to one meeting and I may go back but it doesn't have a priority claim on my time. I think stamp clubs need to have really good leadership and a lot of innovative ideas and programs to keep people coming. I agree that the online stamp community is really the place to be but its obvious advantages can be overcome if it's really worked at.

As has been said many times, I believe stamp collectors tend to be private people who tend to keep their interests to themselves and there has to be really good incentives to get them out of their closet.

"There has to be {a} really good incentives to get them out of their closet"------not true ,from the people I know .There are some who view collecting stamps as a quite time and want to relax and be left alone ,they escape from the world around them . They live stressful lives and are successful in business wether its in medicine or business or education .The daily affairs are pushing on them every day with family and work ,but these same people want to end the day with a peaceful quite time for a few hours and sometimes just a few minutes of viewing their collection. Stamp clubs are a waste of time ,its just another appointment and meeting to schedule and listen to someone talk about their dog or health issues.

....and hopefully stamps.

Stamp club membership is shrinking everywhere. I live in a quite big city (Barcelona, 1.700.000) on a sizeable (5.000.000) urban area. Our public transport is good and convenient. I belong to an old down town club, with our own premises, but not more than 10 people are ussually around, although we have magazines, a good library and sometimes one or two dealers.
On the other hand, I also belong to another club about 15 km from Barcelona and we meet once a week on a shared premises and there's some more (10 to 20) people, although older. Once a month, we've a lecture on philatelic or postal subjects.
A lot of sundays, I go to Barcelona's old town, to our open air stamp market, where I meet some people and chat about stamps.
I enjoy online forums, like SCF, but also sharing views and items in person.

I have no doubt that club membership is down. Here, I guess I can only blame myself. I never joined the club because I was a journalist and wrote about them and avoided the silly conflict of interest. Now, I no longer write the column and didn't join because they always meet on Friday nights - ugh. Also, though, the club's show (it's been every other year lately) is coming up. I called to buy an ad in their program and they said they weren't having a program as they didn't have the money to print one .. sad

The closest club to me has meetings on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month at 3:30pm. If I don't have regular work then I can attend. There's usually 6 to 10 people, but all are retired except for me. It's hard for new, younger people to join given the time they meet.

I've recently attended the Fort Orange Stamp Club in Albany, New York. Their last meeting had arounf 20 people in attendance which was much better and they meet on Tuesday nights at 7pm which is a much better time. Their numbers are probably bolstered since the Troy, New York club is disbanding as far as I know and the Schnectady stamp club lost their meeting place.

All the local clubs do not meet during the summer for three months which is weird to me. I'm originally from Maryland and the Bowie Stamp Club met once a week all year long. You would think that in upstate New York it would be harder to attend a club in the winter given the weather and some members are likely snowbirds (go to Florida for the winter).

I am in Minnesota and I am in the Maplewood Stamp Club which meets the 4th Thursday of every month with between 35 and 50 attending,and The Twin City Philatelic Society which meets twice a month,(once in St. Paul and once in Minneapolis). We draw between 6 to 15 members. We take July off to help with the Minnesota Stamp Expo. I also belong to the Collectors Club in Minnesota which usually meets 10 times a year. It is a little different as the members take turns hosting where they do a presentation and dinner. It is generally about a dozen guys. Technically I am also a member of the Northern Philatelic Library, but they meet on Saturdays, and I am lucky if I make it to more than one meeting a year. I guess I am pretty lucky as there are a lot of clubs around here. I would like to join the Minnesota Postal History group for one, but they meet 45 minutes from my house. I know of at least a half dozen very active clubs in the area. I am still a working stiff. Even though the kids are grown and out of the house finding time does get tough at times. The majority of the members in all these clubs are retired and not working 60 hours a week. As far as Will's comment about summer months off, we lose some snowbirds in the winter, but we lose the ones going to their cabins in the summer too. Spring and Fall are always the best attended meetings here.

Interesting comments everyone. I live in the burrough of LaSalle in Montreal and we have a stamp club but again only 5 to 10 attend. I stop going about 2 years ago as it was a little buying and trading but mostly talking. The last times I went one of the members was trying to involve the members in creating a worldwide catalogue and very insisting on his idea. On Saturday morning when I had work all week I prefer to relax home with my collections, SCF and auction sites than having to listen to an insane like that! Plus it's with SCF I learn the most not at the club. However when I have spending money for stamps I really like stamp show and attend them.

The Nashville Club meetings twice a month. I'm a lurker - I don't go but I usually take a look at their newsletter. Seems they have in the 20 range - sometimes 18 in attendance, sometimes 23 or 24.

My lack of attendance is simply time. Their buy and swap is at 5:30 with a business meeting at 6:30 and program at 6:45. Those aren't horrible times but I work and have to get to the other side of Nashville. My wife works. We have four-year-old twins and a three year old. I'm 43, a very active collector, and for me, it is simply a matter of time.

As a side note, there is a stamp club in Murfreesboro that is closer and meets at a far more convenient time. The Nashville club insists they are active, but multiple emails have never received a response.

Thanks for all the input.

Our club meets twice a month, on the 1st Sunday we have an auction, most the time the item are good stuff and sells 10 to 15 % of Cat. On The 3rd Thursday, it is more of a trader's corner.

I talked with some of the members about ways to get the club moving and we are going to try and get the boy scouts involved, there is a badge they can earn for stamp collecting. I also found out that most the members (I'm not one of them) get the monthly bulletin by email, this may be cheaper for the club, however, it is too easy for people to delete it. I'm thinking that regular mail might keep the meetings more on the mines of the members.

I'll post an update on this subject in a few months. Let you know if these ideas being in more members.