Disgruntled Collector With The USPS

Hi TinMan,

I have done just that. I collect the USA to 1940, GB to 1952, Egypt to around 1960, the Canadian Provinces, and the Australian States. Only very, very rarely will I pick up an exceptional modern stamp, preferably with a good cancel. I am now using all my modern mint decimal GB for postage (still legal in the right amounts) and have only kept clean CDS examples of GB postally used. These are getting harder to find because of PO counter printed labels and may well be the true "rarities" of modern stamps.

Terry

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 abolished the United States Post Office Department, a part of the cabinet, and created the United States Postal Service, a corporation-like independent agency with an official monopoly on the delivery of mail in the United States. Pub.L. 91–375 was signed by President Richard Nixon on August 12, 1970.[1]
The legislation was a direct outcome of the U.S. postal strike of 1970.



This one a good one read the last paragraph of this 1971 act :"The costs of establishing and maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people."

That is interesting "impair the overall value of such service to the people ". Now the fact that the 2007 congress made the Postal Service fund 75 years of pensions .... imagine a private business as stated in prior posts created by and falling under the jurisdiction of congress .

The nice thing about stamp collecting is you can collect any way you want .... it is like watching TV or listening to the radio you don't like the programming change the channel or just turn it off .

you can see that the decline in the numbers of collectors is simply due to the fact that the old guys/gals are dying off. Very few young people get interested in paper.

Also a glut in the market place brings the prices down for the less rare stamps. Some stamps will always appreciate in value.
It's a supply and demand thing.

I got out of stamps to focus on coins and use my money to buy coins.
It is a lot harder, because I used to buy collections, take what I wanted for myself and sell the rest.

with coins it's a bit difficult, people with coin collections instantly think about bullion values and are not interested in selling to me (though they would get a better price), so they go to the coin stores or the pawn shops...

Yes , They get the "melt price" for their gold and silver coins without realizing that it is illegal to melt and re purpose US coins. A win win valuation for the dealer ... not very good for the collector.

I am only aware of the law prohibiting melting of pennies and nickles. I am not aware of any law currently in force that prohibits the melting of silver or gold coins. At one time there was one doe silver but that expired in the lats 1960's.

I'm not always current on the laws but I have not found any other restrictions.

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/ind...lease&ID=724

Hi,
Sadly, it is now OK to melt down coins for their metal content.

I stand corrected with the law ... but you can see my point that the melt value is less than the collectible coin value and dealers do benefit from using that valuation.

If I am incorrect please correct me.

Here is the problem :




No sanctions on melting gold or silver coins unless it is you or me in our backyard . Exception is what you stated above.

How did this post go from being disgruntled with the U.S.P.S. to talking about melting coins. I think somebody hijacked this thread.

Tinman : I guess it just cross hobby comparison . The struggles we as collectors deal with come from all sources. The the USPS is not fostering the hobby as it did in the past. We are feeling the tolls of those pressures .

Best john