Used Prices Collapsing Vs Mint Prices Over The Last 15 Yrs?

First post here, hi everyone.

So I recently dug out my Canadian collection and have been getting back into it after 15 years. My focus has been on used CDS Canada pre-1980 and aiming for XF where budget permits.

A lot seems to have changed since I've been gone! In particular I am quite alarmed by what seems to be a rapid decline in the value of my used collection.

I compared some prices in my 1998 Unitrade Specialized Canada catalogue to the 2014 edition, and particularly amongst earlier material it seems that mint prices have generally doubled over the last 15 years. However used prices have remained the same. When factoring in inflation, that means my collection has been declining in value by about 30% (avg rate of inflation @ 2% per annum).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not in it for the money - I just love collecting for its own sake. But I'd at least like to know that when I take the time to scour for superb examples with beautiful CDS cancellations on classic stamps, that my investment is not actually declining in value.

It makes me wonder whether I should switch to collecting mint, which I don't want to do for both cost and personal taste reasons.

Can anyone speak to what is happening here and whether my assessment is valid?

Can't say that I have noticed this particular pricing oddity since I generally use a current catalogue more for an awareness of relative values than for comparing year to year changes. I would be quite willing to believe it though.

I think that it applies mostly to average material and maybe even fine material but if you are concentrating on superb centering and cancellation then all price guidelines tend to fly right out the window anyway. If I spot that one perfect stamp in an auction and decide that I MUST have it, then my bids have more to do with what I happen to have in my pocket than what the catalogue may say.

"Perfect" used material in terms of centering, condition and cancel is so rare that I am usually able to swallow a premium in an auction. And I have been known to gloat and chuckle happily if I run across something in a dealer's stockbook and get it for just the catalogue price. Gollum and "My Precious!" have nothing on my reaction.

I think you are perfectly spot on by continuing with the used universe and just going with what instinct and circumstance allow you to get. Besides, for me anyway, the use of a stamp just adds that little patina of interest and speculation.

Get back to it and continue to enjoy the hobby and be aware of but don't worry overly about value. I doubt that you would ever want to sell the collection anyway. I intend to write a Will soon that shall begin with the line, "Being of sound mind and body, I spent it all," and leave my heirs to fuss over whether they get full value from the disposal of the stamps.

Hello JR1960, welcome to Stamp Community.

The supposed drop in inflation adjusted prices has always been that way I think. There really is No drop in value.

The main point to collecting is enjoying and appreciating the stamps and envelopes and history of postal communications, art on stamps, engraving, painting, carving, sculpture, photography, etc, as well as celebrating achievements and marking events.

I like the sorting aspect of the hobby and figuring out what is what and what could be what.


There has always been a financial draw to collecting stamps and I was drawn to stamps by that same reason myself years ago.

Some of that was caused by the government's allowance of stamps as an investment, as stated here by other members. Investing has always been a draw also.

People selling their stamp collections for less than they had paid for it because it really was their father's or husbands or brother's or someone who did know about what they were about. But now, the inheritors do not know about them, and thus a drop in supposed value.

The value depends on what the person paid for them minus the value they received out of them (collecting interest, investing value, personal enjoyment, community, etc) equals the, hopefully, remaining value that you can receive out of them.

Dealers and other collectors will not always pay a good rate for All the stamps, even though you yourself may have paid such a rate or price. They themselves have to make their monies invested back with a profit hopefully.

Trading with other collectors and buying and selling amongst them is probably the best route to take to receive the value from them.


I have noticed that modern, recent stamps hold a lot of interest compared to slightly older ones. But, the classics and nicely catalogue valued ones do also hold some value.

One main thing is that the collectors need information about their investing values themselves in order to make informed decisions, especially after some financial events of the past years that have affected a lot of the world.

China now has gained a foothold in investing. If a type of stamp or era is of interest and is promoted by a good investment knowledge and portfolio on ebay or other auction sites, then there is buying interest and collectors are hunting up those stamps to value them and see what they have.


There is always a hunt on for something or other. I think the object of the hunting just moves around and changes over the years.

Backroads,




nice

Good point on VF-XF pricing. I had considered that. However, the flaw in that argument is that the same principle must also apply to mint, yes? The point I am making is that the relative gap between mint and used values has increased substantially. To me this means relative demand for mint is going up while relative demand for used is going down.

We can pretend price doesn't matter, but let's be honest with ourselves. The value of a stamp makes up a notable portion of the personal satisfaction experienced when considering an item. To see that value plummet detracts in some measure from the reward of the experience.

In some ways it's like someone telling you "Nobody collects those anymore." You can't tell me that this would not impact your pride of ownership in any way.

Just thought I should point out that the Unitrade catalog makes mention that a used stamp with an in-period CDS cancel can (not always) demand a premium, sometimes selling for more than a mint stamp.

I prefer to collect used stamps and will continue to do so. I am not so much interested in XF, perfect CDS centering, though I will grab those when I can. But I prefer to study the cancel itself (city, town, railroad, etc). The stamp preferably is nicely centered as well.

Some of these cancels are rare, thus can be bought/sold at a premium. You most likely have some of these rare items. However, since you are more interested in the XF used aspect, you are not necessarily going to be aware of any added rarity factors. Even so, a nicely centered, CDS stamp will always be a welcome addition to any collection.

Have their relative prices decreased? Perhaps the catalog makers are more focussed on mint values and the gap does exist (at least on paper). I doubt it really exists for collectors of nice used Canadian stamps.

Along with the Canadian collection, I also have a World-wide that I take a lot of pleasure in. Canada, I am trying to complete with used material. I never will but that's OK; it gives me a goal. World-wide; I pick up whatever comes my way and try to find out as much as I can about the material before I mount it without too much regard to mint or used. Completion is not a goal. Acquisitive I may be but very limited in resources. Now, your question and your viewpoint comes down to perceptions of value.

As I tried to say, catalogues are dangerous things where value is concerned. Everyone grants that condition and demand controls it and that commodity values fluctuate up and down with both time and place. I can buy Canadian stamps much more cheaply when I am travelling in Europe than I can in downtown Calgary. Since we have begun this discussion, I have gone back to old catalogues myself and you seem to be perfectly correct to say that mint material has increased much more than used - even in terms of stated premiums for never hinged where those have bounced up as well. (An aside - why have there never been stated premiums for quality used?) And I cannot fault your application of inflation over time as a criteria to imply loss of monetary value for a used collection.

That point is where we do part company, though. Current value plays a very small roll in how I feel about my collection. It is important to know when I buy something. It is important to know when I sell something. But important to my perception of the collection itself? Not really. A favorite question from someone who finds out that I collect stamps is either "How much is your collection worth?" or "What's your most valuable stamp?". I quite honestly cannot answer either question. I can take an educated stab at the first based on ebay realized prices for similar collections but would not have a clue about the second.

I can, however, go on at great length about my Penny Black. I could give lots of info, thanks to SCF members and their answers to questions, about early India, Australian States, Transvaal, Assorted Cinderella Issues and others. And, mostly, I could bore the pants off any non-collector talking about Canadian cancels and historical references. In fact, I have several hundred slides (pre-digital era)showing items in my collection that I once used to give a presentation on Canadian History.(I was working on putting a generation of Jr. High students to sleep at that point - 1970's).

You have pointed out that my Canadian Collection has, relative to mint values, lost money over the past 15 years. I don't argue that. Interesting. Does it reduce the interest in it. No. Does it reduce the sense of pride? No.

Value is important. Knowledge of value is important. But you do have to decide whether you are creating an investment or creating a collection of something, whatever you decide, for your own personal satisfaction and enjoyment. It can be mint stamps, used stamps or match books. It doesn't matter once you have figured out what you want to do. The whole debate of investment vs collection has been argued out in this forum many, many times.

My personal bias is never to let the ups and downs of value affect the enjoyment and pride that you take in your collection. I never intend to sell it and have never put investment money into it. Therefore my pride is in the interest of what I have and what I have done with it and not in its value.

3Dadeo - points taken. I should clarify that I aim for XF but will pick up and hold on to specimens with interesting/attractive/rare postmarks even if not XF. Finding XF for a lot of the higher value classic material will be a life long challenge.

backroads - I like your perspective and obviously can not argue with anyone's personal sentiment regarding their own collection. I will only reply that for me it is personally discouraging to see something I paid $200 for 15 years ago now selling on ebay for $40 because it suggests there is much less appreciation nowdays for what I am collecting. Call it vanity, insecurity, whatever...it bothers me.

Anyway, enough on the sentiment of the issue. I was wondering if anyone had insight on the market fundamentals at play regarding used Canada. So far there have been a few plausible theories. Interested in any others, especially from dealers in the crowd.

The other thing you have to consider is the availability of product is MASSIVELY different than it was 15 - 20 years ago. Your stamp that you paid $200 for in 1994 that now sells for $40 is because there's probably 50 of them on ebay, whereas in 1994 local dealers controlled most of the market. So now you have many vendors trying to sell or low-ball so it's MUCH easier to find stamps on the cheap. I bought my daughter a used VF lightly cancelled 158 for $1 a month ago on the first night I went hunting for one! Try and find that kind of sample that fast and that cheap 20 years ago, there's no way.

I remember in my stamp club, you were lucky if you had more than 1 or 2 very senior members that had a #1 beaver, let alone have them bring it to look at. I can probably open up ebay right now and find 3 or more available for sale.

Supply and demand are huge factors, and when the supply is suddenly MUCH more readily available than demand, prices plummet. Combine that with significant global economic issues and high jobless rates in North America, collectibles are dropping quite a bit in general. That also explains why only mint, near-perfect copies get premium prices, they are easier to find so collectors feel it's easier to get their hands on them so many will focus on those and only go used if it's completely out of reach price-wise.

This of course is all in my opinion... *gets off soap box*

Dan

In my humble opinion, a significant part of this is Supply versus Demand.

Dan I think you are absolutely right, it is WAY easier now to fill gaps in my collection and find nice specimens. I also think there is merit to the general economics argument. We have to keep in mind that sellers are not just competing against other sellers (and there are more of them now), but against other past-times. Stamps are competing against flat screen TV's, smartphones, and video games for the attention and resources of a finite group of people with a finite amount of time and money.

I was at the EXUP 35 show in Montreal today (it ran today and runs through tomorrow) and it was my first stamp expo in over 20 years and I was BLOWN AWAY by the prices some vendors were looking for mint Canadian stamps vs what I can find online. At least double or triple going rates, I had trouble keeping a straight face. Some GREAT prices on supplies and general mint and used stamps... they had stacks of several hundred albums and you could buy anything you wanted from them for 0.10 each item. I actually went though a mint Canadian album and found about 80 stamps to fill up some holes.

Anyhow, another thing I noticed was how nice they were to my 10 year old daughter, she was getting gifts of free stamps, free tweezers, free perf measuring guide, free PBs, it was crazy. It was like watching over a dozen grandpas and grandmas all fussing over their grand daughter that they hadn't seen in months. In speaking to several of the volunteers, they told me that they were lucky to see 5 kids total at these shows and that collecting among the youth was just about dead seeing as stamp collecting has nothing to do with video games, facebook or iphones.

Which by the way is something I've noticed... the stamp community seems to be WAY behind in terms of online technology. This forum is a fantastic resource and in the short time I've registered, I can see that there are many intelligent, passionate and helpful members, but this is about the most archaic forum software I have ever seen lol! As far as I can tell you can't even quote someone or reply directly to a post. Then I see people discussing inventory systems for keeping track of your collection and people swapping around spreadsheets. Things is, if you're on the road, you want to be able to access your inventory from various devices, yet there doesn't seem to be a single online inventory system that allows you to open an account and track your inventory from anywhere in the world. I did see that EZStamp software and tried the demo, it too seems really dated, although very useful, but again, can't be accessed except from your PC the software is installed on. And what if you're on a Mac or a tablet?

Another example I've noticed is the big players in the stamp community in my area and province have absolutely horrible websites, coded in 1996 by the looks of things that aren't properly indexed by google and makes finding them and philatelic events nearly impossible. In fact a month ago when I was looking all over for shows and expos in Montreal, I NEVER saw the EXUP 35 show I went to today, it was a complete fluke that my wife saw it in a free local paper that she just happened to look at while waiting for the Metro.

Anyhow, in talking to people face to face, it's clear they are worried about the future of the hobby and they are seeing it in the prices, attendance and age demographics of collectors. If this is a hobby that's going to appeal to the "me" generation that has the attention span of a squirrel on crack, it's going to need quite a bit of evolving.

The crazy thing is, the stamp collecting world is still a large niche that has been around for decades but extremely under-developed online. Many would-be entrepreneurs tear their hair out trying to come up with a successful online business and I can think of at least 5 great projects that don't exist or are extremely under-developed that would appeal to stamp collectors online and make revenue in the process. I am genuinely shocked that there is no login-based online stamp inventory system that can populate itself with user populated data and the catalog database is constantly growing organically.

Anyhow, I'm going on a complete tangent and I need to get some sleep... good night everyone!

Dan

If prices have gone down, look at it as an opportunity to buy and add more used stamps to your collection at lower prices so that the value over time evens out like cost averaging since it appears that now is the time to buy while most are after mint stamps. Then when those who were after mint stamps begin to realize that they could buy the same stamp used for less and start to buy them, you will be ahead of them. That's how things may usually go since trends can change over time back and forth. The overlooked things can sometimes potentially have a way of coming back.

Very interesting point, although I think right now prices for both mint and used are both fairly low.

Dan

Faken, I agree with your point about dealer prices at shows usually being higher (by orders of magnitude) to prices one can get online. The only difference being that online items can sometimes not be as advertised.

I agree, always nice to see the stamps in front of you, but I tend to buy from the same dozen people online that I know describe their lots properly. Haven't had any issues so far *knocks on wood* ;)

Faken,
I think the technology of this forum is quite good. I've been on forums for 15 years and I've seen much worse, and not too many better. I like your description of the EXUP show. Things really evolved for the stamp community with forums and ebay and it still is.