How Old Are You And Whats Your Gender? Will Philately Die?

ebay is not GOD. ebay is nothing, but ebay has brought more people back to the hobby than a 100 brick & mortars or stamp shows could have done. People are much more comfortable browsing from their computer.

That alone should makes it an important part of this hobby.

Male, 39.
Started collecting at age 8, until around age 16 when other things piqued my interest. Started up again around age 28-29 when my studies were done, house and job were secured and I discovered my old collection in the attic.

i agree with you on that part kcaramat....

Male 49.
Same story as Tinus above.

Philately will not die.
What we need is that the next generation will get a chance.
Most stampclub presidents think that they are president till they die.
More than 10 years ago, I spoke to the president of the dutch royal dutch stamp society.(KNBF).
He told me within 10 years no one will collect stamps anymore!
It has to do with the age.. fresh blood. Then philately is saved.
By the way, every century it is twice goldfever. Last time in the netherlands in begin 70's.All stamps issued were sold out in hours!
At this moment in the netherlands bank intrest rates on saving money is almost zero%.
People search for new ways to let their money grow.
But no one promotes collecting stamps thats wrong.
The cause is the age of managers and directors of the stamp companies.
They are for 99% babyboomers and almost retired.
After they are retired and stepped aside new blood will let philately live up again in new ways and with new strategies.
I am 100% shure of that!

49, male. don't think stamp collecting will die, but will evolve. I do think it will wane in popularity, as have many other areas of collecting. (anyone remember souvenir thimbles and spoons from their heyday back in the 70's??)

I actually think the hobby will thrive once the post office is dead.

Look at art, once an artist dies look at the values go up as supply goes away.

Look at cars, take a car that is popular out of production and bingo high values due to zero supply. Takes time but same with stamps.

Even the evil stamps of the sixties and up might be valuable in time.

Cut off the supply and the demand will grow. Younger fresh blood and ideas won't hurt either.

In the Netherlands here, we don't have postoffices anymore.
Now (mainly) supermarkets sell stamps and the dutch post sells on the internet too.
Selling stamps will not stop. Only less less less.
The rates go up fast. The total stamps per issue is going down.
But as long as not the whole world uses internet post will stay to excist.
For example North Korea, Bangladesh and other countries rely on post.
Prices for stamps will go up. ( the new ones)
Prices will go down for old stamps. New stamps are more scarse than old ones.

really kilowarecollector...??
Dont you think you got that backwords...

No not in my opinion.
Starters collections will be old pre internet period stamps.
The blue Mauritius will stay expensive!
Modern 2000 and onwards mint dutch commemms have a value over face value if you can find them. They are scarse!
The most expensive old stamps key values will be more expensive but common old stamps will go down in value.

But after a while.. more people start to buy these bargains and prices will go up again.
Prices are not stabil and the number of of philatelists go first down and then up again
I speak mainly about my knowledge, I live in the Netherlands.
There are more sellers than buyers at the moment.
Some wanted stamps from the 70's lowered in price.
Sets that were scarce 10 years ago are now on the market.
Ten years ago issues were for example 1 million sets this was scarce. Nowadays dutch sets are issued by 100 thousand sets. Fdc's in 1980 half a million per cover in 2014 less than 50 thousand.
So modern becomes scarce and that is a new trend since the 90's!

It might be that the situation in Canada is different.
For example I bought a kilo canadian kiloware.
Many commems complete sets good kiloware.
The price was 200 euros.
This quality isn't available in dutch kiloware since 2002
Not even for 400 or 600 euros.
In the 90's it was sold for 50-60 euros.
In germany the situation is different. Tey have a well organised charity system.
Good german kiloware recent is 20 euro.
In the uk things changed too . Blue peter organisation stopped with kiloware.
Uk is now scarce in kiloware.
The market in stamps is changing rapidly.
For every country in a different way.

For example if a stamp had a price of 100 and the price goes down to 20 than companies that own these stamps can pay 20 for advertisements and prices will go up to 80 the profit is 40!
Prices need to go down before they can go up again.
This makes investments in new collectors profitable.
Thats my opinion.
The big market is here: babyboomers learned to collect. They are retired and are searching for a hobby. Stampdealers are advertising in philatelic magazines while the market is new collectors and not to sell more stamps to less philatelists.
Fresh blood, the new generation has to fill up the enormous gap in the market.

Yes, if one looks at catalog listings, values of stamps after 2000 or 2005 or so are quite a bit higher in value than ones from, say, 1960 or 1980. Fewer stamps being used on mail combined with more different stamps issued each year = many stamps that are scarce (relatively speaking). On top of that, very few (if any) collectors or dealers are putting away new issues in quantities, so I agree that the stamps of today will probably continue to have a higher value than those of 20+ years ago, not counting truly classic stamps. I don't think any modern items will become truly valuable, but there will be plenty of stamps and sets with market values of several to tens of dollars, as compared to stamps of previous eras (again, not counting the classics), which are worth little more than their recyclable value as paper.

I do think that the values will adjust somewhat from where they're at now, though. Scott values almost all new issues, both mint and used, at twice face value. I know from experience that there are some $1 CV stamps that just plain never, ever show up in kiloware and many $5-$10 stamps that are common as dirt, regardless of what the face value says. There are some stamps that Scott says are worth $6 that I literally have a couple hundred examples of because the kiloware is just full of them. I'd look for those values to be adjusted over the next decade or two and then we'll have a decent idea of the actual market value of those things.

A large part of the price being higher from 2000 relative to the 60's or the 80's is that the face values are much higher now, so the catalog reflects that. Finding some of them used on cover will be a challenge, but the stamps themselves will be around.

The only thing that might kill philately is the greed of stamp issuing countries. The USPS has gotten so bad with it frequent issues, I gave up collecting them.

M63 Changing to 64 Nov. 14th along with my brother. I got stamp collecting and other collecting habits from my late mother and father. Both collected stamps among other things. I appear to be the last collector in my family.

Male, I will be 47 on November 7.

I do not think the hobby is dying. Is the hobby what I imagine it was back in the 1950s and 60s, probably not. But I doubt it is dying. While indeed it is harder to get younger people involved, I bet there is a fair number of people in their 30s and 40s who are starting or re-starting their collections.

I think in fact the internet may be helping with the hobby, with forums such as this, online buying and selling.