USPS Says More Than 5 Million In The US Collect Stamps

I would agree about the passing of the experts. I know I don't have a lot of knowledge. But I at least can go to try and find it through what others have written down.

Forums such as this one help that knowledge to get passed on. But sadly trying to find in depth information is becoming less profitable from an industry stand point. If it wasn't for the internet and the cheap dissemination of that information electronically some of that information would probably not be passed on.

5 million wow! They must be counting all the customers that buy extra postage and "collect" it in a draw for later use. Stamp collecting.

If there are not many, many hundreds of thousands of collectors, who's buying all those stamps?

One way to measure the health of the hobby would be to measure things that are public & visible & (relatively) easily valued.

ebay, shmeBay ... consider the total sales/marketing expenses of our little industry:

- there are significant IRL auctions every week;

- there are significant shows every month;

- there are dealers running full-page print ads (that are presumably paid for out of their operating margin);

- there are people collecting salaries from those auctioneers & dealers & supply houses & ...

All of these things (with trivial exceptions) get paid for out of the operating margins of these companies.

And all of that money comes from markups (etc) on sales to collectors.

There's a Master Degree to be had estimating the economic superstructure we're supporting.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey