Stamp Investment Devices

In one of the US discussions here they are chatting about 22 ct gold stamp replicas - and how people invested in these only to discover they have almost no value - years later.

Of course we have had similar items in Canada ourselves, but I wanted to mention "investment portfolios." For a very long time (and maybe still) people have been sold small albums that were billed as "investments" - containing 25 to 50 mint stamps usually from the engraved commemorative phase of Canadian stamps. In some cases people were fleeced, er charged a high price for these and they dutifully kept them for years, only to find out like the gold replicas they had a nice, but not valuable collection. A major Canadian auction house rep told me he sees hundreds of the things and they are essentially worthless. The "portfolios" were nice for holding spares though.

I think this is sad really - so many hopes and dreams - coming to nothing.

22 feet. Damn, that's HUGE! How do you display those?

Here in the U.S. at least, back in the 70s and 80s, "investment clubs" and other subscription-based collectibles were all the rage. Not only gilt stamps, but first day covers at $5-15 each, colorized coins, NCLT, etc. I've seen countless Franklin Mint and other purveyor "collections" sold for pennies on the dollar compared to original cost.

A few years ago my local stamp dealer offered me a HUGE binder of those gilt stamps on first day covers at 35 cents each. I passed.

The modern incarnation, at least with respect to coins, is all of the trash promoted by the shop-at-home channels (QVC, HSN, ShopHQ, etc.) that have virtually no value. When Obama was elected, there was a spate of colorized U.S. quarter and dollar coins "commemorating" the event, that weren't even decently done with enamel or paint, but rather were just stickers stuck on regular coins, sold at $5-20 per coin/set... targeted specifically at a certain demographic. People who couldn't afford these, bought them as "investments" only to be told a few years later that they might as well spend them in a soda or candy machine, because they are not actually collectible and are eschewed by coin collectors and dealers.

P.T. Barnum is alive and well.

Here is an example of what RevCollector mentions
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Barack-Obam...047675.l2557

OMG! I don't collect coins nor am I a Obama fan so I missed that one. That is the worst example of taking advantage of the uninformed by one of these investment scheme coin companies I have seen. I thought the colorized stuff was bad, (my own mother got sucked into that scheme). It's just a sticker put on the coin!

Yep. In the mid- to late-1990s, it was "Limited Edition" Tiger Woods golf cards and sets.

Back in the heyday of the 1980s, The investment portfolios which I am familiar were sold by stockbrokers, primarily to non-collectors. I remember reviewing one such portfolio of Canadian stamps (they also came with US stamps). Nice quality material, but priced about 5 or 6 times the market. I wouldn't call them worthless, but certainly the investor took a severe loss.

Then more recently, there's the whole Stanley Gibbons investment portfolio fiasco...

If it's marketed as "collectable", it probably wont be.

Remember the scam with the Sierra Leone Face on Mars souvenir sheet in the 1990s? I remember classified ads in Linn's from investors trying to collect the thousands in dollars they were led to believe the souvenir sheets would be worth.

Robert

pjsstamps - personally I thought those "Ground Zero" coins were not only the worst quality collectible I have seen in my entire life but also the most tasteless. I fear they sold tens of thousands.