Trends In Collecting?

The trend is your friend.

Fascinating. Really really glad I opened this thread.

It is clear that trends can signal / be the result of many factors. Particularly interesting (to me) is the idea that types of collection trends can follow the introduction of... say... a style of album. (Everybody suddenly needs to have the stamps that fit those cool new pages!) Or that a few "well-heeled" buyers can influence a direction. And I had never considered that a country needs internal collectors in order to get those items out to the wider world.

Re: Cuba. I am, frankly, jealous of folks outside the US who were able to collect those stamps with relative ease across the years. My mother's collection is almost exclusively pre-embargo -- unsurprising since she was in the US. Yet I continue to wonder about Cuba's collectibility going forward, since a massive buyer's market has, theoretically, opened up.

I guess I kind of thought that when a country or region hits the news in a major way (thus the Midde East questions), it might trigger interest in people who hadn't necessarily paid a lot of attention to that part of the world. But maybe that kind of thinking is just me (or people like me, anyway), who have an insatiable curiosity and need to learn new things.

You folks are giving me so much to think about! Thank you! :)

Trends can be all about supply and demand. Perhaps you're a traveling stamp collector who can buy an item or country's stamps in one country and sell them for a profit in another country. Example: buying imperial Chinese stamps in the US and travelling to China to sell them.
For me, it was purchasing a Spanish 1984 Europa bridge stamp back in the day when they were issued. Since that time, I've visited stamp shows and purchased similar 1984 Europa stamps from other countries.

Also within a given country, as philatelic study of that particular country matures, different avenues of collecting avail themselves. For example, 100 years ago in the US, postal history collecting was not a big deal. Many collectors soaked stamps and threw away covers. Now that many philatelic scholars have plowed the way and helped better document rates, historical events with ties to philately and so on, stamps on cover and the whole cover, now get a lot more attention.

PLATE BLOCKS AND FIRST DAY COVERS USED TO BE A BIG THING, BACK WHEN I WAS A KID. NOW, I CAN'T SELL MINE.

DON

We can probably thank the postal service for that. Back 50 or 60 or more years ago, the postal service only issued a handful of new issues per year - some years they issued as few as 3 commemoratives. Collectors collected plate blocks and FDCs along with singles simply to maintain their interest in new issues, plus it was affordable to do so, given the small number of new stamps. Today, simply collecting a single example of each new stamp has a high aggregate cost, adding FDCs to that makes the cost even higher. And there really isn't such a thing as plate blocks anymore since most stamps are issued in panes of 20 or so, which has more or less replaced plate block collecting. Since new collectors aren't collecting new FDCs or blocks, they're not going back to purchase older ones, either. Classic plate blocks are probably still in demand, but those of the 40's through 90's or so usually carry no additional premium over their value as discount postage.

In first half of the last century, stamp collecting was a way to travel the world to exotic places and see things that you could not otherwise dream of. Stamp collecting was a geography, history, cultural lesson all rolled into one.

Today, most of that mystery is gone with the Internet. You don't need to buy a stamp, just ask Google.

Stamp collection used to be primarily focused on filling an album; but today, just look at the "Show us your xxx" for some idea of the diffused focus in today's collecting environment.

The world changes every day. The Postal Service today is trying to compete with faxes, email, cell phones, etc. Around the turn of the century we saw the US Postal Service and others focus on themes from each decade. Like Time magazine, trends shifted away from US and world news to popular culture, music, and sports. The US Postal Service asked: "What is popular?" The last three decades have produced movie themes (Star Wars and Harry Potter), sports stars (baseball greats), and famous musicians (from Elvis Presley to Jimi Hendrix).

I know that some people bemoan that trend, but I'm not one of them. Being a fan of pop culture, this trend has boosted my interest in topical collecting. Some of my topical interests may be more "highbrow" and abstruse (artificial international languages from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, runes and runic monuments, anyone?), but I'm happy to add Simpsons and Star Trek stamps to my collection.

In the US, the only trend I see worth talking about is grading of stamps speculating that they will be given a grade of 90 or greater. No other trend I see appears to have staying power

LET'S TALK ABOUT TRENDS ----this is the way I see it . First and most important factor is everyone is trying to reduce or specialize their holdings . Collections are getting smaller ......and that's a lot smaller . If you collect GRADED STAMPS or PLATE NUMBER COILS or even IMPERIAL CHINA you got one or most two binders in your collection .
China is a joke ,there is no hot market for recent material or air mail covers or China Liberated Areas ,it is in the early stuff or a few investment grade stamps .
I watched ebay for years and see very little advancement in collecting interest ,sure the offers for 100 stamps for $2.00 and 1,000 stamps for $10.00 get a lot of interest but these collectors are not advancing up the food chain ,they still want their penny stamps .
The buyers are getting older and their purchases are getting more selective .
Another trend that is upsetting is the stamp catalogs are losing the grasp for pricing ,where are they getting pricing numbers ,it is B.S. if you tell me from dealers or from dealer price list ,price list are rare . They are taking last years catalog and adding a percentage .
Another trend is most collectors now don't care and not willing to pay extra for MNH worldwide stamps . There are BILLIONS of worldwide stamps MNH complete sets sitting in envelopes many for 10,20 and 30 years that never was placed in a collection and the amount grows by hundreds of millions each year and never find a collector . I think it goes from dealer to auction house to another dealer then to another dealer .
end of rant .

Who ever said there was a hot market for recent China?? It has always been the early stuff and the Mao era.




First of all , there has always been more beginning and general collectors than advanced collectors, and how would you know if today's penny stamp collectors are advancing at a higher or lower rate than before?




Hundreds of millions per year? Another one of your exagerations.

Who ever said there was a hot market ----Linn's Stamp News

They been buying packet material since ebay got active in 1999 and where now 18 years later . Still people buying cheap 2 cent stamps and no evidence of advancement .


Ok not Billions ,I will correct myself to one billion and 50 million sets each year . But you got the point .

Practically every intermediate and advanced collector started out buying penny packets at some point. When I started back up myself just 5 years ago, that's pretty much all I bought for the first year or so. It was only after acquiring several thousand cheap stamps (and reaching a point of diminishing returns) that I decided on the areas I wanted to focus on more. Buyers of cheap packets advance to the next stage all the time, whether it's immediately visible to us or not. And some of them, such as myself, continue to buy penny packets now and again for the sheer joy and entertainment of sorting through a big, messy pile of stamps, something I hope I never tire of.

Hi The ArtfulHinger, here, here.

Well said sir.

Cheers

Stampmaster