What Will Stamp Collecting Be Like In 15 Years?

I am wondering what will happen in the apocalyptic world. Just how will stamp collecting change direction to whatever it's end result will be? Who will still be selling stamps 15 years from now? Who will be buying them? When will stamp collections stop being sold at estate sales and being on their way to winding up in the trash can instead?


-IBFS

I don't think people will worry about stamps when or
if the Apocalypse comes.

I haven't see Rick and his crew on the Walking Dead looking
for stamp collections yet.

Stamp collecting will in some form be with us for generations to come although if we were to jump ahead to see it, we may not like what we see. Stamps will be collected as relics. They will no longer see use by the public, countries may continue to churn out new issues but they will eventually become redundant and just some of the wilder parts of the world will continue to try to milk remaining collectors with them. Focus will be on classic older issues, prices for rarities will hold up well but moderate priced stuff will decline. Stamps are fragile objects- in time many will be lost as collectibles.

As the number of collectors will diminish, there will be an abundance of cheap material below the VF/XF category. This trend has already begun today. Example: Some years ago classic Denmark was bought/sold at 15-25% of catalog. Nowadays you can get whatever you want for 5-15% catalog. This is the 'average Joe' quality which most peoples collections consists of.

This is probably true. I think you'll also (thankfully) see more online sales and printed dealer price lists will (thankfully) become a thing of the past. Unfortunately I think we'll also see fewer long-time, full-time dealers and more and more sellers will be part-time dealers and/or collectors. This may bode well for our pocketbooks in some respects, but it would also be a loss to the hobby as those long-time dealers have a huge amount of knowledge that can only be obtained from decades of experience and actually handling many examples of scarcer and more valuable stamps.

Hopefully we'll have some better digital tools that we've discussed here at length. Catalogs will finally be fully digitized and in a database form and printing your own album pages will be both very easy and very customizable.

Other than that, I think people are still going to collect stamps, they'll still mount them in albums or use stockbooks, etc. So...the good things I see coming are better tools, better access to stamps, better prices for "average" material. On the downside, we may lose some long-term knowledge and purchasing better material may become riskier. Resale value of "average" material is likely to decline or stay flat.

Yes but is peoples want to pay? from what I can see, many peoples want a free online solution, with less customers price for such digital version will not be cheap.

If everyone print their own pages and Amos don't sell pages anymore, do you expect they give for free their online catalog

I pay $ 428 for my Ezstamps ( inlcuding all the ory ) and my AlbumGen may be not perfect but it do a very good job.

In terms of payment for digital tools, I would guess that an online catalog/database app would be subscription-based. Album page creation apps might be as well, or just developed open-source in the collector community. Speaking for myself personally, I'm willing to pay for things that add real value. Would I pay a monthly or yearly subscription just to access PDFs of a catalog? No, that doesn't add much value for me. Would I pay a subscription for a fully searchable catalog with robust database features? Absolutely, because that would be a real value for me.

The logical end game is to roll all of those things (catalog, database, album page creation) into a single Killer App (as discussed at length here). It would make sense to do it this way as so much of the information needed to create custom album pages - year of issue, denomination, color, size, etc - would (hopefully) already be contained in the catalog data. Assuming Scott or another catalog publisher finally does something like this, they would probably have multi-tiered subscription rates. Just want to see listings and values? That's one rate. Want to add the ability to inventory and create want lists? That would be another rate. Want to generate album pages on the fly? That would be yet another rate, or you'd just pay some small amount per page or per stamp. Depending on whether they want to add historical data to the database (which I doubt will ever happen), they could potentially charge for access to the "archives" as well. Once you've got all those things built, you can slice and dice them in various ways that are attractive to wider swaths of people.

In some respects, if some of these things actually come to pass, it could potentially change collecting in ways we can't currently foresee. Topical collecting could become huge. Imagine if you could do a quick search for every stamp with your favorite topic and then create album pages instantly, conveniently leaving off ones you don't like or that are too expensive. Oh, and don't forget the instant links you'd see to sellers selling those stamps. People could branch off on totally different collecting areas almost on a whim.

I do model railroading, for control a layout we have 2 software (well more but not worth), one is open-source and the other is made by a company. I try both of them and I finally pay $ 648 US for the paying one ( RR&co ) the open-source has too much bugs and the paying one run flawless, more friendly to use too. All true the open-source is way better for program the locomotive; this is what they focus on. I'm not about the price but the quality and something that fit my need (why I will do my own album pages when I can get 80,000 of them for $30 )

The kick start may be a nice thing to talk about, but unless you have real programmers with software development experience, it will go nowhere.

Predictions for 15 years out?

Q/ How about a decline in Albumism? And of its evil spawn, Completionism?

Now that stamps are no longer a part of everyday life, there will be fewer collectors 'coming to stamps from stamps'.

I would expect that to lead to a greater decline in Completionist Albumizers than in some of the other types of collectors.

For example, specialties like US Civil War blockade-running covers will continue to enjoy their niche audience, because people have ancillary interests, such as the war, the blockade, smuggling, the impact of withering commercial traffic on withering UK political support for the Confederacy, et al.

In this PoV, more of the (remaining) hobby will be people who got interested in stamps from a study of history, or of commerce, or of art, or of printing, or of government (revenues), or because postal traffic is a proxy for cultural ties, social ties, etc.

Further, if there *is* such a decline in Albumism-Completionism Philately, I would expect there to be a decline in the sorts of differentiations they support, eg, perf-counting. And, therefor, a severe drop in the premiums paid for the varieties.

As usual, I would think that we could learn something from other collectibles that once were in everyday use.

Q/ How many people today collect only quills, with no interest in inks & inkwells & seals & wax?

Q/ How many people today collect only muskets, with no interest in rods & balls & powders & slings?

I would expect stamp collecting to be more integrated with other fields and, therefor, less about the stamps.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I don't suspect that most collectors come into a hobby because they used the things they collect in their daily lives. I suspect most people engage in a hobby of collecting something (rocks, cards, coins, antiques, etc.) for 1 of 2 reasons, and perhaps sometimes both. The first reason is true interest in the thing they collect. Then second reason is because they think they can reap financial rewards, and are really engaged in collecting for profit, not for the enjoyment of the hobby itself.

That being said, I think postal services around the world will become more limited and geared towards serving rural areas and "3rd world" countries. (Sorry, but it is going to take much longer than 15 years to put a computer in every home around the world that is connected to the Internet.) That being said, in some countries I suspect the post services will outsource stamp production to individuals (e.g. zazzle and stamps.com) because that would immediately cut millions of dollars in annual costs of stamp production.

I suspect many collectors will focus on 'classic' era stamps and will continue to build collections in albums much as we do today. I agree the number of true collectors will diminish and the cost of many stamps will drop as brick and mortar dealers get out of the business and purge their stocks, and people who inherit collections put them up for sale on ebay, Alibaba, etc.

Yes, there will be people who specialize just as there is today. But even topical collecting can be a long pursuit. I also suspect as the number of collectors shrink clubs will eventually go to the wayside and collectors around the world will collaborate in online forums such as this.

On the technical side of things the 'cloud' offers possibilities for collaboration, but I don't see a lot of collectors leaving their current cataloging system. The printing costs may become cost prohibitive and demand of younger collectors may push catalog companies to eventually put more resources into an online cataloging system with a rich searchable database. (Data entry is cheap...the database schema and user interface is costly. And open source is not and has never been a viable alternative....at the end of the day someone has to pay the bills.)

Of course I reserve the right to change my opinion if an apocalypse occurs, zombies start running through the streets, and each district has to send off tributes to compete in hunger games every year.

I had not considered stamp-eating zombies. Will they be more interested in the stamp, or the glue?

Ike, I think you're watching too many "Walking dead" episodes.

btw-- Do dead people collect stamps?


-IBFS

One daughter is fond of quoting the rule that, in an argument, the first one to mention 'Hitler' or 'Nazi' loses.

I was not the first one to mention zombies!

You've obviously never attended a stamp club meeting...





But on topic, I don't see much in the way of changes 15 years out. Fifty? Who knows?

Cjd...I am LOL!! Having just recently attended MY very first stamp show gathering.
I'm 65, bald and with a 50% gray beard. And among the few dealers and customers I was the "kid"!

THIS is our greatest challenge. Stamp collecting currently does not appear to invite young people. And I use "young" loosely, meaning from kids to adults 20 years short of retirement age.

In another string another Forum member worried out loud if stamp collecting will survive. Prior to attending a stamp collectors event I provided several optimistic views of the positive future of stamp collecting. However, I have since interviewed several dealers who confirm that their fortunes have worsened in recent times. Where's the young blood coming from to invest in older collections? Who are the young professionals becoming stamp dealers because they know they can earn a good living? Where are there stamp collecting clubs that have grown?

We love stamps, but most of us in this forum appear to be middle age or older. Our hobby needs younger blood! As a career marketer I see this need for a revitalized interest in stamp collecting among younger people as a requirement in order to stave off a continual decline in overall philatelic investments. At stake is lower dealer revenues, reduced auction sell prices, and lesser demand for collections which will sell for decreased prices.

AS a relative newbie to the collection market, I see stamps as a very conservative segment that has embraced fewer new advances and changes than most areas of our global economy. The single glowing exception-advent of the Internet stamp market. I urge all stamp lovers to focus on ways we may introduce the interests behind stamp collecting to kids and young adults.

Our fascination with stamps has to go viral in the digital age!

I am frequently suggesting that we look to other collectibles for clues about the future, adaptations we might adopt, etc.

Q/ Which collectibles 'community' do you think has done a better job of adapting? Furnishings? First editions? How & why?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey