Will Stamp Collecting Survive?

one more Norman Rockwell art of the 1940s and 50s postman:

I was one of them. I got my start from an H.E. Harris ad in Boy's Life, probably around 1980, give or take a year or two.

the Jamestown etc offerings are at least something. I don't see why some dealers might profit from sending some wallpaper stamps to young collectors, there are plenty of cheap precancels and just plain wallpaper stamps from countries like San Marino etc that cost next to nothing. the question is would it be 'worth it"? economically maybe not except for vest pocket dealers, but in the long run, getting hooked on stamps early on might pay dividends in the long run.

Here's something that'll never happen, but imagine how many new collectors you could snag if you could put packets of 50 or so stamps costing $1 or less at the checkout aisles at Wal Mart. 95% of people who saw them would never buy them, even out of curiousity, and 90% of the rest may never buy another one, but what's left would still be a pretty big number.

WalMart has a 'crafts' section, if memory serves, where hobby stuff would fit.

But who is going to assemble packets for a wholesale price of twenty cents?

Well, the exact scenario I described wouldn't be much of a business concern since it would be hard to see how to make a profit at that price. It's really a moot point because WalMart is never going to devote space at the checkout aisle to stamps. But for the sake of argument, it would probably have to be another one of those volunteer efforts that I seem to be fond of mentioning. The APS could ask their members to donate packets of duplicate stamps, for example. They could be the commonest stamps there are - even Dunes issues - new collectors would have no idea that advanced collectors curse the sight of the stamps in those packets. It wouldn't even have to be Wal-Mart, just any retail location where they're out in the open and visible. It could be a different amount of stamps at a different price - the point is to get them out where the public can see them and the curious can take a further look.

do we have a thread on about how to start kids on stamp collecting? I have 3 grandsons and one grand daughter....am more concerned about what type of "album" and mounting to suggest for 10-11 year olds. the older boys are 18 and doubt they will be interested in stamps until they get past the girl focused period.

Discounting the hyperbole, floortrader's post is right on the mark. The hobby needs to change to accommodate the average collector or youth.

I think the best way to get children interested in stamps, which is tough these days, is for the parents to get involved. Without parental guidance and sacrifice of time (i.e., involvement) most children (and parents) are going to take the easy route (e.g., letting the XBox or TV take the place of parental involvement). Sure some children can do it themselves, like probably most of us did, but for the hobby to really take root requires mutual interests, meaning parental interest in activities that interest children (e.g., video games) in exchange for children taking interest in parent's activities (e.g., stamp collecting).

But isn't that precisely the disappointment that caused so many a boy scout or comic book reader to drop the hobby like a hot rock?

Surely there is enough good kiloware out there to make inexpensive packets of decent stamps?




Hence my gentle hint about the crafts department ...

... which brings us to Michael's, Hobby Lobby, et al.

Q/ How would we convince the craft'n'hobby chains to take a new look at stamps?

Q/ What ancillary products do the craft'n'hobby stores already carry? <=== 'synergy'

Q/ What ancillary products could the craft'n'hobby stores easily carry?

Mind you, some of their customers will see stamps and think 'papier mache' ;)

Q/ Are there any better 'new' retail channels than the craft'n'hobby stores?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

In my opinion it is useless to think that there will be stamp collecting by youths.

The future of Philately is that the starting time for stamp collecting will be in post 30's of even older.

The various Post Offices around the world have cooked their goose with the Golden Egg syndrome, too many issues, too high face values, too many formats which leads to too much variation to collect even of the one issue.

However Philately will still prosper mainly because of the fact that there are Exhibitions and Exhibitors who strive to get the best which includes Postal History items, covers and scarce stamps.

Cheap stamps will remain cheap but better items will rise in value because of the competition to acquire them.

Pagoda

Re, scalp's comment that showed some Disney ducks doing after stamps... In Finland Donald Duck is even today the nations most read magazine, and only last week their main story featured stamp collecting / philately in major role. About 1 million Finns saw and read the story (and as the same stories are circulated in Scandinavia and Europe, the total number is likely > 5 million youth and adult readers).



And take my word, this is not an isolated case. Stamp collecting gets featured this way few times a year. It's just that it happens unexpectedly and in environments where there are no traditional collectors. It is beyond my comprehension why stamp organizations don't take any advantage of things like this...

But going back to survival... The real problem is that stamps are no longer the commodity they once were. Unless you have collector friends, then you don't get stamps from the incoming mail. That is the real 'death blow' to get youth to enter the hobby. And that is why things such as Postcrossing should be seen as chance to salvage what's left.

Just my 5 cents worth.
-k-

Basically, so far, I have heard here that:


1. There is a death of selling stamps by Post Offices and receiving these newer stamps by mail or post.

Solution: Mail more stamps to everyone. Use stamps to mail stamps. Ask for nice postmarks or cancels.


2. There do seem to be many friendly stamp collectors around (that's us) who can and do relate to youth from 1 to 85 who just want to have fun collecting some pretty stamps that they hope, because they like and love them, will be of some value to other persons later on.

Solution: Continue being friendly, learn some friendly selling techniques, continue having fun.


3. The persons who do collect stamps enjoy the hobby and wish they had more friends to share it with.

Solution: If you enjoy and profit financially or emotionally from stamp collecting, and associated activities, others will notice this and ask you how you do that.

edit: typos

Hobby Lobby (at least the one in my area) does carry a small bag of stamps (on paper) and a couple other odds and ends, like hinges and I think a beginner album or two. But the stamps are in an opaque bag saying there are stamps in there, you can't see them. When I was a kid, the packets had nice large, colorful pictures of the stamps inside. It was the images of the stamps that caught my eye and piqued my curiousity.

To your earlier point, it's hard to see this happening because of the costs. The stamps themselves would be cheap enough, but the retail outlet and the packet-maker would both want to make a profit, of course, and if one wants to sell a few tens of thousands of stamp packets, you're talking a considerable amount of labor to assemble them all. Ideally there would be a few different packets, more or less uniform in the stamps contained within, with a nice picture of the stamps inside. The opaque bag I was talking about is probably a necessity if the contents vary from bag to bag. Making the contents of each bag different is probably a necessity to keep costs down as that way a packet maker can just include whatever they can get their hands on cheaply that week and then just stuff them in the bag.

John Apfelbaum once made the point that the packets I remember as a kid are no longer around because they used to be assembled using cheap Eastern European labor. That labor ceased being so cheap once Europe was fully recovered and back on its feet following WWII, which took a few decades.

Again, this doesn't necessarily have to be THE solution, but the general idea is to expose people to the wider world of stamps, which 99% of people have little-to-no exposure to.

The two Hobby Lobby stores near my house have small stamp collecting and coin collection sections.




We have to convince them it will result in SALES. The problem here is how many of us buy anything from Hobby Lobby? I might pick up a few mounts, a set of tongs, or some hinges, but that's about it. I'm not buying one of the one or two albums they carry, nor am I buying the packet of stamps they sell for $3.95.




Hmmm. Cutters for mounts? Magnifying glasses? Quality paper for custom pages?




Interestingly, about 2 years ago, I had a TON of stamps. Ok, not a ton, but about 25 pounds of common world-wide stamps. I sold them all on ebay to a craft supplier. I'm sure they became the papier mache you mention. Sadly/interestingly, there are crafts involving stamps.



Not sure, but the retail landscape changes constantly and one never knows what opportunities may come up. My fear is that stamp collecting, as an industry (NOT interchangeable with hobby), may not be overly adept at recognizing and shifting with those changes.

'20 is the new 12'.

Ayn Rand enjoyed such success selling her economic theology wrapped in sex because there was a time when people could read before they could have sex. What might have been a ripe age for stamp collecting back then might not be the best target age now.

Pagoda has a point: maybe we should aim for an age group that has disposable income, a desperate need for individuation, an emerging interest in the broader world, a hobby they could share with *their* kids, etc.

'30 is the new 13'.




The mom'n'pop grocers that got wiped-out by the grocery chains may have recognized, but they did not shift: they hung on as long as they could, then went & did something else for a living.

'The new operator does things the new way' is much more common than, say, Stanley Gibbons becoming a big seller on ebay.

So what would be the new way of making starter kits?




You kids won't believe it but, once upon a time, your monthly credit card statement came with a set of punch cards, one for each transaction. (If you do not recognize the words 'punch cards', you can stop reading.) There was a bit of noise in the 1970s when it was discovered that Bank of America was flying planeloads of credit card receipts to Ireland for keypunching, because it was home to the world's cheapest English-speaking labor force.

Ditto, in the 1990s, jobs in French publishing began disappearing from Paris, because there were folks with PhDs in French Lit (et al) living in Algeria who could/would work for peanuts, and certain work (editing, page layout, etc) could just as well be done there. As the salaries for this sliver of the Algerian workforce began to rise, the work was re-exported by the Algerian contractors to, if memory serves, Madagascar.

I do not think there is a lack of decent stamps for packets.

I do not think there is a lack of cheap labor.

I think there is a lack of a market.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey