Will Stamp Collecting Endure As Snail Mail Dwindles?

KGB

Sadly, I supect that many of the most valuable stamps are in the hands (for which read "bank vaults") of people with no interest in stamps whatsoever.

Geoff

The key to the survival are the young people and how to market the hobby to them. Ex. A lot of the Hollywood films are geared to the under 30 age group. They could care less what a 67 yr. old single male thinks of their film. Some of the films can now gross 200 million dollars in one day. Does are industry do that? I think not.

When was the last time you met a dealer under 30? A fair amount of dealers are as mentioned above; retiring from the job they worked at all their life, won't retire and end up working at being a dealer until they can't see or the stamp tongs shake so bad they can't pick up a stamp.

Women seem to be smarter at this as they've taken their Grandmothers 221K Singer Featherweight and put it to good use like quilting. There is an appeal that can span many generations unnlike our hobby.

I'm offering a basic stamp class to 3rd thru 5th grade and it seems to be popular. I'm appealing to them through the super hero stamps, baseball, and slowly I'm getting into the history that stamps offer. I'll let you know how it progresses. I'm stressing the fun of collecting and learning not teaching them flyspecking. My collecting started from my Grandfather who gave me his collection and gave me a basic starter education. We never once talked about prices of stamps.

There will always be some collectors just a matter of how many

dcaraz1949,

I am with you about collecting modern day contemporary stamps. But I went down the other path. That is, I do continue to collect the current US stamps. Very reluctantly. I refuse to go down the imperforate path. If I don't start collecting them, I won't feel compelled to collect them. My real interest, like you, is with the "Classics".

Jack Kelley

Good for you, Tom!

I'm thinking about our having a stamp club gather at our local library, but, frankly, I'm tired of being in charge of things at this point in my life. We do have a club in a nearby city/town, but meetings are at night and I no longer drive after dark. (Hahaha, woe is me!)

I think that is an excellent idea. Through a little advertising make this available to the kids.

Sdtom are you an educator or provide the stamp class as a volunteer? Have you created a syllabus that you work from?

The librarian might be willing to guide you.

ikey, does this mean I have to pay off all the late book fines I've accumulated?

I am doing this on a volunteer basis although there is a fee for the class for materials (stamp pages, stamps. I do work from a syllabus but it can be ever changing. I do it to try in my small way to promote stamp collecting.

For a few years, some of them overlapping, my brother & I were 'guest workers' in a community less rich in administrative skills.

If you were departing government service - and most of the 'guest workers' were filling skilled slots in the local government - they held your last paycheck until ?21 ?22 different government agencies had certified that you did not owe them money.

Of course, this could get a little tricky. How do you pay your final telephone & electric & water bills, and have the service transferred out of your name, if you are still going to work every day and, presumably, in your apartment at night?

One of the twenty-plus agencies that had to certify you debt-free was the local library. Seriously? In a place known for its, uh, charming informality, you have to trust that the library logged back in every book that you ever borrowed & returned?

My brother suggested that, in your last few months, whenever you returned a book, you took a Polaroid of you placing the book into the hands of the lovely librarian. Times have changed - Polaroids are gone, and selfie sticks are everywhere - but it is probably still good advice.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Way to go, sdtom. The low key approach is certainly the way to go. I'm sure the flyspecking will induce interest.

Jack Kelley

I'd like to suggest an introduction via cacheted FDCs; they've got a neatly-cancelled stamp, a readable slogan, a city, a date, some nice artwork and, most important, a story to tell.

And, best of all, they are TFP (Tongs-Free Philately).

Yes, this from a guy who does not collect FDCs, but who would never think to introduce the hobby to a newcomer by flipping thru page after page of stamps.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I do have some first day covers without a cachet that I'm thinking about including in a class on the subject. It would allow the student to make his own cachet.

Using the topics of the stamps (sports figures, comics, wildlife, etc.) seems to me like an excellent way to encourage beginning stamp collectors. Nice looking used copies of stamps featuring interesting topics are widely available. The recent self-adhesive stamps include many topics of interest, and can be collected on paper by those who don't want to deal with chemicals for getting them off the paper.