Future Of The Hobby Discussion At Stampshow

Just curious, what is your definition of "mainstream philately"?

Condition is an important factor in the grading of old stamps. Some have been surprised in seeing ordinary common stamps sell for much more than usual when being touted as being high graded in superb condition. Some slabbed stamps have been found to have hidden faults when taken out of slabs. The over commercialization of the hobby by those who really don't care about collectors or even really about stamps but only about money can be a turn off such as feeling that big non-profit/charity organizations are all/only about making/collecting money.

I don't know where you get that info from, but stop using it. Seriously. Not even close.

There are multiple tools which do this, obviously I don't have access to the log files. But my point stands on a relative basis since I used the same tool for the sites I mentioned, this site holds people many times over the APS site.
Don

It is all about content. There is little to engage people.

Youtube is important because that is where the people are and Youtube has ways to get your attention (suggestions based upon cookie history).

Al

And more than your tool tells you too.

I like the live webinar idea. When there are APS shows where the APS does presentations and symposiums and the like, they should set up a live video feed where remote viewers can view the presentation and ask questions, etc. It would be much better than recording it and just posting it somewhere later, and it's practically child's play from a technical perspective. Due to where I live, I may never get to an APS show and be able to take part in these things. And it wouldn't just have to be for stamp shows - they could have a regularly scheduled one (say, weekly) on different topics.

"grading was (is) the most important thing to push the hobby forward........." I'd like to know what that guy has been smoking. I want some of that stuff.

Stamp collecting flourished in the early part of the 20th century. But letter mail WAS the way most people communicated with others over long distances, so everyone was familiar with stamps, and there was an ongoing supply of stamps coming into the household for collectors. That hadn't really change by the time of my youth. But thinking about the way I was introduced to 'collecting' stamps... it was my grandmother who cut stamps off envelopes for me and got me interested in First Day Covers. It was her idea, combined with a favorable circumstance where plenty of easily obtainable (and free) stamps were coming into the household. That was enough to get me started. So to use an analogy, the circumstances were the 'soil'. The idea to collect was the 'seed'.

Today we're faced with diminishing 'soil', and fewer 'seeds'. Sure, things are better in some respects for us that do collect because of technology. To continue the analogy, that might be likened to 'fertilizer'. But we still need the proper circumstances, and the idea planted in fresh new minds in order to 'grow the hobby'.

When the hobby was at its best... only some people worried so much about grades. Grading is deep into the 'elitist' end of the hobby IMO. It encourages a certain type of collecting, but doesn't do anything to promote the basic idea of collecting stamps... IMO. Now we have other 'elitist' ideas floating about... ideas that no one thought about 70 years ago... such as "how contrived is this cover?"

People used to love to collect for enjoyment. That's where it started, that's the answer to keeping it going... IMO.

I agree with CLIMBER STEVE, grading is not important to the long term advancement of the hobby .
If you ask me what is the most important change in the hobby over the past five years ,it would be the increase of reference material on the internet .

Show an example please!!

I would expect someone in the grading business would expect to think grading is good. It attracts speculators (see this a lot more in coins) like an investment given the grading adds some standardization. My father is big into coins but never really like the environment - seems more like all about making money and not about history and little works of art.

Al

I've used the word 'contrived', and I admit that it can seem harsh, especially in ASCII black'n'white.

I would like to apologize to anyone whose feelings were hurt.

The commonly used alternative - 'philatelic' - does not appeal to me, and can also be delivered with a sneer.

Perhaps we could use 'intentional'?

I was not collecting 70 years ago, but I am going to guess that intentional covers - created for first days, for first flights, for annual meetings, etc - were greeted more warmly (or less critically) than they are today.

As were postal stationery cut squares.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Interesting video, I think however that many of the ideas on how to attract younger collectors (say those born after 1963) might be just a bit too "top down" thinking. Organized philately is sort of the "pinnacle" or perhaps to say "establishment" of the community, and for many younger collectors, in an age where anything smacking of "establishment" is looked at askance, there is a a lot of disinterest in following that traditional institutional root.

The one panelist I think hit the nail on the head when talking about how younger generations, already internet savvy for the most part, are more interested in the "experiential" aspect of recreation. For philately, that means I think taking advantage of the resources available, but not being part of any "organized" structure and following your own interests and pathways to have the most enjoyable individual experience in the hobby.

So in that sense I don't think there is necessarily a 1:1 correlation between growth of APS, membership in specialized groups etc as being essential for the continued growth of the hobby. The older institutional structures that regulated the hobby instead need to readjust their role and purpose to meet the needs and interests of the new internet generation of collectors. Things such as fora such as SCF and Stampboards in that sense play the kind of institutional role that this younger generation is looking for - more advising and guiding and less directing and defining what it means to be a collector.

As several of the panelists said, most of their business today comes via the internet, and much of it comes from younger demographics than the current makeup of APS or local stamp club memberships. So the new generation of collectors are out there, it just requires a less direct, more technologically accesible structure to interact with them. But the hobby as a whole I think has a bright future as the internet opens up a whole new vista of interaction, making the hobby ever more interactive and international that it has ever been.

Hi ikeyPikey. I hope my comment didn't come across as negative re: "'elitist' ideas ... that no one thought about 70 years ago... such as "how contrived is this cover?"

I certainly didn't intent to put that sort of collecting in a negative light. A better word for what I was going for than 'elite' might be 'refined'. What I meant is that it's a finite subsection of collectors that might really concern themselves with condition, grading, commercial vs contrived, etc.

Really, I don't personally believe there's any 'right way' to collect, and I don't look down on either extreme, where someone is just collecting stamps cut from envelopes, or someone else is only collecting graded stamps of a particular grade.

I think that its perfectly legitimate for someone to focus on how 'intentional' a cover creation might be... as long as they aren't trying to make that the definition of collecting for others.

But I do believe that concern with grade or contrivance is the result of filtering. People fall in love with collecting stamps in general, then refine the parameters of their collecting later. So the key to growing the entire hobby is not refining existing collectors into 'graded collectors'. But rather promoting stamp collecting in general.

I'm new back into the hobby. Coming back I'm just going through this process myself and seeing all of the changes over the years, as well as being introduced to new aspects of the hobby that I was not aware of in the past. I came back for a number of 'light' reasons, including nostalgia... but what will keep me engaged in the hobby will be the depth of the hobby.