State Of The Hobby Today

Without the internet, I would be forced to buy almost exclusively via mail order. There are no stamp dealers where I live and it's nearly a 2-hour drive to the nearest city that hosts shows a couple times a year. I'd probably be buying stamps from companies like Mystic and Kenmore and my collection would be a pale shadow of what it is today.

I second Artful's comment; but for me the constraint is not geographic, it is medical. You would think that the older the demographic the greater the reliance upon technology. Tech allows 'homebodies' to stay active in the hobby even if they cannot travel.
Don

It is my belief that the local club I joined 3 years ago is populated by non-one under the age of 45 and the average has to be 70. Few seem to use computers and have little use for or knowledge of stamp products beyond the late 1800's to 1940'5-1950's issues. They stopped purchasing new issues with the advent of pressure sensitive gummed stamps, which are in common use today. I thank that other than postal history specialists, or those filling decades old "holes", any of them search or purchase online. Similar to myself, it also appears that few have any family members interested enough in their collections to 'will" them to.

Based solely on these possibly totally incorrect assumptions on my part, stamp collecting in this area is doomed regardless of internet, dealer, or direct purchase sales.

I'm sorry that this comment is so negative, but it is something that I have felt for some time.

I hate mobile telephones, and don't own one. I like tablets, and use an iPad, rather than my laptop, most of the time. But my non-scientific observation is that almost every older man or woman seems to go around clutching a mobile telephone, often in lieu of speaking to their other half. So, like Don, I suspect that the APS is missing a fairly large trick.

Thanks Don for clarifying about the APS. I am still deciding whether to pursue US collecting in earnest, but if I do I would certainly still consider APS. Right now my focus is on Canada and I am having fun with worldwide. I then may start to specialize in a few smaller areas, Newfoundland and Iceland seem to be calling to me, but time will tell. I am still waiting for the starter worldwide collection to arrive, which may give me a push in a direction. The US & UK seem somewhat intimidating to collect at this point, but that may well change once I get some experience.

And like you and TheArtfulHinger, I am totally reliant on the internet to collect. My nearest stamp club is a 4hr return trip, so not practical to participate in a sustainable way. It is a shame, because it would be great to connect with local people who have more experience, but I am doing that on the internet too ;-)

That may be because younger collectors who are tech savvy don't see a need to join a stamp club. The internet itself (or more properly the connections enabled by the inernet) is performing many of the same functions performed by clubs. This includes things like collector education, buying and selling of stamps, and just plain old socializing with other collectors. You may see only "old fuddy-duddy's" at clubs because they're the only ones who haven't figured out you can do the same things online more efficiently.

You can socialize with other collectors to some extent online, but you can't sit and have a beer with them the way you could at the hotel bar (or the hospitality suite) at a show. And there's little substitute for flipping through a box of covers when they're right there in front of you.

I agree completely, and if there were a stamp club in my area, I'd be sure to join it, if there were shows and dealers, I'd be sure to patronize them. The internet is not a perfect substitute for buying, selling or socializing in person. But it's good enough for most people in most circumstances.

This may be indicative of the very extensive range of online sources available to the collector today, which speaks well of the health of the hobby from the marketing standpoint. I am in my 60's and have been collecting for some 55 years (with a hiatus of about 8 years in my 50's). I attend one national-level show per year and patronize a local bourse quarterly, and believe it or not there is still a local brick-and-mortar stamp shop in my area, but other than that I acquire items from my collection online. Several of the dealers I used to buy from on a mail-order basis two decades ago are now online--I am still a customer. I do not get auction catalogs in the mail anymore, but still bid at auction like I used to through Stamps Auction Network. Evolution.

I think it really means collectors are a little more selective in what they collect rather than collecting every stamp or every FDC for a particular country as many collectors once did. There is just too much material created in the 20 years. Many collectives have given up collecting newer issues just due to the glut. For example, look back at US issues and you saw variety each year.

Now, every year we have to have Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chinese New Year, Eid, Purple Heart, some variation of a flag, and pop culture (comic book characters,etc) and they are in formats that make it expensive to collect (self-adhesive mini sheets and not always soakable).

I've had some fairly negative experiences with stamp clubs in the last few years. Most recently, I walked into one that is a little more than an hour away from where I live. A couple of people nodded and went back to talking about politics and how everything was better in the good old days. (I know something about what that city was like in their good old days. It was a dump.)

About 35 minutes later, somebody voluntarily spoke to me. Of course, he was trying to sell some duplicates and would talk to anybody, but he happened to have some things I was looking for, so I whipped out a $50. All of a sudden, the assembled multitudes decided I wasn't such a bad guy after all, and I ended up having a pretty good time. That was about 8 months ago, and I haven't been back.

I do like exhibitions and shows, and I've met some really cool people at them. Some have become friends; others I'll be happy to see at other events. But I've learned that if I go to any gathering of stamp collectors, I'm going to witness some remarkably unsociable behavior.

• Bragging.
• Using knowledge (real or imagined) as a weapon to belittle or insult others.
• Pushing each other out of the way at dealer tables.
• Nickel-and-diming every transaction into a pulp.
• Expounding at mind-numbing length about how everything issued since 1940 is junk.
• Branding topical collecting as "not philately".
• Branding, well, almost everything as "not philately".
• Treating every young and/or Bohemian-looking person as an ambassador from an alien civilization whose intentions we haven't figured out yet but which we instinctively know are bad.

I can recognize shyness when I see it (usually), and the same for obsessive-compulsive disorders, but some people don't have an excuse for being boors.

Not that it was all that different in the 1970s, when I went to stamp shows as the token delegate from Springsteen Nation. I really don't have any good memories of those days except for some exhibits, though I do remember a few dealers hitting on my fiancée, with less finesse than I've seen in any gin mill I've ever frequented. I drifted out of the hobby in the 1980s, mostly for work-related reasons, but I sometimes wonder if organized philately lost its moorings in the 1970s and we're seeing the aftereffects more clearly today.

All this sounds gloomy, I know. And there's a lot of things going on that can't be explained by personality quirks. The sheer exoticism of seeing a stamp from Tanzania or the Falkland Islands has faded in a time when you can see footage of those places on YouTube. Philately is going to lose a few recruits to video games, sure, and to electronic music you can mix and produce on a computer. But Postcrossing is thriving throughout a wide demographic, and if there's anything more retro than a postage stamp, it's gotta be a postcard. What is Postcrossing doing right that philatelic organizations are missing?

One thing I learned in my Army career is that situations are what you make of them. If you expect bad, it will be bad. If you expect good, you will have a good time. Sometime bad things happen in good times. and Sometime good things happen in bad times.... but over all if you expect bad you will find it and if you expect good you will find that also.

Stamp clubs are no different.

Seeds and plants are far more popular than stamps it would seem.

As more stamp people get older and pass on the less new collectors start.It is a simple numbers game.Plus there are other social issues in play.

Our world will never be the same again. It has changed to the point of disbelief. A lot of people are still hiding from this fact.The out come of the US election come Nov will signal the times we are in fully.

War World 3 is well and truly under way. Many countries bare witness to this fact. The leaders of the world, as we know it, are very power drunk and extremely dangerous. This underlying stress is changing peoples habits.

We hope very much it is changing many people's beliefs.

I've read everything has posted here, and now it's time for my two cents...

The major dynamic which has changed stamp collecting today is, without doubt, the internet. It has been an overwhelmingly positive change as collectors can now search for stamps online when they have the time and budget to do so and without pressure (well, mostly).

This has created a paradigm shift from the past. Storefronts are disappearing and few are being opened, although it does happen. Shows are also going away, which I feel is not a good outcome. There is something to be said about getting that face-to-face time with dealers and other collectors, not just from the philatelic side of things but from the human side.

One of the things which has caused a good deal of this has been the negative attitude of some of the dealers. There's nothing more irritating, to me anyway, that to be sitting at a table at a show listening to a dealer talk about how strong the market is only to change the tune completely the minute someone comes up and has something they would like to sell. I get that dealers have overhead and expenses, but if the market is that strong when they're selling, there no point in trying to soft pedal it when a potential seller comes along. It is better to explain the realities to the seller.

I've noted that some of the comments have been about never getting involved in organized groups such as the local club. I would like to know, from those who say this, what it would take for you to reconsider that decision. I'm the president of our club and I'm constantly looking for ways to bring in all the collectors out there.

As far as the APS goes, we've got a new administration just elected into the group. I agree with Don that much more needs to be done to become tech savvy and engaged electronically if the "internet" collectors are ever going to join something like the APS. I find the services I've received well worth the cost of the membership dues. They've revamped their journal, making it a much meatier publication, and I really enjoy getting the sales circuits. It's almost like having a small bourse in my stamp den.

The bottom line is that the only constant is change. Technology has evolved and is still evolving. The need to find a happy median where the aging collectors involved in organized philately can embrace that change is going to be the hardest part. Getting the younger generation of internet enthusiasts to understand the value of the decades of experience and knowledge these older collectors have gathered sometimes seems to be just as hard, but it would be a benefit to both groups to find that middle road where they can meet.

'Nuff said for now. I look forward reading everyone else's thought on the matter...

I think that The Idiot Box (and other post-WW2 social changes) did the harm, and that the internet is more of a remedy.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey