Stamp Collecting, The News Of It's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated.

rogdcam: I'm glad to hear you had good sales on consignments to several auction houses. What were you consigning? US? I had a French area collection at one of those houses in August. Did not sell and in the left-over lot sale, did not sell again even though priced at about 12% of Scott. Makes me wonder, although that may just be a weak European area.

Regarding "traditional hobbies" being in decline, what constitutes a "traditional hobby?" Collectibles was mentioned, so is the comment about indoor hobbies? Reading seems healthy as Amazon is opening brick & mortar stores. What about outdoor hobbies? Bicycling, birding seem very healthy at least where I'm at in the Intermountain West. So is mountaineering, since an estimated 400,000-500,000 summit attempts are made annually on Colorado's 55+ 14,000 ft. peaks. All three of these outdoor hobbies have been around since the 19th century.

Steve - It was all WW material with some minor US. The only material that did not sell at auction but did sell after sale was a Scandinavia stock. The realizations were low for all though. NYStamps was there buying all of the carton lots and driving those prices through the roof. I did pick up a muliple carton lot which has turned out to be shockingly good. Extreme bargains were to be had. That was Rasdales. My Canada collection sold at Siegel for short money. Disappointing to say the least. I have quite a bit of US proofs in the upcoming Harmer sale. Hoping for the best. Overall the market seems very healthy to me with certainly no shortage of diverse material and definitely no shortage of eager bidders. Quality is the driver for excellent returns.

Thanks rogdcam. My French area collection will try again in Rasdale's February auction. There are a few, to be expected, minor faults in the classics. But the rest is generally in good (F-VF) condition.

Carton lots at Rasdale and Kelleher are real tempting, but are on the "forbidden" list for me due to lack of time to process collections that I already have.

I went 1 for 10 at Rumsey (and the 1 was something for my personal collection, not for resale). I've had a very hard time buying group US Postal history lots - and many of those I was bidding more than 1.5x high estimate and sometimes more than double high estimate. Of course, I'm at a definite disadvantage not being able to view in person but I also get the sense that a lot of lots are being purchased by people willing to work on very low margin.

Paperhistory - It can be very frustrating. At the last Rasdale auction and at Rumsey this past weekend the large lots end up at multiples of the estimate high end. Rasdale's was the worst with lot after lot being bid up and won by a floor bidder that was willing to pay whatever it took. They only bid on lots that had interest from online bidders. If a lot opened with no interest they did not bother bidding on it. If interest was shown they would go and go and go until many lots went for 3-4 times estimate. It was almost as if they did not bid based upon a review but rather by other peoples desire for that lot. Crazy to me.

"I also get that sense that a lot of lots are being purchased by people willing to work on low margin " That's me . I buy large lots for entertainment . For thirty years I purchase auction lots just to have something to do during the winter months . Then something to do during theNFL and college football games and now include the UFC fights .
It is very relaxing to sort and make album pages and place duplicates in 102 cards . If I sell something it is to get rid of it and those funds are used to buy more. I can purchase and resell a lot on ebay with low margin or no profit as long as there is something in it that adds to my collection .I never buy just to sell it all.

Don - when was that study published? For white collar workers I find that a bit difficult to swallow since "homework" seems to be more prevalent than it used to be. Technically they aren't at work, but they don;t have free time.

Any, more free time or less free time, the question is how is how is it spent?

Basil is correct that going to kids soccer games etc is eating up parents time. But people with Kids at home have made up a minority of collectors as long as I have been involved.

awkward typo fixed

Hi eyeonwall,

2007

Does taking kids to soccer consume extra time?

Going to town in 1880 with the kids seems more work. After caring for and feeding the horses, you had to go to the barn and get the wagon/carriage hooked up. If town was 10 miles away it then took quite some time to get there. Seems more time consuming than grabbing the keys and jumping in the SUV.

Plowing the back 40, caring for animals, preparing meals, keeping warm, washing clothes...there were a lot of time consuming activities in the past.
Don

Don,

Where it was as hard to go to town in 1880 as you describe, it probably didn't happen very often.

But, I would not disagree with you that what is commonly thought of as "leisure time" has increased, at least in some sense. But what we call "leisure time" is often filled with activities that require $$$ that then often cause people to work more than they would otherwise (second income, spouse entering the work force). It is just a variation on TANSTAAFL.

You probably are aware of the discussion taking place on "the other stamp forum" about declining circulation in philatelic magazines versus the influence of ebay on stamp collecting. Declining circulation might suggest a declining interest in the hobby. But ebay has undoubtedly offset that to some extent. I could be considered a good example. Though I collected stamps in my youth, I never got seriously into it until 2003 (when I would have been 56 years old). And by then ebay was a significant factor in developing my interest in the hobby. I doubt I am a one-off example. But has ebay added to the number of people in the hobby, or merely slowed the decline in the number of people in the hobby?

This same discussion takes place in other hobbies. I resumed an adolescent interest in ham radio in 2006, and the same discussion/debate is taking place there. In the case of ham radio, I'm active in a local group, and in the decade I've belonged to it there has been no noticeable increase in its size. Monthly meetings are about the same size as they've always been (if not a bit smaller). From time to time we get new, younger hams joining, but I look around and I can see faces missing too -- older ones who were active when I first joined who are not any more because of age or passing. We're doing well to hold our own, treading water so to speak.

All of this discussion has been casual and largely anecdotal. No one has come up with irrefutable evidence one way or the other. My own opinion is that in total numbers the hobby is probably just holding relatively steady -- like my perception of ham radio -- but that in terms of total population, it is declining significantly. Modern culture and technology keeps creating new diversions to the things that used to be a common way of using our leisure time. People do not read as much as they used to. They do not study history as much as they used to. Attention spans have shortened. These are all things that classical philately requires -- reading, knowledge of history, careful attention to detail, etc. We do well to hold our own, if we can, in the face of all that.

Basil

I have a solution to any perceived decline (if there is one) in the hobby. We'll just refer to stamp collecting as 'retro'.

In liquidating my parents possessions from their house -- they lived there 50 years -- I was stunned at the things that people went crazy over: 40 year old ash trays, ugly tables, .. anything 'retro'. Retro is definitely "in", and there is a very large market for it.

My point being that a lot of younger people are interested in older things. I've seen it firsthand and I was surprised at how interested they are. If I had been thinking, I would have tossed some stamp mixtures in the sale just as bait, to see if anyone would take it. I bet they would have.

We talk about stamp collecting as "analog relief from a digital world" from time to time on the APS membership committee (I think the exact phrasing comes from Scott English). There are certainly people who are interested in "retro", analog, etc., and it's not just "hipsters".

By way of illustration, one of my other hobbies is fountain pens. There is a large, enthusiastic - and surprisingly young - group of fountain pen users, and it's growing pretty rapidly. I belong to a fountain pen Facebook group that has more than 20,000 members. Plenty of this group of people like to write letters (analog!) and plenty of them like to use stamps on their mail and will pick stamps to match ideas, moods, color schemes, to personalize things, etc. Appreciating stamps is different than collecting stamps but it's a way for people to at least access the world of philately.

Don't forget many parents don't just dump their kids at the games, they stay for them and the games run 1 & 1/2 hours plus half time. And today's kids are involved in far more out of the house activities besides soccer than when we were kids, so parents are constantly shuttling their kids around.

As for a comparison to the 1880's, where did that come from and what relevance does the 1880s have?

Were getting off subject here . The correct term is not "the death of the hobby" it would be more accurate to say the hobby has deflated from the early 2000's which was due to the vast influence that ebay made to the hobby .
Now that the big New York Stamp Show is over ,dealers are not building up stock if anything they are getting rid of material that didn't sell or was slow movers . People also have reduce their philatelic libraries because more and more stuff is on line . Collectors are getting more specialized ,there is a big reduction in the size of peoples collections .This reduction in size of collection also means less inventory is kept around the house ,which still falls right in line with most collectors are getting rid of duplicate stock much quicker by selling on line today .
Yes big changes are happening and nobody knows all the changes as they happen .

In my life time stamps in the popular areas has changed dramatically.

Have always looked at stamp collecting areas, are like owning shares. Some go up some go down and everything in between.

Australia kilowatre on paper very recent is selling at auction for over $600 per KG. These high prices have put a lot of buyer/ sellers not able to get stock because of those prices. So collectors have left this very expensive areas. Small amounts of stock has stopped interest in buying. You would think it would be the other way round. This example has big prices but they are bad shares.

Have heaps of stock from 2000 to now. Most of it has died over the last 5 years. But the share bit comes in here. Good stamp shares in my area are interpost self adhesives very popular at big prices. There are other areas but the idea is opened up here.

Just to confuse it all a bit more is this trend highlighted is the other way round in UK & Europe.

And then the snow bound countries are still strong buyers that make my comments look out of touch.

The so called popular stamp collecting Australia days have all but gone.

Most Australia decimal stamp collecting over the years has suited the penny budget collectors.

Us sellers have priced ourselves out of business to put it bluntly.