Do Youngsters Collect Stamps Today ?

We get from 10-16 kids each month at the Kids Stamp Club in NY. Average month is probably 12.

All three of my kids who are old enough are collectors; two are youth CofC exhibitors and the third has a plan for an exhibit and is working on material. But stamps compete with school, Science Olympiad, soccer, and other things,and it's hard to get them to focus much during the school year.

My newborn will presumably follow the same path. But that's because I'm there to mentor them. Very hard for a kid to collect without a fair amount of assistance, particularly when stamps just don't make the same appearance on mail that they used to. I think it's fair to say that a good mentor (a school stamp club, a presenter, etc.) can attract a lot of kids once the hobby is put in front of them.

From Blaamand -







Stamp collecting is not a genetic "happening".......The way young people are stuck on their Iphone..and do not know how to write 3 words in a row.without a mistake !!...I wonder

If these young whippersnappers are too busy with their fancy, technological doodads, I'm not so sure that spells the end of stamp collecting. I never collected stamps, when I was knee-high to a bed bug. I started collecting in my 30s. I wonder if the future of the hobby might be better served by a focus on more mature beginning collectors, who are drawn to the history and aesthetics of philately (coupled with folksy parlance, of course).

I have 3 boys.....ages 12, 13 and 15. The 12 and 15 year olds have interest in stamps. I downloaded the free "Baseball", "Military History of America", "Space", "Pennsylvania" and "Wisconsin" pages off of the APS website. Pennsylvania because that's where we live, and Wisconsin because the youngest is a Green Bay Packers fan (traitor!). The 12 year old also wanted Germany stamps, so I bought about 1,500 used off of ebay for $10. Now the fun of sorting begins!

The 15 year old seems to enjoy stamps, and the 12 year old is somewhat interested right now.

The 13 and 15 year olds are also coin collectors.....my longtime hobby. The 13 year old showed no sign of interest with stamps, but took to coin collecting. I didn't get involved with stamps until about 5 years ago, although my younger brother was a stamp collector when we were growing up.

I keep video games to a minimum, and they all share 1 phone that they use only for extracurricular activities, 4-H meetings, etc. They don't have access 24/7 to an I-phone or video games. So, that helps with getting them involved with collecting. Coins or Stamps.....doesn't matter to me. Just the fact that they are interested and actively collecting is all that counts.

Occasionally, they gripe about not having video games and their own phones like "everyone else does". The oldest once told me that he feels like he's living in the 1800's. I told him that since he lives in the 1800's, he should do good on his History tests since he's living it first hand every day. :-)

I've seen some interesting youth exhibits at WESTPEX. One that I particularly enjoyed was on the history of the Boy Scouts of America's stamp collecting merit badge. Capsule summary: They've made the requirements easier and easier over the years. (Incidentally, that was the first merit badge I earned as a Boy Scout, about 40 years ago.)

A couple of years back, I took one of the twins to our local club's Christmas party. She may have been 7 at the time. I warned her beforehand but she insisted.

So we're sitting there at the party having a snack, which is about all there was at the party, and she leans over and says, "This isn't like our parties at school." Then after a minute, with a sound of dejection in her voice, she muttered, "I bet we're not going to play any games."

I have 4 children and 9 grandchildren. How many are interested in stamps?
Zero!
Most kids today are only interested in video games and staring at smartphones as they walk into immovable objects. I've even seen them staring at their smartphones while riding bicycles on the meandering path along the edge of our lakeshore!
But there's some little hope. Every year the Baltimore Philatelic Society makes strenuous efforts to interest youngsters at its annual BALPEX event.
Last year a mother brought her two young sons to a meeting of our local Howard County Stamp Club to see if she could get them interested in stamps.
Let's try to encourage more parents to do that! We're never going to defeat the siren song of electronics, but we might help to create SOME converts.

As a lifelong collector who's now in his twenties (guess I'm still a relative 'youngster'), I'd say, in a word - no.

It's hard enough to find the time and the money. (Diligently putting together an 1840-1940 Scott International collection, verrrrrry slowly, but surely.) But on the rare occasion I've let my closet hobby be known to acquaintances, I'm looked at like I have a third ear or something.

I'm sure I've said it before elsewhere, but I think there are only a few decades left of widespread philately, which is even less widespread than it was fifty years ago. People who collected as kids finally now have the time/disposable income to spend on stamps, so collections and collecting instincts that have in many case been dormant for decades are now rekindled. There are a lot of people my age who would be hard pressed to recall the last time they even used a stamp, let alone collect the things.

It'll always be around, but it'll be viewed as increasingly esoteric. Nothing wrong with such an 'anachronistic' hobby - I personally find that's part of the appeal - but after this last hurrah, it'll be pretty much done for.

Which makes me think: if I'm trying to make my collecting dollar stretch furthest, I ought to wait, oh, a few decades for stamp prices to fall greatly. On the other hand, I won't postpone decades of enjoyment from the hobby!

My now eleven year old grandson when shown some stamps and covers back when he was eight said, "grandpa, those are nice stickers." His mother is a trained educator and he does know some cursive but this is more and more becoming the exception not the rule. Also, mail is now digital not written.

Philately is not unique in this predicament. Collectables of all types are now relegated to the antiques road show mentality of what money can I make with it except for those items with personal or family significance.

Folks, we are really faced with a difficult but hopefully not impossible task finding future generations to steward our philatelic treasures once we close our albums.

I don't really see youth coming into the hobby the way they did back in the 50s and 60s when there wasn't a whole lot else to do.

I understand that book collecting has a similar demographic problem, but its not too worrisome because books are something that appeal to older, somewhat more affluent individuals. Perhaps stamp collecting is shifting to that sort of model.

I'm sorry to say that like many other things it's a dying hobby like writing letters. I use to derive great joy in using my extra stamps to fill the envelope. Today I'm sorry to say I send off an email.

Getting Kids interested in stamps is not going to happen.

We need to step back and look what happen in the past and not think it will happen again .But there are lessons we can learn .

Let me give some examples from my own life ........I remember stamps first came to my attention thru Ivory Soap and for a little while free with the purchase of a candy bar . Then stamp clubs at school with the help of teachers . Then it was the Boy Scouts and all the ads in BOY'S LIFE magazine . Then it was all the 100 stamps for 10 cents from the comic book ads . All these explode the hobby .

All the activity above brought the investors craziness of the 1970's by 1980's the hobby went down hill. In the 1990's the stamp hobby was death and I was buying dealer lots ,junk lots and WW collections as the only bidder or I could push the old guys out of the way with two or three bids off the opening price .

Then 1999 to 2015 we had ebay ,what a gift to my wife .......we cleaned out 20 years of stamp accumaltions at 3X or 5X our purchase price and sold stuff as fast as we could make it up . That was all done without youngsters.

The point I am making is that it always was something new and different any attempt by people to recreate what worked in the past is going to fail and energy spend .

Quite. During a long period to the 1960s, children collected stamps. Probably most of the brats in my classes at primary school had some kind of collection, although for most this would have been left behind when they discovered girls/boys and acne. It isn't reappearing as a mass childhood hobby, any more than collecting crests or cigarette cards will.

Does Mrs Floortrader maintain a little shrine to Pierre Omidyar?

Where do we go from here ????? First lets look at some facts then you will know were I am going .

We {meaning the Federal Government ,State Government and local districts } have millions of dollars for education , Kids today have limited storage capacity at home , Kids want to do what their friends are doing , Kids want to spend time out of the house ,these kids grew up sitting in front of TV and chatting to their friends by phone from their bedrooms .
For the past 25 years I spend my time at Fast Food Resturants ,you would not believe how empty they are most of the time ,yea a few kids hang around but basically empty.

If you combine all the above you can put the pieces above together, that can be the future of philately ........money----space---friends.