My Limited Experiences With Kids & Stamps

One major factor I have not seen mentioned is that a great number of adults do NOT want their kids to collect stamps.

Like many kids in the 50's, I had a small collection and got approvals from Harris. My dad put an end to that after awhile. He thought the older mint stamps I bought were 'fakes' and that I was being swindled. He said stamp collections are a waste of money because they will 'never be worth anything'. Far too many Americans seem infected with this attitude, if you can't make money doing something, it isn't worth doing. We see this reflected on here sometimes from folks who find old collections an upon being told they dont have anything of value are never heard from again.

My nephew was a little bit interested, but his parents nipped it. Our hobby has an undeserved bad reputation.

That's a new one on me, Stamps1962. Have never heard that stamp collecting was being discouraged by anyone.

While I have personally never had someone call stamp collecting a worthless hobby, I can see how it might happen.

Someone inherits a collection or watches someone who has collected sell their collection and receive a fraction of what they paid for it, well, that non-collector is not likely to have a favorable opinion about the viability of the hobby.

When anyone tries running down that rabbit hole, I simply point out that collecting stamps provides some return, unlike hanging out at the bar watching sports with your buddies or playing golf or any number of other hobbies which have a zero return to them.

If someone wants to nip a kid's interest in the bud, perhaps explaining that 95 percent of stamps are not expensive but the return in learning about art, history and geography is priceless. Not to mention organizational skill development, learning research techniques, understanding of languages and even semiotics as the individual progresses as a collector.

Bottom line - don't give up and don't let naysayers discourage you!

In some cases it may be deserved. For example, the mass produced and aggressively marketed FDC which were sold as great investments. Bad experiences often get related to other many times; given the number of people who 'invested' in these heavily marketed near worthless covers there is a lot of negative press.

And in the last 5-7 years, I have received a lot of negative stories from people who have had bad online purchasing experiences.

Some would say point to stories like last year's Regency Auction failure as another example of a philatelic black eye.

No matter where the fault lies in these negative experiences, they are ultimately attached to our hobby.
Don

It's fine to have kids express interest in what you're doing, collecting stamps, woodworking, rebuilding old cars, whatever it is. But I'm pretty convinced that trying to get someone to be interested in what you do, like stamp collecting, when they're not already interested in it, has close to a 100% failure rate.

I tried that when I was a kid -- mainly because none of my friends collected stamps. I used my best advertising techniques on every friend and all five of my younger brothers with zero success. They just weren't interested.

I came to stamp collecting out of my own interests, not because someone encouraged me to try it. I saw ads for approvals in 'Boys' Life' and National Geographic magazines. I bought a cheap album at a local store along with some packets of stamps. All of this was my own idea, and the money was my own money. Adults "helping" kids is fine up to a point, but their personal interests are their own business, and it's just better to let them develop them on their own. And, frankly, some kids are just dullards without any real interests. These are the ones that sit around all day staring at their cell phone or playing video games. They'll grow up to be even duller than they were as kids.

People take up stamp collecting because they choose to. They do it because they see images of stamps or ads for stamps (not very likely anymore). Or because of the romance of far away places. Or because they have a "collecting" instinct. I really don't think they take up stamp collecting because some kindly old person tries to encourage them to do it. "Pressure" to have fun never works on young people.

Harsh but true words DrewM, The easiest way to get kid interested is to tell them to leave your stamps alone not to touch them ever with pain of severe punishment, when you not around they are definitely going to have a scratch around, to see what the fuss is about, there is no Better fruit than forbidden fruit, tell them not to do it and they will,(suppose its the same with adults)
a friend of mine did this with golf clubs because he wanted his son to take it up so they could play together, the son now is an avid golfer. I'm not saying it will work but maybe worth a try.

This is called 'psychological reactance' and folks should be aware that there may be other factors at work. For example, there is evidence that people may not be reacting to the topic but rather be reacting to the person who is telling them this. In other words instead of making judgements about the topic they make they a judgement about the person who is speaking and assume the person is just being a condescending jerk!
Don

True that Don


Ray

I claim fame to the Jerk part. My mother's maiden name was Jurk, pronounced the same. And it says so on my birth certificate, a legal document announcing me as a half a jurk! =)

It has a lot to do with attitude and patients. Kids have a short attention span and need to move. So, really all we can do is plant the seed.

Most efforts of associations, clubs and adults directed toward youth focus more on ensuring that kids know what stamp collecting is, rather than tirelessly trying to "convert" them to a non-interest. You can't determine that you are interested in something, the way DrewM says, if you aren't exposed to it. If they are exposed to the hobby in a positive way and aren't interested, of course, move on. The same is true for my other hobby, model railroading. Kids exposed to it either develop an interest from casual to near-obsession, or they move on. But we keep holding "train shows" year-round to be sure we show them what we are doing, especially with respect to steam-era operations, since most kids in urbanized areas have never seen an operating steam locomotive in person. The way to create a new hobbyist is to show people what we do in the hobby.

https://wplives.org/ral.html

Now THAT is what I call exposure! Wow!
Don

I was fortunate enough to have an uncle who was a serious collector, who bought me my first album, gave me duplicates from his stock books, and taught me what to do and what not to do. But the original impetus for me to collect (when I was 7 years old) was entirely my own. A strong interest in history and the 1972 Stamp Collecting stamp had a lot to do with that.

My belief is that comparative disinterest in stamp collecting among young people has far less to do with competing recreational activities/sensory stimuli than it does with the virtual extinction of first-class mail as a communications medium.

dudley: Bingo! Out of sight and out of mind. Stamp and stamp collecting in general has largely disappeared from the public realm. Stamp and hobby stores in general are largely extinct. Ads in general publications are almost non-existent aside from a stray ad in the coupon clippers from Mystic. Even when one does visit most post offices, stamp collecting is rarely advertised anymore. Even the clerks are surprised that someone collects stamps.

Unfortunately, technology has largely replaced stamps in most cases, but as a hobby the marketing and advertising really, really poor. Same can be said for many hobbies - when was the last time you've seen a plastic model kit outside of a hobby store?

Marketing and advertising I believe is poor in the general world for hobbies because the return isn't so great. People nowadays have proportionately much less disposable income than they had more than 20 years ago, for one. You'll see big ticket purchases like game systems or RC cars but those are intended to last for a couple of years minimum vs. a stamp collector making regular smaller purchases over the years that adds up to more than the aforementioned hobbyists spend.