My Limited Experiences With Kids & Stamps

Hello.
After many years of collector, I have thousands of stamps that do not cost anything.
Companions of other forums and I itself, we have done promotion of the philately in school centers, giving thousands of stamps to the children, but the results for me have never been satisfactory.
I exhibited in my city for one month, with visits coordinated from the school centers, gave more than 18.000 stamps (50 different ones for every child) and I do not know any that continues.

We give away lots of stamps to the kids every month.

As a teacher for nearly 50 years, I'll say that if you just give someone something it's going to get stuck in a drawer and ignored most of the time. On the other hand, if they "win" it so it's a sign of something they accomplished like a medal or trophy, they generally value it. If packets of stamps were given to elementary school children as the prize for some accomplishment, they might save them and value them. Or if they had to work toward it in some other way. I had to save my quarters to buy stamps. That made me dream about them. If some adult had just handed me an album and stamps, I wonder if I'd have cared about it? I was handed many things that I didn't spend time with because I hadn't ever thought about them as "my" hobby.

Or if you admire someone, you want to be like them. But who that young people admire today collects stamps? Once upon a time, kings and presidents collected stamps. Who collects them today that any young person cares about? I can't think of any.

As I said before, when a young person discovers something on their own, particularly something they associate with being grown-up, that appeals to them. In a world of stamp ads, approvals, and so on, kids used to send off coins to get stamps on their own. It made them more adult to involve themselves in their own personal hobby in a businesslike way. And getting mail addressed to you used to be pretty exciting. But does anyone get actual mail anymore? And what young person sees stamp ads? Are there even magazines for young people anymore? It's such a different world nowadays, I can't really see young people gravitating toward stamps much -- or coins -- or butterfly collecting -- or most of the older things they used to collect. I tried many collections but settled on stamps as the best by far. Do young people collect anymore? Some collect trading cards, maybe. So I'm not too optimistic.

Some of them collect virtual Pokémon on their smartphones. "Gotta catch 'em all!"

Basically all kids are topical collectors. The trick is to find out some topic that interests each of them and go from there. So it's not simply "handing out packets of stamps".

There are hundreds of free philatelic lesson plans available online which are great introduction tools to our hobby for teachers, home schoolers, parents, and grandparents.

I considered developing additional lesson plans and then also matching them with free stamp packets on Stamp Smarter. For example, develop a 'Black History On Stamps' for grades 3 thru 6 complete with a few hundred matching stamps. Teachers could download the lesson plans and get the matching stamps for free. The stamp packets could contain many duplicates since the teacher would be giving some stamp to each student. If anyone would like to administer such a project, I would be willing to assist and get it into place.

Doing > Posting
Don

I've always been skeptical of the necessity of involving children in the hobby. Rare book collecting is flourishing, from what I've heard, and almost nobody takes up book collecting as a child.

I remember my father's stamp books but he stopped collection stamps before I came along. When I was 6 or so we started collecting sport cards and he heavily got back into coin trading.
Fast forward to about a decade ago I start to get interested in coins and form a decent collection myself. I also have a good collection of vinyl that we also had in the house growing up, and I have most of it now since he passed 8 years ago.
Now that I am interested in stamps (started 2 ish years ago) my mom is trying to find the old blue Harris albums and her brothers stamp book from when he was younger.
I now have 2 children, both girls 10 and 4. The 10 year old is more into reading and Girl Scouts and isn't interested in stamps unless I find scouting ones for her or ones with animals. The 4 year old is interested because I'm interested and spends time with me looking through me books. I cut all the used postage from envelopes that I get from my ebay winnings and when she sees something she likes I give them to her, she puts them in her "drawer of treasures".

-Willie

Oh and side note I have saved all of my postage, the wife wonders why. I have thought about mailing them to the Houston Stamp Club to put together for young/ beginning collectors. But if Don has started to put things together I can send them to him, just let me know sir, I also have a good bunch of WW that a seller give to me with each pack he sends me.

-Willie

"Rare book collecting is flourishing, from what I've heard, and almost nobody takes up book collecting as a child".

But one learns to love books as a child. And children usually don't really understand the concept of rare anyway, only the concept of expensive. At least until they see items where there are only 3 or 4 or 5 known, as my kids group saw at NOJEX on Saturday.

I Like Children.....Fried. WC FIELDS

25 years ago, a stamp dealer in my area published a book of this sort, called The Lost Stamps of the United States, which comes with stamps, tongs, hinges, and a magnifying glass:

Foster's website: http://www.fiatpapermoney.net
Amazon page (which is more informative): https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Stamps-...p/0964306603

I believe fully the issue of getting kids involved is partly our own fault.

We have a class and/or we give them stamps, tongs, maybe a kid's album. Then we send them on their way.

My three children are involved in the hobby because we collect TOGETHER. Our interests in the hobby are different, but I take an interest in their interest by participating with them. I take them to the stamp club meetings, to stamp shows, and I let them show me the same bloody butterfly stamp over and over and over. They don't want someone to throw stamps at them, they want someone to help them actually develop their collection.

I know a couple other children involved in the hobby and in each case, a family member is involved WITH them.

New article
'Information Rift, Philately, and Young Collectors'
http://www.stampsmarter.com/Learnin...ionRift.html


Don