Discussion Over Multiples Leads To Discussion Of Collecting Stamps In General

So I post this here only because the stamps I'm interested in are pre-1930. Stamps saved not because someone thought they'd be worth millions but because it was fun and cool. My dad did that and he loved it. I inherited and have continued, I find it fun and cool, but will the next generation? That's my question. Maybe Bill Gross is getting out because he see's the future of stamps is getting duller not brighter. When was the heyday of stamp collecting and highest value? 1980's pre-Ebay? I see the Scott prices and chuckle. That $250 stamp can be had on ebay for $50. Now there will always be exceptions but I feel era of stamp collecting is maybe fading. What kid wants to collect stamps any more? As the collectors age out, is there really a generation ready to fill the ranks? I collect because it makes me happy to gather what my dad would have loved to do (do I think its a wise financial decision?). I have the money and the will but are there many of us, under 50, that do? Out of ALL my friends, I'm the only one who collects stamps (and I know A LOT of people). I've put stamps on ebay because they are duplicates, I'm not a dealer, I know little about trading stamps but I sell them and I never get what I think I really should get. I'm just willing to sell them for whatever I get. Dealers are not!! So are prices going up or actually going down? Why would the exact stamp sell or not sell on ebay? The first is being sold to the highest bidder, the second by a dealer. The highest bid is $50...sells. The Dealer wants $250...doesn't sell. The dealer will be leaving a lot of stamps to his children. The children will go on ebay and sell the $250 stamp for $50!! As an adult collector, you buy what you couldn't as a kid. That's why the Porsche market is so hot right now. The kids wanted a 911 and now as adults, they are buying. Is this true with stamps?? I have my thoughts, what are some of the smart people's thoughts?

IMO, stamp collecting as a marketplace or investment meant nothing to Bill Gross. Effectively, he has been culling his massive stamp holdings for a while, going back to 2009 when he sold his British Empire thru Shreves Philatelic. He is also 75 years old. and generally donates all auction proceeds to various charities.

He also siphoned off many major US rarities from the marketplace and donated them to the Smithsonian Postal Musuem, which named a gallery after him in return.

I'm in the USA. The last time I saw anyone under thirty in person at a stamp club meeting, besides myself, was maybe twenty years ago. That kid came for two meetings and I never saw him again. I can tell you few in my generation (Gen X) enjoy stamp collecting, or ever did it. I've never met anyone younger than me, in person anyway, who thinks stamp collecting is cool.

So... no. In the USA, at least, the answer is no, not particularly.

But I've met many young collectors through the mail or over the Internet. I know some people my age who participate in Postcrossing, and some of those people collect stamps as well; that's how I meet them. Mostly they live in places like the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Philippines, and some of the richer developing nations, as well.

I think there are a lot more young collectors abroad, in Asia in particular, than there are in the United States.

Topical collecting, country collecting, and general world collecting are the things young collectors do. Some specialize in a stamp series -- usually it's a modern era one. Modern postal history is also somewhat in vogue. The era of European colonization is generally less liked, though there are a lot of people who collect things like "Queen Victoria's Britain" or "World War II" which usually include topicals pertaining to the area as well as stamps from them.

So, yeah, in some places stamp collecting has a future, but it will look a lot different than the past. Maybe it will bleed back in that form to the USA. Who knows?




I expect that it's a combination of the decline in the US stamp market, as well as the fact that he is old, has owned just about every stamp or cover he has ever wanted to own, and has decided to sell those goodies for other collectors to enjoy. Maybe he'll start another stamp collection for fun in his final years -- who knows. The thrill of the hunt goes away after you've caught everything.

Given the location and the proclivities of the young collectors that I know, I expect that "peak classic US stamps" came a long while ago, like 1980 or so. Gross knows what he's doing.




Yes, early 1980s. Adjust prices for inflation and very little sells for more now than it did then.




Catalog values have always been goofy, except for some rare stamps where they're based on actual market transactions. Even at the peak of Nassau Street brick-and-mortar stamp shops, nobody wanted to pay more than half Scott.




The ones I told you about. They're out there, they're just in different places and have different interests. Stamp collecting will still be around in 50 years, but it won't look like the current scene at all. "Things will be different" -- probably the most accurate prediction you can ever make about the future.

The stamp collector population in the US is shrinking, but in Asia and Europe there are still many young collectors; There were still a lot of brick and mortar stamp shops in Europe 15 years ago on my last visit, and probably still are. Take advantage of the present buyers market in the US and enjoy your collecting, as bottom line, that is what it is really all about anyways.

If you participated lately in real auction house sales you and your wallet would come away with the impression that the market is definitely not fading. As for Gross the items in his recent Siegel sale sold for more than he paid for them. Different types of observations but I face a lot of competition for good stuff. ebay and ebay prices are not good indicators of the market as a whole. There are too many levels and specialties to make it that simple. On the sales side I sold a lot of material through auction houses this year and there were plenty of bidders which let me know that my material is liquid and folks will pay up for it. I believe that we are in a good place at the moment but the economy is very strong. When we hit the next really rough patch we shall see what happens.

In general I agree with the responses of codehappy and loupy. You will see comments on other posts trying to grasp or understand the lack of apparent interest in the younger generations of US in the idea of collecting anything or the past
and preferring to spend their money on experiences as opposed to things. I agree with this perception and am also at a loss to explain it. By the way, I don't think this attitude toward the past or collecting is limited to stamps but all fields of traditional collecting that characterized the baby boomers.

There are two separate issues at work here.

First, there has been a paradigm shift in the way stamps are collected.

The idea of the brick and mortar store as the "go-to" place to purchase stamps, or the stamp shows, as the primary alternative, are a thing of the past.

What is happening now is the era of the internet stamp collector. Instead of buying their stamps from the traditional purchase point the collectors/accumulators of today are buying them on-line. Many of these collectors have never been involved with any of the traditional venues (i.e., stamp stores, local or regional stamp clubs or national level organizations such as the APS. They are going it on their own and the mistakes/errors being made because of this intentional solitary approach may have catastrophic affects on their collections.

If you doubt the veracity of this paradigm shift, just look at the number of auctions of stamps being sold on ebay on any given day. Stamp collecting is not dead, but the way in which collectors add to their collections have changed markedly.

The sad point of this, with regard to the collector who is sitting in isolation in their den, buying on ebay or other venues, is that they are doing so in the blind.

One of the many points I believe strongly in is the education of these collectors. The problem is how to get them to understand the value of organized philately?

I haven't come up with an answer to that which would make any real time difference in the outcome of their purchasing practices.

One of the real problems is the number of unscrupulous sellers who prey on these naive buyers, touting their wares like 19th century snake-oil salesmen. Unfortunately, many independent buyers purchase their stamps from these individuals, never realizing the monetary losses they are accruing as they do so.

By going this in a solitary fashion, and refusing to engage in organized philately, these collectors are missing out on tremendous knowledge which could help them avoid pitfalls and bad decisions which will likely have a severe impact on the value of their collections.

At some point in the future, they will try to liquidate their collection - or their heirs will - and will find out the cold hard truth that stamps are a hobby, not an investment. Unless you are on the level of Bill Gross, you will never likely realize a profit on your collection. Instead, there will be some residual value for your heirs, but nothing which approaches the monetary investment the collector likely made in their collection.

The secondary point is that while there has been a paradigm shift, both established philatelists are failing to recognize this shift and the absolute need to reach out to these individuals and try to educate them. Some organizations, such as this website and to some degree, groups in organized philately, are attempting to remedy this.

Time will tell how effective these outreach programs and the effect they have will be.

The only justification for a 'doom and gloom' attitude of this hobby are people who are using 1960 metrics to understand its health. As has been opined many times in this community, the introduction of the internet has forever changed our world. The tradition methods of understanding the health and growth of any hobby are no longer viable. Talking about the closing of brick and mortar stores as a health indicator is just silly. Pointing to lower prices as a poor health indicator is to ignore the impact of the increase and instant availability of online material.

And anyone who thinks they have handle on our hobby's health needs to demonstrate how they are accounting for its online activities. Folks cannot ignore facts like the success of online resources like this community, Stamp Smarter, and the USPCS. How do people explain the fact that this community attracts hundreds of new members each month? How can we say that our hobby is in poor health based upon shrinking brick and mortar club activities while ignoring all the online activity that has replaced it?

Exactly what methods do we use to understand the total online activities for this hobby? Unfortunately there is currently no way to get an accurate understanding of the total philatelic online activities. But a lack of understanding should not open the door for negativity and doomsaying (which serves no productivity purpose and actually damages the hobby).

Rather than waste time and energy discussing our hobby in the context of outdated metrics, we instead should be working on how to gather and understand meaningful online metrics. These need to be understood before we can start making any predictions about the future.
Don

The op based their hobby health assumptions in great part upon low prices realized vs catalog value on ebay. This seems to happen often as ebay is the elephant in the stamp sales room and CV is always used as the end all barometer. Collectors, and in particular beginning and intermediate collectors, need to understand that while ebay prices can reflect the true market value for more common material they do not provide good data for better material, material that relies much more upon condition and confirmed authenticity. Sites such as SAN now have a massive amount of data that is much more useful for real cost models than ebay, Hipstamp etc.. This is not a slam on ebay but rather I am seeking to clarify that when a collector sees a pricey stamp starting at a penny on ebay and it ends up selling for 5 % of cv that is not indicative of soft sales and in turn a hobby in decline. It is more likely than not that that item has issues with condition or authenticity. Context is everything when basing broad assumptions upon pricing data.

Hi rogdcam,
Agreed. In my opinion catalogs were traditionally used for two things; as a reference to ID stamps and as a value guide. As a value guide they were about as good a dealer price list; they would give you a relative idea of value but not really give you the actual market value of your particular stamp. As a ID reference catalog are now becoming obsolete as more and more online resources are becoming available (mostly for free).

At some point someone will code an app/site which will glean stamp 'sold prices' from multiple online sources. It will even be sophisticated enough top only show you average price paid for sales in your corner of the world. (Already being done for cars sales.)

And of course identifying stamps online is becoming easier and easier as more resources are freely available. Hardcopy publishing, especially in limited production sizes, is far more costly than online publishing.

These trends will continue to put considerable pressure on catalog publishers; hardcopy catalog publishing will probably only last as long as the current 'old school' generation of users.

Hopefully some of them will recognize the need to invest in new technologies like valuations that are close to actual market values.
Don

Unlike cars, stamps are not fungible. Each is unique relative to centering and condition. This does not matter much for really common items, but quickly starts to matter a lot with even slightly less common stamps. Add to that the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it becomes a problem of needing 20 different prices for each item, perhaps more. The basic problem with catalog pricing comes from the fact that every stamp has a bottom line value. In Scott it's .25. All prices move up from this base. There are thousands of stamps that are not now and will never actually be worth .25 (although that is what a dealer would charge for them individually). This has a ripple effect; for example all stamps that catalog $1 or less are really about equally common. That is probably true even for 90% of all stamps that catalog up to $10. The differences are more about historic popularity then scarcity, even given variables in issue quantities.

I think people who see the grass as greener in Europe and south east Asia are not quite correct. I meet many students from SE Asia in my city where we haveover 20,000 full time students from that region. A lot of the students have parents who collect stamps, but not many of them do. Sometimes they have enough interest to go to an auction or shop with me and get items for their parents. The grass might be greener in SE Asia but it is withering rapidly. In Europe the retail world is different (still got shopping areas downtown). I think there might be more stamp shops. On Tyneside there are two bricks and mortar stores, very unusual. One is also the HQ of a high end Philatelic and Numismatic Auctioneer (Corbitts) the other is an idiosyncratic little place with a low profile.I suspect it's owner runs it as a way of keeping himself occupied. The next nearest brick and mortar store that I know of is Murrays in Edinburgh about 110 miles away.
Stamp Collecting and many traditional hobbies are withering, Stamp prices are generally going down but what the heck I am not around to see if my Penny blacks go in the garbage when I die. My local stamp club has audiences of about 30 at it's talks we are almost all elderly, but some only took up collecting recently. Numbers do get slowly lower.
In China as I have said elsewhere the scene is different 3 years ago when I was in Harbin some people routinely bought the year books of new issues and the stamp exchange was a revelation but the people there didn't so much collect stamps as invest. Wads of mint uncirculated Chinese stamps and banknotes were on display, but it didn't feel like collecting, more like hoarding. some people do collect like we do in the west, but they know little about stamps from the rest of the world. I was shown an Chinese online advert selling perforated penny reds being sold in a pretty package with authenticity certificate for around 400 Renimbi or roughly $50US. Starting prices in the UK for a decent specimen still less than a dollar.
Surely the minimum price of any stamp sold must reflect the time taken to identify it. If a dealer is to pay themselves properly 25p fpr a stamp that has been identified and sorted is a realistic price. I still buy from people who charge unrealistic low prices and accumulations that I have to identify myself, so I am a Problem for the guy who wants to make a living from stamps.

Uh, sorry, but the fascination with stamps & gains predates the 1930s ... and the 1920s ... and the 1910s ...

If you can only enjoy activities that are based on innocence, I am at a loss as to how to advise you to proceed.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

`If you can only enjoy activities that are based on innocence`

This statement rings true. Collecting limited supply items is not about peaches and cream for all actors involved. A certain amount of ethical choices are almost always involved. Do you pay a widow $500 for a $10000 collection? Do you share knowledge or conceal for profit? Do you go to flea markets haggling on a bin of underpriced material with folks trying to make ends meet? The amount of scenarios that arise from collectors are astounding. Do you put up material on ebay and leave out details intentionally about condition (95% honesty)

I suspect the fun part for everyone is different. Some like the transaction, getting deals. Some like large lots and sifting through them. Some like a single stamp that brings joy. Some like the history. The errors. The full album page. The countries discovery and learning. The technicalities of stamp making. on and on. One mans fun, is another man's bore.

I thought the 1893 Columbians were considered as a gimmick for collectors. Was that the loss of innocence?

We have debated the state of hobby so much.

@angore How true. I recently read a diatribe from 1911 about the awful Canadian jubilee issues of 1897 as "fake for collectors" stamps. Now we find those stamps wonderful and classic.

On the broader topic, I don't get "doom and gloom" posts about the dire state of the hobby, or ignorance of modern collectors, etc etc. Stamp collecting, like any human endeavour, has changed and will continue to change. Just enjoy it how you like, that's what important.

~gmot