Hi Kleinton, and welcome!
Collecting stamps has been around a long long time (since the first stamp from Great Britain, the famed Penny Black!) And most of us collectors hope to pass along our stamps to interested family members, if they're not disposed of first by other means....
A thing to remember is that 179 years ago and even just thirty years ago (and all the time in between) mailing letters and postcards were the primary means of long-distant communication. Business, families, and governments of all types regularly used their country's postal system to send invoices, wedding announcements, even death notices, to their contacts near and far. The postal systems were generally much more reliable back then, too. People would often mail a postcard for a penny or two (or its local equivalent) the day before their train would arrive; some places even got twice a day mail deliveries, or more!
Keep in mind radio, telephony and telegraphy were very expensive when new; newspapers were often the main source of worldwide information in their day.
Sadly (or maybe luckily) those days are long gone, but the literally billions and billions and BILLIONS of remaining postage stamps remain, used or unused--even after accounting for lost, trashed, or otherwise unaccounted-for copies. Even today the US, UK, Germany, and other bigger mail-producing countries issue literally millions, if not even billions, of most new stamps. Nearly every US collector, for instance, can easily source older, still-valid UNUSED US postage for HALF the original post-office price!
More supply than demand.So if you're still with me, the age of stamps is nearly never the reason some stamps are very valuable; even condition or scarcity are rarely the main factor determining which stamps have a lot of value. For that, there needs to be DEMAND, which, sadly, is usually lagging far behind supply, in this fascinating but somewhat shrinking hobby. And of course information is often misguided or flat-out wrong.
ebay sellers prove that by the bucketload! True relevant knowledge is indeed power, if you have the right knowledge, at the right time, and know the millions of subtle differences between otherwise similar-appearing stamps.
Still, us collectors will always enjoy the "thrill of the hunt" and be ever hopeful that the next book of stamps (or envelope, or odd lot or inheritance of a friend of a friend's) will reveal that "pot of gold" at the end of the rainbow.
As long as you enjoy the rainbow (the beauty of stamps and collecting) and don't count on actually ever getting that pot of gold, you will be a happy collector.
Off my soapbox now, and feel free to ask questions!!!
--Jim (searching for 50 years now, chasing endless beautiful rainbows--but yet to come a cross a single molecule of gold!)
Posted 03/26/2019 04:46 am
Welcome Kleinton
