Article That Spreads The Rumor Of Wealth Through Selling Stamp Collection

These are the types of articles that encourages the thought that you'll make millions upon the sale of a stamp collection! Get ready for a wave of people thinking they have a collection worth their weight in gold.

https://www.womansday.com/life/work...-collecting/

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

While it is great that articles like that increase hobby interest by reaching the general public, I share your concern about not offering more complete information. It is like encouraging people to learn about rocks and minerals by telling them they might find gold or a diamond in their backyard.
Don

As noted - the article doesn't seem to encourage collecting, at all. It just encourages one to go look for collections to sell.

I wonder if there is anything positive for the hobby from that.

The article could have benefitted from some proofreading for spelling and punctuation. But even then, it would still be full of poor advice.

At least the website it points people to, LearnAboutStamps, is accessible to beginners and reasonably informative (if basic).

A slight shudder seeing the elastic bands around the rounders cards.

Being a coin collector as well as a stamp collector I find the coins section just as egregious, if not more. If you find an 1849-S Barber dime you will have a rare collectible on your hands indeed. Especially seeing as how the San Francisco mint opened in 1854 and Barber coinage began in 1892. Good luck finding that pictured proof set in Aunt Minnie's attic as well.

Well, at least it's true you can make money off these "collectibles" but only if you have rare and highly popular ones. More importantly, are there people who actually read "Woman's Day" magazine?

I think stamp collecting is one of the few places where you can find an overlooked valuable. the trouble with many articles about value in stamps is that they don't mention the difficulty and skill needed to identify such gems. More common are stamps that are worth 10s of dollars for which you paid cents but you still spend a lot of time spotting them and even confirming what it says on the page if they are in a collection. I might have identified a few hundred dollars worth of "finds" in fifteen years but my catalogues probably cost about the same. factor in the labour cost if you aren't a collector then expecting to find any treasure is laughable.

I wasn't implying that one couldn't make money off stamps, but exactly what txstamp said. The article doesn't encourage collecting. With the amount of people coming into every stamp forum asking the value of common stamps seeing an article like this just gets me fired up.

Morning all,

Yep, there is many more people focused on the value of what they have rather than appreciate an item for its true significance beyond economic gain. Let's face it. Almost everyone is looking for their next winning lottery ticket or inexpensive purchase worth big bucks.