Stamp Collecting During The Coronavirus Pandemic

I was wondering how the recent coronavirus pandemic has impacted your stamp collecting (home, work, etc.).
I work for a recycling center that sells compost. I receive used stamps on envelopes for paid deliveries. During the pandemic we can no longer take payments in public, so we have gotten creative with prepayments for products for the first time ever. When the payments come, we call the customer to come and pick up their product.
I miss the state stamp shows, but look forward to seeing the dealers and collectors again once this pandemic is over.

My life is a lot busier as the online segment of the hobby has gotten a lot more active.
Don

As I collect Canada and live in the UK virtually all my purchases over he last 10 or so years are through on line auctions. I go to a stamp show possibly once a year mainly to chat to old friends not expecting to buy. So this mess has mode no difference

AQ

Have spent a fair amount of time pulling stamps out of the collections that I bought at past shows and just never got around to mounting in my main albums.

I finally got around to putting together album pages for my imperf transportation coils. Second page of two appears below.

I've been buying more stamps lately. Not sure why, but maybe it's because I'm home more and can do other things less. Or maybe the virus just reminds me of my own mortality, and that makes me think I should buy the stamps I need before I'm too old to enjoy them . . . ?!

The pandemic hasn't caused much of a change in my day-to-day collecting habits, except that I'm trying to avoid purchases from foreign countries. But even there I relented and bought some maximum cards from an ebay seller in the U.K. last week, because they were too cool to pass up. I'm also trying to spend less, since I'm temporarily unemployed, but I don't normally spend a particularly large amount on the hobby anyway.

The biggest disruption for me was the cancellation of Westpex. I had hoped to buy some low-value items that aren't worth buying individually online because of shipping costs.

Not much has changed for me. I do wish that the shows and live auctions had been allowed to go on. Not sure why people could not view material for instance by sitting spaced out and wearing a mask if directed and washing their hands before handling the material. What is the science behind the decision that you cannot look through an album at a viewing table because it will spread the virus?

We are all doing our parts like good obedient citizens but we should always push for answers from our leaders as to what the science/rationale is behind actions that restrict our freedoms. If an orginization wants to postpone or cancel on their own,good on them, but if they are being required or caused to do so either directly or indirectly by government action there needs to be science behind it.

"Not sure why people could not view material for instance by sitting spaced out"

Where would you hold it, every show would have to be 50x as big. A show dealer booth is 8 feet long. So 2 people could look at the first booth in a row. and only one per booth after that. So every booth would have to be enormous, at least for the first day. A&D Stamps would need a booth 1000 feet long.

I was talking about viewing auction lots pre-auction.

Still be the same problem. I view auctions; no one has remotely enough room to do that, at least not those in NYC. I suspect that many others do not have enough room either. For example Stamp Center in Delaware does not.

I could see Kelleher doing it. A moot point because the government will not let them. Sad

Sad? It's smart. Much as I love the hobby, a few people looking at auction lots is really not important right now.

Smart? How does people looking at auction lots have a negative impact on anything? What is the science behind the decision to not allow it?

I agree it is smart in NY and surrounding area but keep in mind that there are very large areas of the country which are not hot spots.

In my state of 10.8 million people, there have been 90 COVID deaths while in the same time period there have been 208 opioid over-dose deaths. But due to the state wide lock down, the hospitals in my area are ghost towns. At my local hospital they are at the lowest number of patients they have ever had and the healthcare providers are sitting around without much to do since all 'elective' medical procedures have been cancelled. They cancelled and consider my regular CAT scans 'elective' assuming that my cancer will stay in remission during the COVID outbreak. They also cancelled my monthly oncology lab work and port flushes again assuming that my cancer stays away and my port will not clot up and require another operation.

And of course my dialysis center is still a mess including shortages of infection control supplies. The $12/hour technicians, whose hands we place our lives into everyday, are trying to get laid off they can collect the $26/hour COVID incentive layoff money and I do not blame them. While the dialysis company refuses to pay more than minimum wage to those who do the life and death jobs (for them and us), the CEO got paid $36 million last year, making him rank 28th in the list of the highest paid CEO in the country for all businesses.

I did get my COVID stimulus money yesterday and am thinking about 'wasting it' on stamps, maybe that will keep the cancer away. LOL
Don

Meanwhile the largest individual hot spot in the country is a meat packing plant in South Dakota. They don't have a lot of people there, either.