Proposed Merger Of The APS And Asda

The show sponsors must at least break even to continue with shows. The dealer must as well, but for the dealers, it is not just the expenses of having a table but the cost of sleeping somewhere other than at their table. NY/NJ is not an inexpensive hotel region, especially near the various venues . Couple that with the transportation cost and security issues with transportation, it begins to add up. Lastly the level of open street theft and attacks to accomplish such thefts makes protecting ones stock, expensive, not certain and even potentially life ending. These other factors push the bounds of "acceptable costs of doing business."





In was in response to your
which I took as meaning newer transportation without ICE was more modern. That currently "modern" (?) technology is electric vehicles which require lithium in large quantities. Please clarify what you see and more modern than big ICE? By the way there have been huge advances in combustion powered engines. Perhaps you were looking farther out to hydrogen powered vehicles, the hydrogen of which is derived from natural gas, a fossil fuel. Production from water is too energy (specifically electricity) intensive to really be wise way to go.

Hotel room was 139 a night. The dealer I worked for had a good show

Stamp shows today are tiny compared to the past. I ran across a flyer for a 1982 stamp show that I attended and it had close to 200 dealers and it wasn't even a big show. Today, even something like GASS can only get about 75 dealers.

I don't need fliers for that, I can remember the once a year ASDA shows at the Armory in NYC; EVERYBODY was there. Including dozens of us kids.

I only found it interesting because Orcoexpo 2023 is coming up and it's not going to have anywhere remotely close to that, whereas Orcoexpo 1982 was pretty standard for the time.

I do not attend shows for all the same reasons fewer dealers - cost. The ability to see a dealer, see a few exhibits I cannot appreciate, or attend mostly dull ad hoc seminars is not very appealing. I am not in the organized philately side much to see it as a mission - those that staff society tables and related social activity.. Of course, at an ADA dealer bourse there are only dealers.

I've been a show promoter/organizer for seven years and there are a mix of reasons for there being less dealers at shows. Our club is an APS member so we get to post the show in the magazine. Ironically, in the case of my show, there are too many shows to compete with in the fall so I am limited to only dealers that are from two states. At the venue I have the show at, I'm limited to about ten dealers. It's a large enough show for me to handle. Last weekend we had about 150 attendees on Friday and about 100 on Saturday. It really helps to have ample volunteers. I'm fortunate to have a club with about 40 active members. Still for a successful show one really needs to put a lot of effort to advertise. We spend about 1K in advertising for the show. I wondered what the dealers there thought about the APS/ASDA merger, but I just couldn't bring myself to ask. I did overhear one dealer say that there were only about 40 retail stamp shops left in the country. I think that might be having a larger impact on the hobby that the condition of shows. A show is only around for a brief moment, but a shop was available through the year.

I think the hobby has moved on from traditional stamp shops just as general retail has suffered - malls closed, etc.

To me the health of the hobby is by how many dealers/resellers stop buying the collections to break down and resell and those buying. They are the recyclers along with those that buy from them.

Given the complaints by some buyers of rising collection prices for decent material at auction seems to be a good aspect as long. Most of the ebay sellers or hipstamp (especially non US) are not going to join any stamp group and believe any effort to boost the APS credibility to sellers is not going yield meaningful results. I am not saying it is a bad idea but do not suggest trying to spend a lot of energy on it (grand mergers, alliances),

That is, the majority will not view the APS dealer logo as anything to them. I would guess it would only be important to some subset of 25000 APS members. The dealers get together (ASDA, NSDA, etc) first to work the problem but all groups have fiefdoms.

I think the thing about the brick-and-mortar shop is the visibility. People drive past it, see the sign, and wonder about it. They may or may not stop in, but perhaps the visibility is the sign - to them - of a strong, vibrant hobby. Of course, the store has to be able to sustain itself...

I don't know..there's something about thriving retail environment that speaks to the health of a hobby.




I think this is a fair point. I live outside of Nashville and we have an annual show. It's pretty good - solid number of dealers, some exhibits - but it is a far cry from what I experienced in 1990-1992 when I was stationed in Boston while serving in the Coast Guard. Three weekends out of four, month in and month out, there were shows locally.

When I was a kid, the local newspaper had a weekly stamp column. Even in the 90s, you could see upcoming stamp shows mentioned in the newspaper's calendar of events, in the weekly "Playbook" guide, etc. Is the failure to mention a result of the hobby changing, or is the hobby changing because we lost our more general publicity?

The evolution continues...
- Mom and Pop general stores gave way to grocery stores
- grocery stores gave way to big grocery 'clubs'
- small retail shops gave way to malls and big box stores
- malls, big box stores, and grocery 'clubs' gave way to online shopping
<shrugs>
Don

" I think that might be having a larger impact on the hobby that the condition of shows. A show is only around for a brief moment, but a shop was available through the year."

Back when shops were more common, there wasn't one near me when I was growing up. Later when I got a job and moved there was a couple of shops in the area, but I preferred to go to shows.

I can say that there is a certain segment of buyers who like to purchase stamps "in person." Kind of like I do for the "smell factor." Makes me wonder, does anyone know how many dealers there are in the ASDA? I think there was only one of the ten dealers at our club show that is an ASDA member. (at least according to https://www.americanstampdealer.com/Home.aspx) In all of Minnesota there is one and I'm not sure he is still active. There is one in Iowa, and he was at our show. Maybe this is much ado about nothing if so few active dealers are part of the organization.

Which begs the question why bother in the first place. Is the juice worth the squeeze and what exactly is the juice?

I grew up where there were lots of shops, but now, the closest is about 100 miles away. We used to go in there when we'd go to visit my wife's father, but he recently passed away and we won't be doing that very often. Shows, for me, are just like having the opportunity to visit a whole bunch of shops all at once. I much prefer to be able to pick my stamps on my own and it's always been a lot of fun to just "happen across" something you need without being on the hunt for it specifically. That's really hard to do online.

"It's fair to say the ASDA cannot continue as a standalone organization for much longer."

So what is the benefit to APS members for helping them survive? What is the advantage gained by combining with a financially failing ASDA?