Proposed Merger Of The APS And Asda

I think that Mainer hit upon a key problem that the APS could help solve. If one of the areas that newbies are getting fleeced is in the area of modern US stamps worth less than their face value, why not advertise the problem and address it directly. The APS could use StampStore.org as a marketplace for these kinds of stamps. They could probably offer "starter collections" of this kind of material for less than face value. It would give parents who wish to introduce stamp collecting to their children a bargain way to do it through a not-for-profit organization. If their kids lost interest, they could use the stamps for postage!

This may seem like a diversion from the merger topic, but I view the merger as just part of a broader discussion of what can be done by the APS to help promote the hobby and to address a key problem. The APS could either work with dealers who support this idea, or they could run the function themselves. Opportunistic dealers who have been selling the same material at several times face value would find it hard to compete.

There are a lot of disappointed people when they or their heirs try to sell a collection. The AP used to post letters to the editor on unhappy people fairly regularly,. They complained of low offers for collections.

The APS editor made these comments back in 2018.

July 2018 AP
Catalogs set a standard that can be used by collectors, sellers, auction houses and dealers. A general rule of thumb is that a catalog value is what a customer could expect to pay a dealer in a retail environment.

My comment to above. This is just restating Scott's claims and back to the discussion if Scott sets market value or reflect market value, This is not the same as for other catalogs. The "retail" environment (a traditional dealer) continues to shrink. APS dealers will quote a catalog value for a collection yet the stamps in the collection that do not meet the criteria for the catalog value.. One has to adjust for condition (hinged, not VF, etc). Is this misleading to inexperienced collectors?

April 2018 AP
Most of the accounts I hear from collectors selling their collections eventually come around to the issue of price. I worry that we often rely too heavily on catalog values and, maybe, the emotional investments we have made in our collections. Virtually every philatelist can recount the time they paid too much, the time they got an incredible bargain and the dealers with whom they have the best relationships. Furthermore, the value of everything offered in a market is entirely dependent on what someone else is willing and able to pay for that item. I once heard an experienced philatelist explain that he covered up the values listed in a catalog so as not to be distracted from the information he really needed.

If anything comes out of this discussion, I hope the APS allots more editorial content on educating members if that is the basic goal but not everyone will agree on how much policing should be done.

Maybe a non-profit without a vested interest in increasing prices should be in charge of setting catalog prices...

Uhhh.... what?

The Scott Catalogues are owned by a private entity. Why should any third party be "in charge" of setting anything?

If the APS wants to create its own competing catalogue with what it believes are more realistic prices, then they or any other entity are welcome (and encouraged) to do so. It's not as simple as it sounds.

If you don't like Scott (or any other catalog system) with respect to pricing then don't use it or modify your approach accordingly like everyone else does. Catalogue values aren't gospel.

What I really meant was APS should try to drive an open source competing catalog. But I feel, incentivized dealers will try to angle.

It is actually easier to make things transparent than opaque. Simply looking at auctions catalogs I can almost certainly revise 1000s of listings, and be more in line with actual values. A big problem is you can't waste time in printing 1000 page catalogs. You need to be online and updating entries in real time based on sales.

Fleecing starts with lack of education, and information available.

This has been discussed before on the forum, and not to divert the thread (more than it already has been), but the technology is the most simple part of this proposed venture. The bigger issues are IMO (1) pricing standards (i.e., what constitutes "the" appropriate price? Online results? Which venue(s)? Auction houses? Brick & mortar retail? By whose authority is the price accurate?), and more so (2) adoption. What is going to cause any beginner out there to take this new catalogue more seriously than the existing standard with name recognition and the industry behind it?

(IMO, further discussion on this topic should probably be split off to another thread, whether new or existing.)

revenuecollector: AMEN, brother.

Widglo46, the stumbling block you have overlooked in your suggestion is the APS store generally is peddling stamps own by collector sellers who set the sale prices. While the APS does get donations, do they have the time, worker(s) and material to create such lots? The joining with Hip was to reduce the APS workload, not increase it.

Frankly, there is space for a seller on ebay to be called Beginner_Deals which offers up the material you suggest. However, after the creation time for the lots, the posting time for the lots (need to show all stamps) and the fees charged by ebay and which ever payment company is used AND the cost of the material to the seller, is it sustainable? It is the cost of the stamps themselves which is a huge percentage of the expense. New issues cost at least face (or more when including the expenses to get them into your hands). Otherwise, one needs to buy stock as discounted face groups which on ebay run 60-71% plus shipping and taxes. Yet that way one cannot expect to get a full years worth of all stamps.

In the retail stores and retail mail order, these sets were often offered as "Year Sets" in three varieties, Commemorates, Regular Issues and Airmail with C+R, C+A and C+R+A.

While the catalog sets a minimum price of 25 cents and twice face for unused stamps, the sales of single stamps from a walk in store may get close to that cost, it is far more expensive to sell a single stamp on ebay.

Thank you rismoney. You nailed it!




This sums up what should be the focus of both APS and perhaps even the ASDA (if their goal is truly to create an educated marketplace for purchasers of their products.)

We must educate ALL collectors, potential collectors, and families and inheritors of collections, to understand that all catalogs, regardless of source and statement made, are only a reference or guideline to value.

Stamp Collecting is a HOBBY, it is NOT an INVESTMENT!!!!



The stock market does not rely on a published catalog of stock and fund prices. Once upon a historical time, these were published in newspapers, now they are in real time and on line.

In spite of the criticisms posted about ebay, the sale price of an individual stamp or cover, as seen using the sold items lookup, reflects at least a reference point for its value, given the parameters related to condition. The same applies with prices realized for major auction houses for more valuable materials

The bulk of any APS effort should be focused on educating current collectors, and potential collectors, and families of collectors, that there are no real absolutes in stamp values, and that they are a dynamic entity of a market driven economy, at a specific point in time, and NOT based on a printed catalog.

Over and over, emphasize that stamp collecting is a HOBBY, not an investment program.

How many individuals take up hunting, fishing, gardening, or any other hobby with the beginning assumption that they are going to make a financial gain from their new hobby? I speculate that NONE do.

I have eaten $20 tomatoes grown in a home garden, when I could have acquired the same thing at the market for a $1.00. What fisherman has not eaten a $1000 trout caught on his $100 fishing pole from his $10,000 boat. Did he enjoy it. Damn right!!!

Does he expect to get his money back from the sale of his boat and gear when he dies. I seriously doubt it.

Hammer home that valuations are dependent upon the ACCURATE identification of the stamp, its condition, mint or used state, and emphasize that education is essential.

The APS should create free, on-line tutorials, available for everyone, not just members, and perhaps should make their execution and successful understanding of their contents, to be a prerequisite for membership.

Note that most states require that a prospective hunter take a firearm and hunting rules class and examination before allowing them to wander about in public with a loaded firearm!

The same might apply here. What if a new member of SCF had to take a tutorial to demonstrate that he understood how to use a catalog, could identify the key terms required, how to use and read a perforation gauge, how to scan (not iPhone) a stamp image and post it, before he could register and post a question about the value on this forum.

We already make them participate to a level of 50 posts before we let them communicate with others privately. Why don't create some additional criteria before allowing them to post??

Let a newcomer to the SCF family demonstrate that he has some skin in the game, rather than simply asking questions and looking for free advice.

Nothing that will or could be done by an APS/ASDA merger is going to change the market place for broad based selling platforms like ebay, Delcampe, or HipStamp. Only EDUCATION of the people using them is going to make a difference.

Logically speaking, NO ONE, absolutely NO ONE, should think of spending $100 or more on a single stamp or cover until they had spent many $100s or $1000s of dollars on less expensive common stamps so that they understand what the market and stamp collecting is all about.

You simply can't fix STUPID!!!



Several edits for typos.

I thought that some folks that are new to the hobby come to the forum to learn some or all of those very things. Now they should be locked out until they take a test?

Yeah, just what we need... more barriers to adoption.

Hard pass.

mml - I do thing there are some decent videos available, but I haven't watched them, so I can't comment and do not know if the APS has links to them. In general I do agree there is a lack of good material educational material available for beginners and some of the suggestions given here and on another board I visit are not really ideal, like telling a newbie to get a copy of Durland to see if they have a rare plate number (because gee you may have won the lottery) or telling them to get a copy of the Scott US Specialized (do you tell a beginning swimmer to dive off the high board?). Yes there are some useful things for a beginner in the front of the Specialized, but also other things that are over their head. The United States Stamp Society came out with the Encyclopedia of Stamp Collecting (or something like that), but I don't think it I idea for a beginner either.

I had to ruminate on what has been said in this thread thus far and while eating a tuna sandwich some opinions were born.

It dawned on me that when it comes to information, we are living in the land of plenty. Just about everything you could wish to know is a mouse click away. There are forum members that are GOAT's because of the internet. They know how to and have the time to mine the depths of the internet. The information is there if you go looking for it. From Siegel's Power Search to Stamp Smarter to SAN to ebay results and through the copious information directly or indirectly available from websites such as run by the USPCS, Rossica, JSTOR, The Philatelic Foundation, our very own "revenuecollector", SCF and countless others there is a wealth of philatelic information. You don't have to buy a book (unless you want to). It is almost exclusively free of charge.

The key is that you have to WANT to put in the work to find the information and the answers to your questions. If you don't wish to work a little before you drop cash on a purchase, then there is little help for you. I know people that will exhaustively research a coffeemaker purchase but throw money at stamps on ebay without a care in the world. It is a headscratcher but is not that uncommon.

I say the above because IMHO there are no organization logos that will have any impact nor are there any information deficits that need addressing. There are no shortcuts to education. The first step is to admit that you need the information, and the second step is to obtain it. If you do not wish to do so there is really nothing that can be done for you. Engineers do not design a bridge before getting their PE stamp and collectors should not drop money on a collection before satisfying themselves that they have a good handle on their subject matter.

None of this mitigates the problem of bad actors not being honest. You use the information at hand to safely navigate purchases. You can well arm yourself to do battle, but the seller needs to be forthright and honest in what details and information they present. That brings us full circle to how to handle sellers that are consistently dishonest. And that comes full circle back to the platforms themselves that support the sales. I see no place for any outside organization to exert any influence on the likes of ebay. We have all seen the same sad stories play themselves out for many years (Ryle/Cartel). Years that have not been devoid of the presence of philatelic organizations and nothing has ever really changed.

We all need to look beyond membership clubs for answers because although they have the brand and financial wherewithal that we as individuals do not, they have not proven themselves to be very effective when it comes to cleaning up the street after the parade horses have passed through.

I'm not. Education is great and we should lean into it, I'm just saying that we cannot hold ourselves responsible for people getting scammed. We can offer. If they choose not to take us up on it, then what more can we realistically do? There's always going to be dumb people out there. They're always going to make bad decisions, they're always going to complain about it and they're always going to "make us look bad". Welcome to the real world. People who get shafted are going to pack up their tents and leave philately, as they've been doing for decades. All of the platitudes of "educate them!" in the world aren't going to change that. What you're talking about here isn't a philately problem, it's a human problem.

All of the ideas that you're coming up with are fine, they just won't do anything. Say you stick your "Seal of Good Philately" sticker on a seller. So what? People are still free to buy from anyone else, they are still going to chase their irrational dreams, the scammers aren't going to care, hell, they'll probably do something similar to lend them an air of credibility, and we'll still be back where we started. ebay, which is in the business of making money, still isn't going to change their policies unless they think it'll make them even more money. There just isn't any kind of magic wand you can shake at the problem. It's a human problem and humans are inherently dumb and gullible.

Absolutely and that's a point that I keep trying to make and most people don't want to listen. If you want to see the attitude of most people, go look at the "I inherited a stamp collection" area. They act like anything that someone collected must be worth a new car and a luxury vacation and that's not how the overwhelming majority of collections are. I talked to Caj over at the Stamp Show Here Today podcast a while back and he was saying "sure, but you want to recoup your investment, right?" No, it's not an investment. I am never going to sell my collection and I honestly don't care what my descendants do with it when I'm gone. I actually wrote a page that's in the front of one of my albums that says "if you want to get rich, I don't know what to tell you..."

Again, this is just human nature, people who don't understand that a collection is about a fun way to spend your free time and your spare cash to enjoy yourself. That's it. It's an inherent sunk cost. You don't expect to make money on hobbies. Anyone who thinks that you do, they're doing it all wrong.