The Changing Philatelic Market Place

The issue with items such as the Switzerland PAX set floortrader mentions is that Switzerland (and Continental Europe as a whole) is simply no longer as popular among collectors as it once was. The collectors who pushed up prices on Continental Europe back in the 1970s and 1980s are now passing from the scene, and there is now simply a glut of the material in the marketplace and fewer buyers who are interested in collecting those stamps. Continental Europe is now "passe" while the focus of interest is either in the Non-Western world (South and East Asia in particular, but also Colonial issues) or in topicals among "meat and potato" collectors who do not have large bank accounts to buy big-ticket items.