Open Philately: A Free Philatelic Journal

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Contents:
Go Forth by Lawrence Fisher
Topical Stamps in the Classroom by Dr. Michele M. Bresso
Stamps of the Island Games by Richard Sun *** Edited by Staff - Please review the rules that you agreed to when you registered. ***
Perils of a Modern Collector by Todd Gantzer

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

Interesting reading - thank you for the link

This is a post from WKUSAU from another thread;

Note,
I try to check out every link to make sure it is safe for everyone. And of course the rules state that new members should refrain from posting external links until they get 50+ posts.

In this case, the link/post from the original poster (sotwuser) was great but I wanted to stay consistent with the rules, so I removed it. I was going to add back the link myself but this morning I had a CT scan (my 27th CT scan!) that I had to get to and did have the time.

When I got back in, I saw that WKUSAU had posted the above in another thread. Since I do not have ability to 'merge' or add specific posts from one thread to another, I added as a quote in my post above. I remove a couple of additional post pointing out the issue.

Sorry for any inconvenience.
Don

Thanks Don. I was doing to many things at once and confused myself.

The editor, Susan Martin, Middle Tennessee State University spoke to the Knoxville Philatelic Society the day the issue came out.(maybe) She is very open to additional writers, as are all editors. From basic stamp collecting to more specialized things. Articles can be about stamp collecting or your journey in collecting or anything that she finds close enough. If you want to try your hand at philatelic writing, contact her.

Excerpted from "From the Editor..."

"As a new philatelist, I was surprised at the number of paywalls around accessing philatelic literature. As a librarian, I was not. As I delved into philately, I did discover philatelic literature that was free, but was often limited to older back issues and not to more current material. However, the most important philatelic scholarship was completely behind the paywalls of societies which carry their own barrier, membership. Memberships not only have an annual cost but, in some cases, one also needs one or two philatelic references or nominations."

I've been doing philatelic research for 25 years and never ran into these limitations. For example, I've never thought it to be a "limitation" to pay the APS library for loan of a book, or for their scanning or research services. So I'm curious to know:

• what kinds of materials have you been unable to access because you've had to pay for them

• why having to pay for access to specialized information is considered objectionable

• why membership in an organization is considered a barrier to learning (memberships to the several philatelic societies I belong to are $40/year or less; one is only $25, and the value of the writing in their quarterly journal is well worth the price of admission)

I second essay_proof's comments and questions. I wrote (but decided not to post a similar set of comments yesterday.)

I often find a reference to a article in a historical or sociological or other academic journal, and find the same type of pay-wall. It's everywhere.

I find many major US philatelic publications have all but perhaps the last 2-5 years of prior issues available on-line with all but the most recent research available. And that for the cost of a membership that is no more than $45 for APS, and $35 or less for most other societies (at least the ten or so to which I belong).

I have no sympathy for anyone who claims to be a philatelist, and especially a professional librarian, who is not willing to pay a membership fee to support our hobby. I am sure she is a member of the American Library Association ($155/year), and/or Special Library Association ($220), and/or Tennessee Library Assn (fee based on salary), etc. I was a student member of the first two when I was in school for my MLS (student memberships were reasonable then), but as I never worked professionally in the field, I found their membership fees excessive to maintain as a "hobby".

I also wonder about the quality of potentially publishable articles she will receive. Most Society Journal Editors aggressively solicit articles from their membership and non-members, and I would be hard put to go to an independent publication with an unknown circulation when I can publish in a journal where I know people who share my interests will be reading it.

In spite of the above, I wish her well in that endeavor, and hope that with the financial backing of the Library, she can pull it off.

Mike

When talking to a new or potential new hobbyist, how much would you tell them to expect to pay in the first year or two for gleaning the knowledge they will need to make informed decisions?
Don

As much as it takes. That was my experience as a newcomer to my fields of study. When it wasn't a matter of spending money, it was a matter of spending time. When I first started out in the 1990s, I joined the APS and the ARA. Then, for the price of two subway tokens I spent the better part of a day at the NY Public Library pouring over journals. The information I gathered consumed hours, weeks, years of my time. I borrowed books from the APS library and bought philatelic literature and reference books from Langs, Bansner, Jackson, and Hartman. On the flip side, I got auction catalogs for free from Siegel, etc., each one an education in itself. Siegel paid for that education because at the time I couldn't afford what I wanted to buy.

So investment-wise, it's a give and take. That said, I'm not sure I understand, or will ever understand, that anyone is entitled to get things for free, whether it's lunch, a car, or information about their hobby.

I think that 10% is a reasonable amount to consider spending for resources on a regular basis.

One would likely have to spend an equivalent of that much on equipment to play in an organized sports activity, so why not a entry cost for stamp collecting.

My suggestions for using that money would be along the following lines.

Before spending any money , I would advise a new collector to begin by looking at the various videos on Stamp Smarter and the APS site Once those are absorbed (for FREE!!), they can go to YouTube with the understanding that those videos are not all "vetted", or possibly as reliable as those on the first sites. With these, the new collector can begin to get a feel for what is out there and how to collect.

Find a Forum like this one, and use it to let experienced collectors guide them to other online resources, most of which are free.

With this type of experience for the starting period, I would think the beginning collector would have some sense of what literature might be helpful to his collecting. In most instances, I think that the initial purchase probably should be the Scott US Specialized catalog that focuses on the primary collecting interest. For other countries or subject areas, the comparable Scott Catalog would again my my first recommendation, although if the interest is a specific country, a specialized catalog may be in order. I would think that a new collector, for the first few years, would probably want to focus on the basic stamp entries, and not the specialized material found in a specialized catalog.

The initial catalog can certainly be an older one, and I would think that no more than $20 would be necessary that first year's purchase. In subsequent years, they should continue to acquire other related catalogs or special references (A topical collector might want to focus on ATA membership and checklists for example). Occasionally, a special interest might require a larger one-time expenditure, but I think that a guideline of 10% of the budget for references and supplies is a starting point.

If their budget can support it, the APS membership and The American Philatelist would give them a broad perspective of ways to collect. Linn's is about the same cost, and would have more timely information regarding new US issues. Although there is a tremendous amount of (FREE !!!) US New Issue information on the other SCF forum.

Even for a working adult, who might be able to allocate $100 or more per month for their new collecting hobby, I would think that the 10% level might still apply for the first few years. I would again recommend that this be split between memberships and literature and catalogs. After a few years, if the collecting focus has not broadened, one might acquire fewer literature items, and may settle on a fixed set of organizations, and allocate less.

Once you keep in mind that knowledge gained from philatelic literature and other sources can easily assist the collector to recognize unusual or scarce varieties, and that knowledge can help grow the collection, I think it makes sense to continue to acquire literature for areas of interst.

Its a generational issue as a result of the on-demand, or "information" age. We have moved past that, and are now in the AI era, which only exacerbates it.

Imagine growing up, and having a question - simply ask: google, alexa, siri, or now: chatGpt, bard ... and you get instant gratification/answers for most of your questions. This certainly conditions one to expect mostly 'free' and 'instant' answers to questions.

Does that mean that answer should be free? Not necessarily, but if you run a non-profit organization, such as the US Philatelic Classics Society, that certainly bases a key part of its business model on paid memberships which drive revenue that fund the publishing of a journal, then you have a dilemma when people don't want to pay for information. The current approach of keeping recent issues (only) under a paywall seems pretty reasonable to me, but probably doesn't to some others.

Such organizations will evolve into the modern world or perish. I very much appreciate that the Classics Society has made so much information open to the public on their website, and I certainly encourage other philatelic organizations to do similar - while trying to balance that with staying-in-existence. I would submit that, in today's world, fully hiding information is counter-productive to expectations of the populace, and that such businesses need to adapt their models accordingly. The approach of hiding 'some' (recent) information doesn't seem unreasonable, but maybe these organizations can find other ways of funding their publications. We'll see.

You are not going to attract young collectors to the hobby by telling them what to do and expecting them to have a budget for peripheral expenses.

And this arrogance is what chases them away

The following is my opinion.

In IT, there is a saying, "information wants to be free". This has been used to mean several things, but I choose to think that it means that information's 'default' state is free. In other words, it takes far more time, effort and cost to restrict information than it does to simply allow information to flow without any restrictions. As such, it makes restricted information less efficient and less cost effective.

And it could be argued that a piece of information, in and of itself, has a very small amount of value and that value is always ephemeral. At some point, a piece of information can become 'common knowledge'. And once it does, the amount of value becomes greatly diminished.

Time, on the other hand, almost always has value. And I think that when folks speak of information having significant value, they are often referring to compilations of information which are basically time savings. Being able to save you time by quickly finding the information you are seeking has value. Having a lot of information compiled into a single source represents a lot of time saving and hence increases value.

And as txstamp mentioned above, technology has introduced (and will continue to introduce) new, faster, and easier ways to find information that you might be seeking.

For me the bottom line is that information is fluid, like water in a bucket. Whether is through evaporation or a leaky bucket, the only way to keep information making you money is to constantly be replenishing it. Anyone or any organization that sits back on their haunches thinking they can monetize the same information over and over decades is likely to be left behind.

And I also agree with txstamp regarding the upcoming generations. Information access expectations have already shifted and this trend will certainly continue and probably accelerate. As a hobby, we can either rise to the challenge and meet those expectations or risk a potentially significant decline in interest.
Don

Sadly, there are a lot of people today, and probably always have been, who don't want to invest in anything. They don't want to learn anything. They want a constant online Wikipedia, in case they need it, but they don't want to invest, they just want immediate benefit.

It's not everyone by any means, but there are enough out there who don't want to learn anything. They want everyone else to do all of the work. They also don't want to buy anything that they can't immediately turn around and sell for a profit. The concept of fun for the sake of fun seems to have disappeared from a large part of the modern young audience. We see a lot of people these days who say "I inherited a stamp collection, how rich am I?" instead of "I inherited a stamp collection, how can I learn more about it?"

I quite agree with Don post above and I do not really agree with Cephus post.

On my newly created website I just launched, all information is for free including my Thailand revenue catalog edition. 2019.
On all the philatelic sites who charge the people for seeing information, I think potential 95% of the people (including sometimes myself) is not willing to pay for information which maybe turns out of low value for you. This nonpaying has nothing to do with being lazy!
For my own website, if I can choose for 5% of the viewers to pay and loose the other 95% of potentially interested viewers, I choose not to lose anybody and gain potentially new collectors. Any money I would make from the 5% of the viewers is anyhow nothing compared to the countless hours I spend preparing the website and the material posted on the website.
I agree with Don that in the IT world, people expect info to be for free. How many people would use Google if they would have to pay for it. How many people would pay for Twitter (X) or Facebook or.....
I think the most important is how many people are interested enough to visit your website every month. If that amount is large enough, there will be opportunities to have targeted advertisement like certain auction houses willing to pay for exposure on your website.

Jos Sanders