The Biggest And Most Destructive Lie In The Hobby Of Stamp Collecting

"Nonsense. If they were all worthless and only priced at cost of labor plus profit, they would all be priced at the same price."

That's a very good point.

"...Dealers make money all the time on investing in stamps. Why can't the collector?..."

I think, because some people collect it just because they like it (B-Fly, Cats, Dogs etc.).
I know one collector who buy/exchange, trade .... B-Fly he need any country, Dune, Phantom, non exist, all of it, just to have B-Fly on it.
Now, we know that (as someone say, hoarding) this kind of collection will have no value at all when offered to dealer any kind.
When time come to sell it, come problem ....

Yes you are correct, all the stamps have the same price, 25 cents or if mint, twice face value.

You need to count the stamps that exist, not the Scott numbers. Just because US Scott 85A does trade at a price in no way changes the trillions of stamps produced who value in the catalog is 25 cents or twice face if mint. Those than don't have that (zero) value are not enough to be statistically significant. Sorry, just because one has a winning lottery ticket does not give any value to all of the losing and unredeemed tickets.

I'm not giving it to anyone, relative or otherwise, while I'm alive. Once I'm dead, I don't care. Light it on fire for all that I'm going to care. Whatever.

So all you are now saying is pick any random stamp and it is likely to be so common that it is essentially worthless. Duh.

Far cry from your ridiculous earlier claim of "stamps are worthless comments even those with a retail (not catalog) value of $50 or more".

If anyone wants to donate their worthless U.S. Scott No. 1 and Scott No. 2 I would be very appreciative .. willing to pay $1 each

stampdragons would also like donations from the collectors who paid a lot for their stamps but don't care about the value. Remember you can't take it with you.

The straw man argument of 'send me your stamps' is inane, let's all please move on and try to make logical arguments.
Don

Milco what is a "B-fly"?

Butterfly

Buy 1, get 100 free*

*just pay separate shipping & handling on each

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

As a collector, I view stamps as an expense and I "care about the value" of them as much as I care about the value of energy, electronics, medical care, housing, vehicles--I want them all to be as cheap as possible, and get maximum value for my money. It is necessary for a collector to know the market value in order to budget for your collection. If I was able to acquire a stamp I needed at 50% off market value (for example, a poorly attended auction), I would jump on it as quickly as a 50% off sale of avocados at the grocery store. But 50% off a stamp I already have would be as relevant to me as 50% sale off pork to a vegetarian.

If the entire stamp market crashed by 50%, I would be dancing in the streets because suddenly I could afford double the quantity and/or quality of stamps for the same budget (or be able take up another hobby in addition to stamps). If a stamp I own doubles in market value, the impacts are mostly negative--if I sell it, it would create a hole in my collection which would then cost the new (doubled) value to replace and would be a net loss after transaction costs. If I don't sell, the higher value results in higher insurance costs and in some jurisdictions higher wealth taxes. I'm not going to give away a stamp worth $1,000 for much less than $1,000 in value because it would create a hole which would cost $1,000 to replace. Just like I wouldn't sell my car or my house for much less than the market value.

Backing up a bit in this thread...

Catalog values are less useful than many would think. Applying the 'sold' filter on ebay is a much better way to determine how much you're going to realistically get for your stamp.

That said, catalogs are still useful to give a sense of relative worth - what's common, and what's rare?. But yes, many of these values do not change as often as they should. I know for a fact that Scott is considering an update at some point to Colombian States; they're aware that the values given in the catalog are stupidly low for items that might change hands on ebay a couple of times a year, if that.

So, there is utility in catalog values - but only when used as a guide to determine relative, not
absolute, value.



Sure, but the questions raised earlier have to deal with what happens when the 'market value' plummets for some reason. You might think your car is worth $20k and therefore be reluctant to sell for lower, but if everyone else decides it's worth $8k, then you really don't have much of a choice, do you? Unless you a) derive more than $8k of value from it by continuing to own it, or b) believe that at some point in the future, everyone else will value it at more than $8k.

This is the thing with stamps: as we mentioned earlier, we're basically collecting bits and scraps of paper. Other than the commodity price for recycled paper (de minimus), they have no intrinsic value. If you're stranded in the woods with a couple people, a few cans of food, and the 1¢ Magenta, nobody's going to care about the stamp. (Unless they're collectors, perhaps.)

As the number of people who 'value' mid-tier material continues to decrease, values and prices for said material will decrease over the long term. We've debated this ad infinitum elsewhere on the board, but I'm a firm believer that in the long term, prices will sink as the number of collectors drop. All of the auctioneers I've spoken to believe the same, which is why those in the family business I know are gently nudging their kids to either find a new business or diversify beyond stamps.

(Yes, the internet opens up new collecting pathways, makes it easier for people to connect to each other and information, etc., I've heard this before. I agree that's the case, but it won't make up for the massive generational 'time bomb' that's going to set off in another decade or two when boomers - the last generation to collect stamps at scale - start to flood the market with material.)

In the end:


This is really the golden rule. Sure, everyone likes to score a 'deal', and if you can flip a couple of duplicates on ebay or whatever, great, but in the end, it's not about the money.

I think that every time discussions of this type come up, folks fail to raise the role of inflation. And I am unsure I have ever seen a catalog publisher mention that their 'values changes' are typically only reflecting inflation.

If people would do discovery and dig into the role of inflation and catalog values, they would find that catalog values typical collected stamps follow inflation pretty closely. If you "invested" in a set of US Zeps in 1940, they are cataloged at the same value today when you factor in inflation.

Is this lack of mention of the importance of inflation intentional by some? Everyone can form their own opinions on this.
Don

The same could be said about a bar of gold. But guess what, we aren't stranded in the woods.