The Cost Of New Issues 2024 - A Weekly Guide

As I am the main new issue contributor for one of the major online stamp catalogues, I have been engaging in a bit of an experiment tracking just how expensive the cost of new issues is based on face value per year. Thought people here might find my results for the year so far interesting.

Basically I am including any stamp/mini-sheet/booklet etc that would garner its own listing in at least one of the Big 4 catalogues. I am including only single stamps when issued in single-design panes, single se-tenant sets when issued in multiple se-tenant sets in a pane, mini-sheets, souvenir sheet, booklets, and personalized stamps and ATM stamps where they are listed by at least one of the Big 4.

I've also included the average cost per week as a metric for collectors to determine if a country's new issues are "too expensive". In my opinion, if a country's average weekly cost is less than say US$6 a week then I'd not consider it too expensive - US$6 is less than the cost of a McDonald's Big Mac or a specialty coffee at Starbucks these days.

This is the update for last week (week 34 of 2024). The codes used for the issue types are

BK - Booklet
CS - Collector Sheet
MS - Mini-Sheet
PB - Prestige Booklet
PS - Personalizable Stamps
SS - Souvenir Sheet

Countries highlighted in red are those whose issues are produced by agencies such as Stamperija and Inter-Governmental Philatelic Corp.







Rapidly approaching almost US$10,000 in total face value for stamps issued in 2024, with France and Great Britain very close to US$500.00 each with another 3-4 months of issues to come. Romania is quite surprisingly in fourth place, and 24 postal administrations are currently over US$100.00 face value for the year, including the USA at US$115.88.

Interesting study , I see why people don't try to keep up with current issues. The collectors usually have a cut off date , some of the most popular cut off for W.W. collectors are 1940 ,1960,1970 and even 1980 . But rarely do you see anyone go further ,unless they are a single country collector .

I guess for me the question about new issues is really about perception more than reality for most countries. If the average face value for a country's new issues is less than say the cost of a Big Mac Value Meal, then I'd rather skip the Big Mac meal and put the money towards keeping my country collection(s) up to date. But then I personally like the majority of modern designs produces - they tell so much more about the society issuing the stamps than the classical-era stamps that had a restricted base of designs (especially before 1920 when it was mostly heads of state or nationalistic allegory that dominated stamp design).

But collecting the entire world's new issues - not unless you have a lot of free income to spend. Back in the 1990s I tried to collect new issues from most of the world (I did not include agency countries, which back in the day was mainly IGCP stuff, with some Francophone Africa countries as well on the "not interested" list. Only did it for a couple years then decided not feasible, though in the end some of the countries ended up appreciating nicely, like India and Turkey, since so few were collecting those countries in the 1990s and now there is more interest in the issues from that era.

One important thing to note is that print quantities for most new issues these days are TINY compared to what they were even in the 1990s, never mind the glut of the 1960s-1980s. Which is why if one does want to "catch up" on stamps post-1990 for most developing countries, they are likely to pay way above face value for them since the print runs were small and interest is high (especially for popular topicals, like animals/flowers/sports etc)

Oh and while many say the USPS issues too many stamps, at least it's not Royal Mail or La Poste, those two REALLY go after the collector in terms of issues and format variants.

Fascinating study, thanks for posting. Interesting to see that the overwhelming majority of countries are issuing souvenir sheets, mostly in the low single digits. There must still be a market out there for them to continue producing so many new issues, whether for collectors or local residents.

It would also be interesting to compare each country's current first-class letter rates versus the stamps they produce. I expect some of the leaders on this list are issuing multiple complete sets per year of 1 cent through 5 dollar values, for example, the majority of which will never get used on any letters or packages (and thus will be quite scarce postally used).

Venezuela also jumps out as an oddity - no single stamps just 3 mini sheets and 1 souvenir sheet, for a total of $305 face value. Weird.

I see a few names in the bottom half of the list that used to be big CTO producers in the 1980s. Every story is probably different, I wonder what economic or political changes have caused them to come to their senses.

So much to look at here, again thanks for sharing.

Regarding Venezuela -- they've had something like 100% or even higher inflation every year for the past couple of decades, which you would think you would correlate with lower currency adjusted FV. At first I thought maybe the currency conversion in the spreadsheet was off (I know they have an 'official' rate which effectively makes the currency appear much stronger than the actual black market rate). I searched a bit and found Touch Stamps which lists 3 minisheets and 1 souvenir sheet for 2024 (same as spreadsheet) but it appears the stamps are not actually currency denominated but denominated as "100 grams" i.e. I guess similar to US Forever stamps. I wonder where the FV 11082.96 in the spreadsheet comes from? It does not seem to appear on the actual stamps.

Seems like Venezuela might be one of the more interesting modern issues to collect, I don't see anything newer than 5 years listed on ebay or Hipstamp. Also wonder if they exist postally used.

Really interesting data and thanks for posting DJCMHOH. Any chance this data is available for previous years? Would be very interesting to see long term trends.

Well, there goes my enthusiasm for Togo!

"Linn's Stamp News" used to run an annual "cost of new issues" article that I saved, but that seems to have stopped some time ago. I found it to be useful confirmation of which countries to avoid collecting new issues from and which countries to collect. It also gave me some good ideas for new countries to build country collections from just for the fun of it at little expense.

Thanks for this. It's very interesting.

French collector here…

Thanks a lot for this wonderful study which I would certainly share with my collector group. I never really kept french stamps as, even when I was young, where too much.

The problem : I love UK stamps, which are as bad as a choice too…

Some facts to share : lots of french stamps can't be bought directly in post offices, you have to order them on line so they are completly oriented toward the philatelic market.

The ATM stamps known as LISA are quite rare, you should be part of a special group (mostly) to get them. They are cheap, interesting but for the collector market too.

So France, as UK, seems to be dead philatelic countries for me who thinks that a stamp as to be issued for mail first. That's my opinion, with my biases. What are your thoughts on this ?

At one time there was 20 million stamp collectors in the U.S. and lets say another 20 million around the world. So now they claim that a lot of the newer issues are now printed in smaller quanity . Well yea ,there are a lot less collectors and even much less worldwide collectors .

We are at the age were you can buy "bricks" of sheets of stamps . The auction firms now offer stamps by the pallet direct from the printer ,no need to deal with the post office any more . Safe for me to say Printer to Auction House .

There will come a day when the stamp catalogs can't list each new issue . There will be a cut off for new issues . The announcement will be 1970 or 1980 for printed and anything after will need to be online . I believe the changes are coming shortly . Scott catalogs will be the first because there playing with a over extended set all ready .

I believe a Classic 1840 to 1940 ,then a Golden Period 1940 to 1970 will be the printed catalog which can be extended with a lot of specialised items much like the classics has .

So the future is not the keeping up for all the recent stuff ,sure there will still be country collectors but the market for buying and selling will get thinner . The worldwide collectors have walked away from trying to keep up with updating album pages already .

I'd rather have the Big Mac.

In my previous post, I focused on french stamps, as they are from my country and it's a shame (seriously, that's just too much issues with too much money).

If you look each countries there's a lot of moderate ones. Lot of them issued for less than $50 a year. I would rather focus on some of them instead of France or USA.

The only thing I would consider would be postally used stamps : they become more and more hard to get and, in my opinion, are under evaluated.

I agree with Silhat's posts. There are some "blue chip" countries that unfortunately have to be accused of issuing "wallpaper," such as France, UK, USA, Japan, Greece, Australia, Spain, New Zealand, Channel Islands, Italy, Brunei, etc. Sad state but these are some of the biggest "stamp dealers" in the world.