The Changing World Of Stamp Collecting .

I've been around stamp collecting for 70 years .During that time you come to see how the world is changing .

Here is my opinion .

The first big change was with the 1920's Ferrary auction ,this was the time the hobby changed from a few wealth Royal's and famous people to what I call the wealth business men coming into the Hobby . So this period was where the American's started buying and taking the hobby treasures across the ocean . They had their agents in London and Paris .This was the time of Avery and George H. Worthington,Col. Green,Alfred Lichtenstein plus people like Burris who were the wealth business men .

Then we get into the post WW11 period ,this is the time of the schoolboy collector . Millions of young people enter the hobby ,stamp supplies became a industry , stamp dealers grew and even department stores because places of stamps and supplies . These are the glory days for new stamp dealers . Stamp stores open in every city .We all grew and became researchers and specialist .


Then we get into the 1990's and 2000's , billions of stamps get printed each year ,too much of a good thing . This is where ebay enters and starts to destroy this empire , every collector becomes a stamp dealer and kills the small stamp dealer market place . ebay even becomes a place where you can sell your own collection skipping selling to a dealer or auction firm . The exit starts for new collectors too much stamps other factors take people away . David Kolhs of Regency Stamps tells everybody profit margins are gone between buying and selling .

Now we get to the 2020's ,a hundreds years after Philippe Von Ferrary auctions and what do I see ?


First the printing of billions of stamps are not printed any more ,the countries post offices killed the whole market with junk that you needed to keep your albums updated ,you don't buy a box of stamps ,now you buy a pallet of recent printed stamps still wrapped up from the printer . Now you go on a chat room and half the postings are "HOW MUCH IS THIS WORTH ".
Where is the building of a collection , it is like we got 95% of collectors are hoarders . Where is the future specialist and researchers comes down to "find it on the internet " They tell me there are millions of collectors but when I put up a page of what I worked up ,today I am lucky to get two positive inputs , where are the millions of collectors --answer-- they don't care what others are doing .

I see less and less people fighting to buy a good auction lots , I can buy nice stuff and get two and rarely three bidders fighting to bid on it ,more like I can get any lot after two one time bidders for me to win .

I collect stamps and don't plan to be part of the sale of my collection, it will be entertainment to me on the last day ,stamps will be on my desk when my wife to turns off the light .

Actually, the big change in the 20's was that collecting went from being a hobby for the well off to being a hobby for all. The middle class was being born. There was more leisure time in the post WWI world than before, and the "Roaring Twenties" included stamp collecting. Collecting went through a boom and into the golden age, which lasted into the 80's. Newspapers had stamp columns, and while there were certainly the rich and famous collectors, there was a reason that Nassau Street became so famous. It wasn't just those few very wealthy collectors.

Plus you had the end of any real reason for most stamps with the rise of the Internet. You very rarely ever see stamps on envelopes delivered to your mailbox unless you're already a collector receiving philatelic mail. That's how most people got interested in stamps to begin with, by looking at the stamps that arrived at the front door. Stamps are not even part of the experience of most young people these days and for the few that are, it's usually through non-collecting means. Postcrossing and the like, where the goal isn't to collect the stamps, it's to send and receive the postcards and see what other people have to say. I don't know why we would expect young people to jump in when their experience with stamps has been close to nil.

Probably not qualified to speak on the big picture but will say this. IMO people are tacky to join a stamp group just to ask "How much is this worth?" I won't snap at them or tell them their stuff is worthless, but I will try to ignore them like I would a telemarketer or commercial on tv.

Actually, a very timely thread as far as I am concerned. I have a large world collection though not near the caliber of the collection shown in the 330,000 thread. Best described as Three Bookcases and Gaining. It has given me a lot of pleasure even though I have never had the money to spend on rarities. Here is where it impinges on the current topic. Last fall, I decided to sell most of it. To do this, I contacted several auction houses that I have dealt with ( in Canada only as the process of dealing across the border these days is too complicated and painful to contemplate) Interest was expressed so I spent a couple of months doing a careful inventory which gave a pretty accurate total, by country. This was sent to those interested. Since I live in the middle of Alberta, hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the Auction Houses, I know shipping will be a problem but nothing that throwing a few hundred dollars at would not solve. Since then? Nothing! Have I been ghosted? I know values pretty well. I know my material will (mostly) only get in the neighborhood of 5% catalogue sold as country lots but to me the result is still substantial and is giving a profit to the business without an outlay for inventory. Is their take on likely interest in bulk lots that it would be so minuscule that their commission would not be worthwhile? Scary, if true.

An aside here. I mostly toss my auction remnants, duplicates, etc. into a cardboard box. This box of "stuff", when full, is then priced at something around $100 and put on the local Kijiji market place. It has never failed to sell and always to someone that, in my perspective anyway, is a young collector. There is hope! My big collection though? I would be quite happy if no one does get back to me and will continue collecting as long as I have room to accommodate my 3 bookcases (soon 4?) and a desk. I already did abstract a selection of loved items as I did the inventory in order to create a separate "Cabinet of Curiousities" in true Victorian Mode. Curated with no common thread other than I like it. What I call full on Magpie mode. Ohhh! Sparkly!

I don't even know why I collect. I believe that after some introspection, it is a way for me to keep the memory of my dad going alive. I think back to childhood memories, going to stamp dealers to buy cheap stamps to fill pages. I'm a bit younger than floortrader, now in my 50s, but at the time, all my friends were collecting baseball cards. As we all know, once the production numbers went up in the 80's of baseball cards, there was little value in card collecting except for a few cards. I know tons of people who bought box sets, and every card, all with the life plan to sell the future Mickey Mantles of the day. What happened was interesting. The same kids who bought video games, tore open the boxes, and tossed away the instructions.... now? Unopened Retro Video Games in mint condition are worth thousands. Toys from movies like Star Wars, or lego sets unopened instead of played with? Valuable. People who peeled baseball stickers and put them in albums? Bad move. Garbage Pail Kids are worth more than baseball cards. Vintage merch, like an unworn concert tee. Worth 10x original price.

I was never in it for the money. I was never in it for the history. Or even the hoarding. For me it is now about remembering a time...when my dad and I connected and I can evoke those memories everytime I buy a stamp, mount it, or just turn a page.

I buy a lot of modern error stamps in the last few years. I like the idea of things gone wrong in the creation process. Few people are engaged in it. I don't care. What other people do in philately has a low impact on me.
I doubt any error stamp outside of the Jenny will ever really sky rocket to even 6 figures. I have no desire to spend 6-7 figures on a postage stamp. Nor do I think spending 1000 on a stamp will yield me 2000, 5000, or 10000. Probably 700 if I were to sell. If I wanted to invest that money, I would have just bought nvda.

My 4 kids have no interest. Maybe one day they will wonder, or just post a message on insta asking what its worth when I am gone. It is a different generation, and stamps might as well be silver teaspoons or old apothecary vials. I don't think most kids care about comics, or baseball cards, or even collecting anything...Though pokemon, and sneakers have been more recent hot buttons, few if any find joy in stamps. And I can't blame them. It's really not all that great a landscape, and hasn't been nearly as long as I've collected.

What I think will happen is that niches will form, like minded people will congregate in places like this forum, and hobbies will continue. Many stamps will get lost to time. But I do not think for a moment it will just disappear. I think there is some inate likeability to amassing a collection or set of something, and as long as there is a thing called stamps, some percentage of those collector types will gravate. Then if enough of them do, markets re(form).

Off the point, Backroads, but you may be entertained by Lucinda Lambton's A Cabinet of Curiosities on YouTube. Lucinda herself is not the least of the curiosities.

In the World of Stamp Collecting, as in life itself, the only constant is change.

Old habits die hard, but we as stamp collectors and philatelists adapt, innovate, overcome. We grow with the times. Gone are the days of the Golden Age, most likely never to return. We accept this and move on.

When I began collecting stamps more than 50 years ago, the landscape of the hobby was radically different. There was an abundance of stamp shops and dealers who would gladly take my weekly allowance to allow me to fill the missing spaces in my stamp album. I could go to Woolworth's and purchase packets of stamps that I found interesting. Life was good.

Cut to the 1980s when, after a brief break from collecting stamps, I began building a new collection of dubious quality and was chasing slightly more costly stamps. The stamp market was on fire. Stamp values were up, people were investing in valuable stamps, Linn's was a weekly newspaper that I had delivered to my doorstep. Life was still good, but a little more expensive.

2009. Another brief break from stamp collecting (retired from the military, bought a house, sent the kids off to college), then I was back in the game. My focus had evolved by this time and my collecting boundaries had changed. I started yet another collection, but this time I had a plan. As my collection grew into what it is today, I used my software engineering skills to carefully build applications to track my acquisitions and to scan and store images of every page in my collection.

While my collection isn't anywhere near 330,000, I've built and curated a pretty amazing collection of U.S., Canada, Canadian Provinces, and Mexico that I'm happy with. I haven't decided if there's an end game with my collection yet. I may wake up one day and sell the whole thing to take a year-long cruise or visit far-away lands I've only seen on postage stamps. I may keep collecting right up to the end. Only time will tell.

That's my 2¢...do with it what you will.

I've been collecting since the early 1980s, on and off, and it's always been a deeply personal pursuit for me. I have exactly one old friend from those early days who still collects, and our "discussions" these days are mostly me sending him a photo of a recent acquisition. That's the extent of my philatelic social life, and honestly it suits me fine.

I'm probably preoccupied with too many other things to feel a strong pull toward community engagement, so forums like this serve me well — casual, no obligation, dip in when something catches my eye. I'm an APS member, though I'll be candid — I switched to digital and don't read it much anymore. The real value for me would be meaningful expertization discounts and a streamlined way to move extras. I keep my membership mostly because I believe in supporting the organization, not because I expect much in return.

Online purchasing is what brought me back to the hobby after a 5-10 years absence, and I'm grateful for that. But years of getting burned have made me cautious — at this point I'm rarely buying anything significant without a certificate, and even then I know that's not a guarantee. The trust problem is real, and it's one of the genuine headwinds the hobby faces going forward.

Floortrader's arc resonates with me even if my relationship with the hobby looks different than his. The specialist and researcher he's mourning — that's still out there, just quieter these days.

Yes, yes and yes!

The problem of trust has never been addressed in any meaningful way by philatelic organizations like the APS and it has had a MAJOR impact on the hobby. I built an advanced Russia and US collection and sold both. Now I purchase nothing. Why? Being burned too many times. Philately has been a magnet for fraudsters and con artists for generations but too often brushed off as being the victim's fault or part of the dues you pay. Nonsense. You can't enjoy the hobby or make larger purchases when there are so many minefields.

I do agree with most things said. One point though is that although it "died" out a lot, especially in comparison to the millions of school age kids starting up post WWII, that is ultimately what fed to the overproduction of the mass amounts of rather "useless and uninteresting stamps" (my opinion perhaps). I only have so much interest in the 4000 cto bird stamps from Poland lol. That said, I do think the 40+ crowd is still taking up the hobby in some decent level of numbers and I see hope in it continuing like this. It just will evolve and change, I'm sure.

Interesting topic - great to read the other perspectives. I am on the other end of the hobby - relatively new/just starting (in my 40s) and highly curious, motivated and in my opinion entering at a time when it is a great opportunity to create pretty amazing collections. I doubt I could have afforded my collection in my situation 40 years ago (for a number of reasons that I will save for another day and topic).

There is a great short video from Paul Fraser on YouTube that was created about a year ago. He described his experience entering the China auctions in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the early 2000s (I believe.) He described a buzz in the air, standing room only and (get this) a room full of young people who were eagerly buying and collecting. That is exciting to me personally and as someone who for an unknown reason has an odd draw to the China philately - I love listening to that video.

I have family that are wealthier than I and yet - they cannot take out their bitcoins or stocks at night and look at them with admiration, wondering the life that the bitcoin has endured, the hands that have touched it and the journey and story that it could tell if it was able. I however do that all the time when I look at and admire my collections. They are tangible - and in a world that has moved to an almost exclusively digital realm, I think that people are going to yearn for something tangible and would not be shocked of philately has a boom in the coming years/decade. Maybe not here - but like it has happened in China, it can and I hope it will, continue to be a past time that is loved by many. I often times look at stamps and think to myself - 150 years old and it has been cared for, preserved and in amazing condition. How many times has someone put tongs on it, rehinged it to their album, measured the perfs or even sold it. They have outlived all of their previous owners and will hopefully do the same to me.

I have no nostalgic memories that drive me, it is just an odd and sudden onset for learning and collecting that is somewhat inexplicable and yet therapeutic. I really enjoy reading these posts and I appreciate the wisdom and knowledge shared in this space. Our world has never been as artificial and rapid as it is today and it's not going to change any time soon. Yet I find collecting my great distraction to all of that, a chance to slow things down and allow my imagination to wander for a while and dare dream a little. Anyhow - thank you all for sharing, great topic and wanted to add my $0.02. Cheers!

And we are back to the Von Ferrary obsession.

Never mind that there are shiploads of cheap nineteenth-century stamps available. Where did those come from other than from ordinary people who collected those at the time?

Philately constantly changes. For an event to have an impact, it must have been covered in the press and reached many people around the world. Otherwise, it is just something that the in-crowd will be aware of. Events being covered by the worldwide press is a phenomenon of more modern times.

There are several reasons collecting is dying, or at least downsizing a lot:

• Kids have other things to do than collect stamps. Video games, social media, and even Magic the Gathering and other cards, which are also things that get collected.


• People don't use stamps much any more. It's emails, text messages, social media, paying bills online, etc. Maybe an occasional greeting card still has a stamp on it.


• Most stamp issuing countries have released an abusively high number of issues, to the point where collecting all the recent issues isn't very practical (and is certainly impractical for kids). This also includes such tricks as having 10 different stamps in a sheet of 20, where the sheet has enough other material that it's basically a souvenir sheet so you need to buy 20 stamps. This also leads collectors to have cutoff dates.

The OP's timeline and narrative isn't really accurate. Ken Lawrence did a multi-part piece in Linn's on the history of stamp collecting and part one is here:

https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...art-1-h.html