The Changing World Of Stamp Collecting .

Collecting many items is no longer a major leisure activity. If you look at all the cheap albums in the "how much is this worth".It does not look like most were very serious about collecting.

Potential collectors do not have as much local support - clubs, dealers, etc.

I do not think it is fair to consider someone who uses a cheap album as "not serious." Someone might be perfectly happy collecting cheap, damaged stamps and storing those in a cheap album. That same person might be looking at those stamps in a different manner. It might be someone like that who spents more time on studying the stamps than on chasing perfect examples.

The ones asking what the stamps are worth, may not be the ones that collected them.

Indeed. I was deadly serious about my stamps when I was twelve - more serious than I am now - even if they were messy bits of paper.

I wonder what causes young collectors to avoid organised philately.

Everyone avoids organized philately.

I have seen from multiple sources the number five million collectors of stamps in the US alone. Let's say that number is off and the real number is half of that; 2.5 million. Given the current APS enrollment, with APS being the most recognized of the US based philatelic organizations, that means they have captured less than 1% of those collectors.

I would venture a guess that Siegel Auction Galleries has more customers and auction catalogs distributed than the APS has members. Hmmmm

You can look at other venues such as ebay and based upon the number of stamp related sales there are hundreds of thousands of people dipping in and out.

There were a lot of collectors that weren't very knowledgeable or focused on value. It was just fun to find stamps, fill holes in albums and enjoy collecting.

Most of these are now showing up on Facebook with the question "any value?"

Knowing the time and passion put into the collection those inheriting it seem upset to learn that each stamp isn't worth dollars a piece

I miss trying to get the many of the annual USA issues mostly just from mail.

There still are. In fact, I'd argue that the overwhelming majority of modern collectors don't give a damn about value and are only doing it for pleasure. That's the nice thing about philately, you can collect any way that you want and nobody can tell you different.




Those are not collectors. They are leeches. They either inherited stamps or found them in the gutter and now want to be told how rich they are. When they find out that their stamps are common and worthless, they throw them away and go to other groups trying the same thing with other crap they found. This is the majority of most social media stamp collecting forums. These people do not count as collectors.




I miss when the U.S. had stamps worth collecting instead of the self-adhesive crap that looks like a 12-year old made it in Photoshop. That's why I stopped collecting U.S. stamps in 1993.

All interesting comments and, by the way, thanks to geoffha for the Utube suggestion. It was fun!

And I do whole heartedly agree with the thrust of the comments. The hobby itself has absolutely nothing to do with rigid collecting rules, or values, or stratified layers of ranked collector elites. Even not that much to do with thousands of made for collector issues. A couple of Sand Dune Issues have made it to my Cabinet of Curiousities because I like them. It is nothing more than a positive answer to the question "Are you enjoying yourself?" Either answer yes or hang up your tongs.

Someone also asked in this thread why more people do not join clubs. Maybe, just maybe, they are like me. I have over time joined many local clubs along with national level associations. The clubs never lasted long and in my latest move, did not even get a tentative try. Reason? Invariably, they showed a strong element of what I call competitive collecting. My collection is, and here you can take your pick, bigger, worth more, in better shape, better organized, has received awards, done the right way, is mounted more correctly, etc., etc. Not everyone in the club, not even the majority of members, but there none less. So my introverted character did not renew my membership and I left. Most people are not scholarly, technical researchers or particularly inclined to display for awards so, like me, do not join something where active participation is an expectation. Something like this forum where the occasional post is the best I can do is quite enough. A question is always answered because someone in the community has the expert knowledge and is willing to share. A discussion is not a contest, just shared opinions. How many of us can remember forums that collapsed because they became competitive? Everyone, most likely. Same applies to physical attendance to clubs.

The closest club to me is over a 30 min drive each way and they meet at night. I do not like driving at night these days. They did have a day time auction but could not make it.

If it was not for the internet and Steiner pages I would not be collecting nearly as much as I am now.

ANGORE ---- Agree , without the internet and the use of Steiner Pages ,would of given up many years ago . I went to a stamp club meeting when I first moved to Florida ,meeting was about traffic on the roads and which new car was the best . Never knew what half the people there collected .

As said earlier ,the 2020's is going to be a pivot time for collectors . This Boston Expo is starting to look a lot like a repeat of the past two decade shows . Guess I am looking for new ideas coming out or new direction of any trends ,sad but nothing worth looking at .
Until something changes will stick with my plan of building on just filling more completed pages and looking for those hard to find complete sets .

There are allegedly 5 million stamp collectors in the US. But this figure is tossed back and forth all the time with no reference to where it's from other than Linn's.

As far as I can tell, this is not true. The 5 million does seem to be from Linn's--but it dates back to 1997! https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997...ter-quality/ And it's defined as people who have collected "up to four stamps a year". Actual collectors number 550000, and that's still in 1997. (The article claims to be updated in 2021, but I would be surprised if they got new figures from Linn's in that year.)

It's true that stamp sales are active on ebay, but it really doesn't take a lot of collectors at all to make ebay look active for something.

There's also a figure of 60 million collectors in the world. Wikipedia helpfully tells us that *that* figure is from 2013, which is more recent, but still not recent enough.

There is in the U.S. 4,950,000 people who buy extra stamps at the post office . There are about 50,000 who collect stamps actively of which spend more than $100.00 a year .

Inside this group of 50,000 maybe 2,000 spend more than $1,000 a year . Out of this 2,000 maybe 500 who spend $10,000 a year .
Then you got a whole different group of highly specialise collectors who will spend $5,000 to $100,000 to buy exhibit pieces once or twice every 5 or 10 years .

It is the 2,000 stamp collectors who spend $1,000 and up a year that the stamp auction firms hold close to their chest .

For a truely accurate set of numbers you would have to ask the same questions to the eight major auction firm owners in the U.S. ,they would know the landscape better than anyone else about the U.S. market .

Oh. forgot to mention another type of stamp collector ,I learned about back in 1968 .

We also got the "I am a expert " who comes to our monthly stamp club meeting and walks around stamp shows and likes to tell everybody "what to buy " He hasn't purchased anything new for his own stamp collection for the past 25 years and hasn't been seen actively bidding at any stamp auction too.

I being the youngest collector in the room at the time attrached these helpful experts all the time .

So any count of stamp collectors should included the inactive collector .

50000 makes a lot more sense than 5 million, but it still raises the question: where is the figure from. Passing around numbers with no sources doesn't really help much.

The apparent collaboration between Scott and Graham Beck through his youtube channel focuses on the most valuable stamps by country in the Scott catalog.

The video on Croatia stamps starts out with a question "Do you have one of Croatia's most valuable stamps?" Am I supposed to watch the video and find out?

This sounds like push on value for collecting and the need for a valuation catalogs and the how much is it worth crowd.