Not exactly, but today I discovered that my local coin shop sells old unused stamps at 80% face value. So I bought a bunch to use on my US swaps! Much more interesting than the "Forever" stamps. (I wonder if this drives stamp collecting purists up the wall!)
I am a serious philatelist - many professional country collections. Stamps are my number one hobby and I manage and run several stamp groups here in Auckland.
I love coins. Especially silver, gold and anything really old.
Member of the Royal Numismatic Society of New Zealand and the Auckland Numismatic Society
I guess I'm a pretty low brow collector in that I don't really care about watermarks I can only see when a special solution is applied, how much gum is on the back or if it has 17 or 17 1/2 perforations. I do however only collect unused stamps. Stamps with heavy cancellations are just blobs of black ink to my barbarian eyes and they are most unappealing.
Non illegitimis carborundum est. Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!
I used to have quite a substantial collection, but lucky I sold it before the market tanked. I still buy some now and then if I find a big bulk lot that looks promising, but that's only to split and re-sell.
Since I discovered eBay about a year and a half ago, I have checked once in a while what Canadian stamps go for and can't believe how cheap they have become ─ even Victorian stamps. Neilithic says "the market tanked" and I remember reading in another post (not sure whether it was on Numista) that it is rare now for a dealer to deal only in stamps; they need to deal in coins or something else as well, otherwise they wouldn't make a living. Anyone knows what happened? Is it that stamp collecting lost popularity, a little like hockey cards collecting?
I have a few hundred stamps ─perhaps actually well over a 1000─ that I will eventually sell... or give away because it looks like they're worth altogether not much more than a few dollars ─ perhaps $50 at most, which means it's not worth the effort and time to catalogue everything in order to sell them.
I'm likely to keep the Canadian stamps, though, without actually planning on expanding my collection, since they are actually a form of official "tokens" used to pay for mail. There is no good reason why they should be treated differently from other exonumia ─ it's only a question of language that they form their own separate category. Stamps are more legitimate as a form of currency than pretty much the entire "coin" production of the Cook Islands. What's more, as I pointed out in another post, stamps used to be accepted as a form of payment by many businesses. Here in Canada, the Eaton stores used to accept them for payments by mail. This form of payment was also popular in France, and probably elsewhere.
Letters don't get posted as often these days with most people using e-mail or pre-paid envelopes (look at what happened to phone card collecting when cell phones were invented) so stamps aren't as popular.
With not many letters being posted then it's difficult to revitalize the hobby by getting younger members into clubs. I was a member of the local philatelic society and I was the youngest one there, there weren't any junior members there at all.
With a lack of new members the hobby stagnates, then when the older members start dying off and their kids aren't interested in stamps they try to sell them off, flooding a shrinking buyers market with stamps that just won't sell
People who weren't serious collectors but were holding onto collection thinking they will improve in value panic and try to sell them off to cut their losses leading to more drops in prices.
It's bad news if you are an old collector who has spent a fortune on their collection, but good news if you like stamps and are looking to start a collection. On a whim I bought a package of Canadian stamps for like NZ$20 I managed to get a lot of Victorian stamps, most of the Edward VII and George V stamps and then a whole lot of modern stamps and tons of duplicates that I sold off. Years ago that kind of collection would have set me back a couple of hundred dollars.
Coins on the other hand will never tank to the same degree as stamps have, stamps are just bits of paper, but coins have a metallic value, so if you buy silver and gold coins then you'll always have the bullion value of your coins to fall back on if numismatic values drop.
I've never really been a stamp collector (a brief fling with one of those "starter kits" when I was a kid notwithstanding), and I don't really want to start. I have enough accumulations of coin folders in my office already. But I definitely appreciate the wide variety of artwork and the way stamps like coins are snapshots of history, indications of what society deemed notable in a given year.
The coin & stamp shop that I frequent has more stamps than they could ever use and they sell mint unused stamps at 80% of face value. I just picked up a couple hundred stamps from the '80s and '90s to use on my domestic swaps and on bills, etc. It just amuses me to use an old 32 cent and 18 cent stamp instead of a boring "Forever" flag stamp, and maybe it adds a little color to the day of whoever receives my mail. I think that's a fun way to enjoy looking at old stamps while they pass through my possession without needing to accumulate them personally.
Actually, I guess I am a stamp collector now, because among the 18 cent stamps I bought were a couple of complete 8-blocks of these "Space Achievements" stamps from 1981. I liked the Robert McCall painting so much I decided to tuck away a block to keep.
I have several thousand I have accumulated over the years and do enjoy sorting new ones. I just completed a swap where we both collect stamps as well so some of the "extras" I received were some world stamps and I try to put actual stamps on his shipments. I generally don't buy stamps because I bought a large older collection for a great price 10-12 years ago and every so often pull some out and sort them. I also save them as I receive them in the mail. Maybe one day I will have the time to sort all I have and if not they really don't take up a tremendous amount of room.
I love the observation made earlier that stamps are really official tokens used to pay for mail. This is a great way to look at them.
This is all very interesting. I think Neil is right about the fact that stamps don't mean as much to the younger generation, who don't see a lot of them at all. The same is likely to happen with a lot of memorabilia that mean something to a generation, but not to the next. So, according to the law of offer and demand (basically what Neil said), collectibles are likely to reach their peak value when a generation of users is still alive for the most part and suffers from nostalgia. One of the best example here (probably not in New Zealand...) is how hockey cards from the late 60s and 70s became quite valuable in the 1990s. I don't care about hockey now, but if I had kept those cards in pristine condition (which almost nobody did), the collection would have been worth several thousands of dollars. Believe it or not, beside rookie cards of the star players, one of the most valuable cards was (and still is?) a checklist in mint state . Why? Because almost all of them were checkmarked, so that you knew what cards you were still missing. The hobby was killed in the 90s because hockey card printers started to sell whole sets. That was impossible to obtain until the 80s/90s, when you had to buy a pack of gum with 5 cards, and you built your collection one pack of gum at a time, hoping to swap your doubles. What's more, most of the 1960s/70s/80s hockey players don't mean anything to the new generation, so you get mint cards for a few dollars.
I suspect old jukeboxes and other 1950s memorabilia will never peak again. We heard a lot more about such artefacts in the 1990s compared to now.
Back to stamps... I have been buying a lot of coins over the past 18 months, and quite a few envelopes are covered with stamps going as far back as the 1950s. Obviously dealers see no benefit in keeping them and trying to sell them barely above face value. If I were to start collecting seriously, which I won't do, I would probably select a theme: Canadian provincial stamps; Nazi Germany stamps; the stamps of the Islamic revolution in Iran ─ that sort of things.
One thing I recently read is that one possible reason for the decline in stamp collecting is the advent of self-adhesive "peel and stick" stamps. You can't easily steam or soak these off the way you could the old "lick and stick" stamps, so it's not as accessible to young or more casual collectors. Of course, today's kids don't see nearly as many stamped letters anymore to begin with, what with the decline in writing letters and the switch to pre-printed labels for postage and pre-sorted business mail.
I recently read a story of a Post Office worker who first started working there right out of school and was given some well intentioned advice by a stamp collector. She was told to buy a full sheet of every stamp as it appeared and for over 50 years she did just that, accumulating what she believed was a valuable and unique collection. On retiring she came to cash it in and was offered 50% of face value. Shoulda stuck with the 401k.
My local coin shop has a box full of vintage stamps going back as far as the 1930's which they sell for slightly less than FV for postal use. I've picked up a lot of full sheets as a small gamble. I can't really lose.
Stamp prices have reached crazy levels and while that's great for buyers it's not healthy for the hobby. At least coin collectors can be comforted by the knowledge that the bullion value provides a safety net below which prices can't fall. While I'm largely indifferent to the fate of phone cards, hockey cards or tea bags I have a nostalgic fondness for stamps. When I was a kid everyone had a stamp album. Low prices are great but if all the dealers disappear then they become academic as there won't be anywhere to buy them!
We often hear people say "I wish I bought a load of <xxxxx> back then". For stamp collectors and savvy investors "back then" might very well be today. A recent movie just made Accountants sexy, maybe one day the same thing will happen with "The Philatelist".
Non illegitimis carborundum est. Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!
I have to imagine part of the problem is that the USPS (and every other postal service, I assume) has basically turned into the equivalent of the Royal Canadian Mint, etc., creating commemorative stamp issues for every popular movie and TV franchise that comes out, etc., in numbers that presume many sheets will be bought and hoarded unused. There is simply so much surplus unused postage left around (I read an estimate of I think $3 billion in unused US postage alone!) that coin/stamp shops can't even move the stuff at face value, because the minor inconvenience of using two stamps instead of one (and having to wet a stamp instead of just peeling it) is enough to push the price down below face value.
Perhaps it bodes ill for the hobby, but I suppose if the enormous surplus gets consumed or lost over time, the remaining stamps will rise in value again, someday.
There's really not much money in post-1950 base metal coins, why would there be in stamps? Give them both a hundred years and we'll see.
As a follow up to what I wrote, I have just received a couple of tokens in this envelope:
The two $2 stamps date from 1979 (you may be able to read the date at the bottom if you open in a new tab or window). Since the purchasing power of $2 has been cut by at least half since then (probably more), it means that those stamps were used at a loss, but it's better to get your $4 out of them and clean your drawers than to get $0...
It may not have been a loss. Many stamp dealers will now sell low value old mint stamps at face value so people can use them for postage. That would do two things, get rid of their old stock that they're never going to be able to sell, and reduce the number of mint stamps that are in existence, therefore possibly driving up the price of the rest of their stock.
One thing I find interesting with stamps is that often the high denominations are cheaper to buy overseas than they are in the country of origin. Why is that? Because the stamps are used for international mail. The local letter rate is $1 for a standard letter or $2 for a large letter/fastpost standard letter but the international rate is $2.70. If I tried to find a used $2.70 stamp over here I would find it pretty difficult, but I daresay they would be easier to come across in the UK, USA, etc. Conversely the high denomination USA and UK stamps are reasonably common over here.
Stamps never interested me until five years ago. My mother had bought her childhood home from her father. She mailed me a birthday card using old unused stamps she found in a junk drawer. I wondered how old those assorted stamps were, so I discovered colnect's stamp catalog.
Being unemployed at the time, I then scoured my house for more stamps. My wife's once-vexing habit of saving the envelope of every piece of mail now became a boon. After an afternoon's work, I had 20 years of definitives to start a collection.
Through coin swaps, I started getting stamps from other countries too. This was even cooler!
Nowadays, I clip the stamp off of every envelope I get. I also try to save as much of the postmark too... a cool reminder of the stamp's individual history.
From various sources, I have have about 200 stamps from 40 countries. I slip duplicates into coin swaps. Like Phil, I only collect by type. I just want the art, not the finer details about sheet position, perforation count, watermarks, etc.
If you're in Washington DC, check out the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum. The entire stamp collection is on display, and there's a table of free vintage stamps for visitors!
Now, AOL CDs would be interesting to collect. Who ever bothered to save those? I wish I had...
I used to collect stamps but not any more. I would like to swap my stamps to coins. I have some 20-30.000 stamps from all over the world also some special theme stamps, like flowers, sports, birds.
I've had no issue being interested in coins, playing cards, football cards, and war relics. For some reason I haven't found any interest in stamps other than perhaps collecting 3rd Reich ones. I understand the art can be cool but I find it difficult for me to get interested in them. Collecting anything is a great hobby, especially for kids who will stay out of trouble for it.
What I collect: US, 3rd Reich Germany, Philippines, Ancients, Vatican City, North Korea.
. Why? Because almost all of them were checkmarked, so that you knew what cards you were still missing. The hobby was killed in the 90s because hockey card printers started to sell whole sets. That was impossible to obtain until the 80s/90s, when you had to buy a pack of gum with 5 cards, and you built your collection one pack of gum at a time, hoping to swap your doubles. What's more, most of the 1960s/70s/80s hockey players don't mean anything to the new generation, so you get mint cards for a few dollars.
