7 ms·

Stamp collections are fetching whopping prices, but clubs need new members

36 points by adrian_mrd 5y ago

thatguy0900 5y ago
My grandfather recently died and left behind collections that we sold off. When you spend your life collecting things you really do build yourself around it. I was very excited and volunteered to take his national geographic collection until I realized that it would essentially take two entire rooms full of boxes with no walking space. His coin and stamp collections were also massive, heavy filing cabinets. Even selling them off is a massive chore, much less going through them to try and see where to continue it.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Even selling them off is a massive chore There are people who will give you a price to buy collections that you don't want to take the time to carefully catalogue for appraisal. Both you and them take a risk on the price being right, but then you save a lot of time.
- notyourday 5y ago
  > Even selling them off is a massive chore, much less going through them to try and see where to continue it. Contrary to what people want to believe 99.99999% of all those collections are priced per lb or kilo.
- sumtechguy 5y ago
  My dad has one of those big coin collections. There are maybe a dozen or so coins in the whole thing that are really worth anything. The rest is several physical tons of 'that is going to take awhile to go through' and 'hey dad your retired why dont you sort your coins, oh I am leaving that to you'. I personally try to keep my physical collections small. Only a few items that I consider interesting I keep. Except my DVD collection, video games, and my wifes CD collection. I like them so I keep those. But if I stopped caring about it I would take an active interesting in getting rid of it. I do not want to burden someone else with my collection of junk. My personal coin collection if you went and spent it as cash I would be a bit upset but no real value would have been lost. The 50 or so coins I have are merely novelty not valuable and fit in a plastic cup.
achenatx 5y ago
I personally try to collect nothing. I essentially "collect" two things 1) stocks 2) personal digital photos Every material thing you own can weigh you down. I try to make sure I use everything I own vs owning things just for the pleasure of owning them. I have pre kindle books that I wish I could convert to kindle. I wrote amazon suggesting I give them my books for free, then they give me the digital copy at a discount (maybe 50%?) At some point I might buy the kindle versions and then sell the books to a used bookstore (at 25%).
- secondcoming 5y ago
  Books are a nightmare when moving home. I see people with full bookshelves and I pity them. It's not like they read all the books either
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I've slowly been trying to work down the amount of stored paper, including books, in my house. I haven't moved in a long time but, earlier in my life, I definitely put way too much effort into moving books and other heavy things from place to place.
    - lapetitejort 5y ago
      I recently dumped nearly all of my university papers and textbooks. That's one less solid box of tree that I need to lug from place to place only to forget about for half a decade at a time.
  - williamtwild 5y ago
    "It's not like they read all the books either" Not sure how you would come to this conclusion without knowing every person with a book collection. I know quite a few bookphiles that have read every single book on every shelf.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I have many shelves of books. There's a few reference books that I haven't "read" because nobody sits down to read a CRC Handbook; a few textbooks I haven't read because they were aspirational purchases that are difficult to make time for; a dozen or so novels that will definitely get read in the next two years. If I don't like a novel enough to re-read it, it goes into a box, and gets returned to the next used bookstore I visit.
bhouston 5y ago
Stamps are 1900s' NFTs.
- VonGuard 5y ago
  Incorrect: stamps have a very distinct use. NFTs are just humongous numbers that are metaphorically associated with some.... thing.
  - manquer 5y ago
    Stamps had a function, now they are mostly decorative. You can print postage with unique number. Stamps are just one method for postal service to identify your package and its payment and transportation mode.
    - poo-yie 5y ago
      US stamps of today seem to be far less decorative (talking about the design on the stamp itself) than ones I've seen from days gone by.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Stamps are fungible tokens though. The whole point of NFTs is they're non-fungible tokens - that's what the N stands for.
  - electroly 5y ago
    In terms of collecting, stamps are nonfungible. They are individually graded for the centering of the image, the condition of the perforations, the condition of the gum, and sometimes the novelty of the cancellation (if it's used). The price of a stamp is based both on the rarity of the stamp in general and on the grading of the particular stamp. When you buy a stamp, you're buying the exact pictured stamp[0], not a fungible equivalent. [0] Usually. Sometimes people will buy "spacefillers" where they don't care about the quality, they just want something cheap to put in the spot in their collection. These are often unpictured and you get whatever the dealer sends you. These could be considered fungible.
llimos 5y ago
Everything is fetching whopping prices. There's just too much money around.
- ghaff 5y ago
  While somewhat true in general, there isn't a lot of evidence in the article in support of the headline. Some high-end stamp collections have fetched good prices. OK. But at least for the population the article is talking about, interest is dwindling. And it's hard for me to believe that, in general, either stamp or coin collecting has the mainstream appeal that it once had.
- vintermann 5y ago
  The world can't seem to get enough objects of pure speculation these days. But "seem" is crucial here.
munificent 5y ago
It's hard to imagine stamp collecting not dwindling as a hobby over time given that email and other digital communication has supplanted almost all personal letter writing. In the absence of that, there's so little emotional attachment left to physical mail and stamps that few will care to collect them.
LammyL 5y ago
Canada had a renewed interest in stamp collecting among young people in the late 1980s after the TV movie Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller came out. But it died out pretty quickly as Canada Post switched to printed stamps, and as kids grew out of it.
electroly 5y ago
I'm involved with an online stamp store for collectors. We estimate the average age of our customers is 70. The business has been around for 30+ years; a big contributor to customer attrition is death. I can't imagine the hobby surviving for another generation.
- m463 5y ago
  probably eerie parallels at the model train store
- massysett 5y ago
  It will survive. Years ago I would never have imagined walking into a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (American chain restaurant with a shop that sells novelties) and finding vinyl records and even record players. The selection includes stuff from thirty years ago and brand new stuff, like Disney soundtracks-these are interesting because they do color art on the front of the vinyl itself and sell it in a clear plastic sleeve. Nostalgia and the yearning for physical objects are powerful things. Pair that up with the Internet and its ability to unite far-flung niche communities and yeah, I have no doubt at all that stamp collecting survives.
stevoski 5y ago
This headline is quite inaccurate. Most stamp collections are worth a pittance, and worth far less than was spent on building them in the heyday of stamp collecting. The hobby mostly died out a couple of decades ago. Just a few diehards, and - as the article gets right - they are generally old.
Stranger43 5y ago
Stamp collection is one of those things that belongs to an particular period of change where things lined up to make it accessible and exiting at the same time, as the post war economy saw an book in people flying of to exotic destinations and sending postcards back to family and friends as Instagram and Facebook had yet to be invented. That faded as the exotic abroad became less exotic. Today you don't even need a actual stamp to sent an letter using the actual mail(see https://www.postnord.se/en/sending/letters-and-postcards/portokoder https://www.postnord.se/en/sending/letters-and-postcards/por... for example) so the hobby is bound to become more expensive and lets be honest what was the last time you got an postcard or for that matter an letter not sent by an bulk mailing operation containing boring bills or official documents.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Whoa, not sure what kind of folks you have around you and relationships with them, but when we travel (or on christmas, easter, etc) we send postcards to our closest friend and family. So do they. Its personal, I always draw little figures of me and my wife on the picture side, climbing mountains, swimming from sharks, paragliding etc. depending on situation. My parents have them all on the wall, so do some friends (well not all of them). Its a small gift, showing we think about them not only by bombarding them with photos/videos all the time. Its a nice tradition, the best kind of mail you can get, and I see no reason stopping it.
  - distances 5y ago
    I agree! It's nowadays even a more special occasion to receive a postcard than it used to be. I make sure to send one from all my holidays for my grandparents and godchildren (which itself is a nice tradition, no need to be part of a church or make it religious -- kids love having their own uncle/aunt).
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It does sounds like a nice tradition, but as a mid 30s American living on the coasts, I have never sent or received a postcard, nor seen one of my friends do it when we go on trips.
darthvoldemort 5y ago
What they really mean is that they need a new generation of Greater Fools to sell their collections to, otherwise the value of their collections will completely deflate. I've seen this exact same discussion on comic book boards that I frequent, where some collectors worry that Golden Age and Silver Age comics may drop in value because they don't have as much meaning to newer collectors, who buy Modern comics for different entirely reasons. It's kind of a funny discussion to me, since they are literally trying to keep a Ponzi scheme going at the expense of younger people and new collectors.
- leoedin 5y ago
  Apparently the same thing has happened with Elvis memorabilia. It's the natural cycle of collectibles. People start dying and flooding the market at the same time that demand dries up
- 7402 5y ago
  In my experience, people don't collect stamps in the hopes of making a killing via a "Ponzi Scheme." They collect stamps because the hobby brings them joy and satisfaction. Even if they are mocked by others who don't understand how they could enjoy such a thing. It is not necessary to attribute to ulterior motives to what can be explained simply by different interests. I'm sure there are aging collectors who mistakenly think they are leaving a stamp collection that could be of financial value to their children, but it is likely that they also have the wistful albeit unlikely hope that someone of the next generation might take up the hobby that has given them pleasure.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    This is how I feel about collecting books. I have a nice collection of illustrated books from the Yellow Nineties. They are not a path for financial independence, but they are beautiful.
  - vintermann 5y ago
    That you describe doesn't lead to "whopping prices". And if there haven't been collectible pumpers in your hobby before (a doubtful claim), it's all the more attractive for them to be the first.
AaronNewcomer 5y ago
I run the biggest international collectors show for my hobby and we always talk about the average hair color and old age. I think that there are a couple big reasons for this. I think there is definitely an issue with less discretionary income for younger people to spend on collecting. But I also think that there is a bit of a shift in the information that’s out there. Everything’s catalogued and priced and researched and it can just be really overwhelming for someone new to fit into expectations.
vintermann 5y ago
Whenever some collectible is "fetching whopping prices", your first question should be if someone is buying from themselves. Especially when the next sentence suggests the rise in interest may be illusory.

36 points by adrian_mrd 5y ago

My grandfather recently died and left behind collections that we sold off. When you spend your life collecting things you really do build yourself around it. I was very excited and volunteered to take his national geographic collection until I realized that it would essentially take two entire rooms full of boxes with no walking space. His coin and stamp collections were also massive, heavy filing cabinets. Even selling them off is a massive chore, much less going through them to try and see where to continue it.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> Even selling them off is a massive chore There are people who will give you a price to buy collections that you don't want to take the time to carefully catalogue for appraisal. Both you and them take a risk on the price being right, but then you save a lot of time.
notyourday 5y ago
> Even selling them off is a massive chore, much less going through them to try and see where to continue it. Contrary to what people want to believe 99.99999% of all those collections are priced per lb or kilo.
sumtechguy 5y ago
My dad has one of those big coin collections. There are maybe a dozen or so coins in the whole thing that are really worth anything. The rest is several physical tons of 'that is going to take awhile to go through' and 'hey dad your retired why dont you sort your coins, oh I am leaving that to you'. I personally try to keep my physical collections small. Only a few items that I consider interesting I keep. Except my DVD collection, video games, and my wifes CD collection. I like them so I keep those. But if I stopped caring about it I would take an active interesting in getting rid of it. I do not want to burden someone else with my collection of junk. My personal coin collection if you went and spent it as cash I would be a bit upset but no real value would have been lost. The 50 or so coins I have are merely novelty not valuable and fit in a plastic cup.

achenatx 5y ago

I personally try to collect nothing. I essentially "collect" two things 1) stocks 2) personal digital photos Every material thing you own can weigh you down. I try to make sure I use everything I own vs owning things just for the pleasure of owning them. I have pre kindle books that I wish I could convert to kindle. I wrote amazon suggesting I give them my books for free, then they give me the digital copy at a discount (maybe 50%?) At some point I might buy the kindle versions and then sell the books to a used bookstore (at 25%).

secondcoming 5y ago
Books are a nightmare when moving home. I see people with full bookshelves and I pity them. It's not like they read all the books either
- ghaff 5y ago
  I've slowly been trying to work down the amount of stored paper, including books, in my house. I haven't moved in a long time but, earlier in my life, I definitely put way too much effort into moving books and other heavy things from place to place.
  - lapetitejort 5y ago
    I recently dumped nearly all of my university papers and textbooks. That's one less solid box of tree that I need to lug from place to place only to forget about for half a decade at a time.
- williamtwild 5y ago
  "It's not like they read all the books either" Not sure how you would come to this conclusion without knowing every person with a book collection. I know quite a few bookphiles that have read every single book on every shelf.
- klyrs 5y ago
  I have many shelves of books. There's a few reference books that I haven't "read" because nobody sits down to read a CRC Handbook; a few textbooks I haven't read because they were aspirational purchases that are difficult to make time for; a dozen or so novels that will definitely get read in the next two years. If I don't like a novel enough to re-read it, it goes into a box, and gets returned to the next used bookstore I visit.

bhouston 5y ago

Stamps are 1900s' NFTs.

VonGuard 5y ago
Incorrect: stamps have a very distinct use. NFTs are just humongous numbers that are metaphorically associated with some.... thing.
- manquer 5y ago
  Stamps had a function, now they are mostly decorative. You can print postage with unique number. Stamps are just one method for postal service to identify your package and its payment and transportation mode.
  - poo-yie 5y ago
    US stamps of today seem to be far less decorative (talking about the design on the stamp itself) than ones I've seen from days gone by.
chrisseaton 5y ago
Stamps are fungible tokens though. The whole point of NFTs is they're non-fungible tokens - that's what the N stands for.
- electroly 5y ago
  In terms of collecting, stamps are nonfungible. They are individually graded for the centering of the image, the condition of the perforations, the condition of the gum, and sometimes the novelty of the cancellation (if it's used). The price of a stamp is based both on the rarity of the stamp in general and on the grading of the particular stamp. When you buy a stamp, you're buying the exact pictured stamp[0], not a fungible equivalent. [0] Usually. Sometimes people will buy "spacefillers" where they don't care about the quality, they just want something cheap to put in the spot in their collection. These are often unpictured and you get whatever the dealer sends you. These could be considered fungible.

llimos 5y ago

Everything is fetching whopping prices. There's just too much money around.

ghaff 5y ago
While somewhat true in general, there isn't a lot of evidence in the article in support of the headline. Some high-end stamp collections have fetched good prices. OK. But at least for the population the article is talking about, interest is dwindling. And it's hard for me to believe that, in general, either stamp or coin collecting has the mainstream appeal that it once had.
vintermann 5y ago
The world can't seem to get enough objects of pure speculation these days. But "seem" is crucial here.

munificent 5y ago

It's hard to imagine stamp collecting not dwindling as a hobby over time given that email and other digital communication has supplanted almost all personal letter writing. In the absence of that, there's so little emotional attachment left to physical mail and stamps that few will care to collect them.

LammyL 5y ago

Canada had a renewed interest in stamp collecting among young people in the late 1980s after the TV movie Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller came out. But it died out pretty quickly as Canada Post switched to printed stamps, and as kids grew out of it.

electroly 5y ago

I'm involved with an online stamp store for collectors. We estimate the average age of our customers is 70. The business has been around for 30+ years; a big contributor to customer attrition is death. I can't imagine the hobby surviving for another generation.

m463 5y ago
probably eerie parallels at the model train store
massysett 5y ago
It will survive. Years ago I would never have imagined walking into a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (American chain restaurant with a shop that sells novelties) and finding vinyl records and even record players. The selection includes stuff from thirty years ago and brand new stuff, like Disney soundtracks-these are interesting because they do color art on the front of the vinyl itself and sell it in a clear plastic sleeve. Nostalgia and the yearning for physical objects are powerful things. Pair that up with the Internet and its ability to unite far-flung niche communities and yeah, I have no doubt at all that stamp collecting survives.

stevoski 5y ago

This headline is quite inaccurate. Most stamp collections are worth a pittance, and worth far less than was spent on building them in the heyday of stamp collecting. The hobby mostly died out a couple of decades ago. Just a few diehards, and - as the article gets right - they are generally old.

Stranger43 5y ago

Stamp collection is one of those things that belongs to an particular period of change where things lined up to make it accessible and exiting at the same time, as the post war economy saw an book in people flying of to exotic destinations and sending postcards back to family and friends as Instagram and Facebook had yet to be invented. That faded as the exotic abroad became less exotic. Today you don't even need a actual stamp to sent an letter using the actual mail(see https://www.postnord.se/en/sending/letters-and-postcards/portokoder https://www.postnord.se/en/sending/letters-and-postcards/por... for example) so the hobby is bound to become more expensive and lets be honest what was the last time you got an postcard or for that matter an letter not sent by an bulk mailing operation containing boring bills or official documents.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Whoa, not sure what kind of folks you have around you and relationships with them, but when we travel (or on christmas, easter, etc) we send postcards to our closest friend and family. So do they. Its personal, I always draw little figures of me and my wife on the picture side, climbing mountains, swimming from sharks, paragliding etc. depending on situation. My parents have them all on the wall, so do some friends (well not all of them). Its a small gift, showing we think about them not only by bombarding them with photos/videos all the time. Its a nice tradition, the best kind of mail you can get, and I see no reason stopping it.
- distances 5y ago
  I agree! It's nowadays even a more special occasion to receive a postcard than it used to be. I make sure to send one from all my holidays for my grandparents and godchildren (which itself is a nice tradition, no need to be part of a church or make it religious -- kids love having their own uncle/aunt).
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It does sounds like a nice tradition, but as a mid 30s American living on the coasts, I have never sent or received a postcard, nor seen one of my friends do it when we go on trips.

darthvoldemort 5y ago

What they really mean is that they need a new generation of Greater Fools to sell their collections to, otherwise the value of their collections will completely deflate. I've seen this exact same discussion on comic book boards that I frequent, where some collectors worry that Golden Age and Silver Age comics may drop in value because they don't have as much meaning to newer collectors, who buy Modern comics for different entirely reasons. It's kind of a funny discussion to me, since they are literally trying to keep a Ponzi scheme going at the expense of younger people and new collectors.

leoedin 5y ago
Apparently the same thing has happened with Elvis memorabilia. It's the natural cycle of collectibles. People start dying and flooding the market at the same time that demand dries up
7402 5y ago
In my experience, people don't collect stamps in the hopes of making a killing via a "Ponzi Scheme." They collect stamps because the hobby brings them joy and satisfaction. Even if they are mocked by others who don't understand how they could enjoy such a thing. It is not necessary to attribute to ulterior motives to what can be explained simply by different interests. I'm sure there are aging collectors who mistakenly think they are leaving a stamp collection that could be of financial value to their children, but it is likely that they also have the wistful albeit unlikely hope that someone of the next generation might take up the hobby that has given them pleasure.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  This is how I feel about collecting books. I have a nice collection of illustrated books from the Yellow Nineties. They are not a path for financial independence, but they are beautiful.
- vintermann 5y ago
  That you describe doesn't lead to "whopping prices". And if there haven't been collectible pumpers in your hobby before (a doubtful claim), it's all the more attractive for them to be the first.

AaronNewcomer 5y ago

I run the biggest international collectors show for my hobby and we always talk about the average hair color and old age. I think that there are a couple big reasons for this. I think there is definitely an issue with less discretionary income for younger people to spend on collecting. But I also think that there is a bit of a shift in the information that’s out there. Everything’s catalogued and priced and researched and it can just be really overwhelming for someone new to fit into expectations.

vintermann 5y ago

Whenever some collectible is "fetching whopping prices", your first question should be if someone is buying from themselves. Especially when the next sentence suggests the rise in interest may be illusory.