Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
We turned the discussion to Philatelic concerns. The dealer bemoaned the fact that most of his stamp customers were in the late 60's and many of them were not buying but selling to him. He said he keeps offering less and less money, but they still are very willing to accept his offer. He then pointed to the piles and piles of used stamp albums and stamps that he sells at catalogue no matter what the condition and supplies that are far higher than you can buy on line.
Then he predicts that the hobby of stamp collecting will die in 6 years along with us older collectors. Each month I make it a point to review the applications to APS and note that there are a lot of us old folks who are joining and not many youngsters. Is that a sign of our times when kids are more interested in surfing the internet than forming stamp collections? Or is there something else afoot?
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Les,
IMHO the problem with the future of collecting US is the impossibility for kids to find very many used commemorative stamps in the incoming household mail, combined with the proliferation of new issues. In other words, young collectors aren't likely to see many commemoratives on the meager amount of incoming mail that actually has a stamp, so they are not likely to see a very high percentage of each year's commemoratives in the mailstream. That, in turn, makes collecting unattractive.
When those collectors in their late 60's you mentioned started collecting as kids, it was likely in the mid-1950's. You only needed a network of a few friends to keep an eye on incoming mail and do some swapping to keep up with a collection of used stamps back then, so stamp collecting was a rewarding hobby.
I house my US collection on White Ace pages in White Ace binders, and I store Commemoratives separate from Definitives, Airmail and BOB. Commemorative album #1 (COM1) consists of 1893-1949. Over 50 years of commemorative stamps! COM2 is 1950-1969 (20 years). COM3 is 1970-1979 (10 years). COM4 is 1980-1986 (7 years). COM5 is 1987-1991 (5 years). After that, every album is 3 or 4 years of Commemoratives. That's all that will fit!
My 9-year-old has no interest in stamps or coins. My 7-year-old has started his coin collection and his 10-year-old cousin and 14-year-old cousin also have coin collections. They can find coins in circulation, and finding a coin issued 5 years ago is not a huge challenge. They might even find a really old coin on occasion. Good luck with that with stamps.
I doubt my kids will EVER be interested in collecting US stamps, so I plan to end my collection at 2016 with the next stamp expo in the US. I will still work on older issues, so I'm not giving up philately, but the number of new issues pumped out since 1980 or so has been a nail in the coffin for collecting US, IMHO.
I do plan to spend more time in numismatics because kids DO go there for a hobby. Don't blame "surfing the Internet" as the culprit. I have two boys and they have two male cousins. Three of the 4 collect coins. ZERO collect stamps in spite of my obvious interest in stamps. Stamp collecting, not the kids, is the problem.
One area where I see potential for my kids, anyway, is topical collecting. They could learn about a topic AND geography at the same time! So stamp collecting isn't dead or dying, but it is morphing. As governments abuse stamp collectors more and more with new issues, we will adapt and modify our parameters to fit OUR needs. At least I will.
Cheers!
Lars
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I am definantaly the only person my age (31) I know that collects stamps. I think most people are too busy. I find that most people have little time between work, kids, facebook, cell phones to do anything let alone a very time consuming and finicky hobby like stamp collection. People often ask me why I do it. When they ask how much stamps are worth and I say 5 cents for most stamps they ask me why I bother. People just don't see it as productive (a chance to make money) and therefor they don't think it is worth their time. I am not sure if the hobby is dead, I think it is probably more of a cyclical thing. We just live in such a fast paced world that most people are much to distracted to sit down and do anything that takes time. I think another factor is that collectors are burnt out after the 90 where we collected everything from dolls to hockeycards to comic books. Ultimately I think collectors will always come back to stamps because they are so perfect for collecting. But for now the collections that were made up in the 90s have a lot of people distracted. Fast paced society just doesn't allow most people the time.
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I am very pessimistic about the future of the hobby, so if you're looking for a rallying cry and balm of hope in the future of the next generations picking it up, don't read on.
It seems to me that most of older collectors (and I include myself, at the cusp of 60, in that group), collected in this pattern in their lifetime: We started collecting as kids because our parents, grandparents, or other relatives collected; our friends collected for the same reason, and that was how we socialized, trading, admiring items, etc.; and as Lars pointed out, there was the intrigue of getting interesting stamped mail. We then hit our teens to 30s and put away the collections for the most part, until in our 40s/50s when we resurrected the hobby.
While we were being a philatelic Rip Van Winkle, the generation being raised during this time didn't have the active role models we had; had friends who were no longer collecting; and mail became increasingly boring, with metered envelopes and bills dominating the daily delivery. As this generation grew up, we were their children's philatelic role models, older uncles, aunts, and grandparents, and their social world changed completely with the boom in electronic interests (read: distracting bright shiny objects) and social media sites. Now kids don't start with the excited anticipation of interesting mail; they have an exciting world of gaming, surfing, and what not on their phone, tablets, computers, etc.
I would be surprised if the hobby survives another decade, but I'm not optimistic it will. The question isn't whether stamp collecting will die, but when and what will happen to all those collections? As dealer/collectors disappear too, it will be at the auction houses where these albums, stock books, boxes of philatelic material get dumped. Prices will fall as fewer bid, and the market will shrink for the remaining burgeoning stock. Common issues deemed of "no value" by some alleged market authority, will be chucked; you can only donate so much to Scout troops, schools projects, and creative artists.
So enjoy your hobby for yourself, and consider educating your next generations about the value of your collection as a family heirloom, not a source of money in the future.
Peter
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Ah Peter,
Your words make logical sense, and your outlook a distinct possibility. There is the counter argument that as our leisure time grows, so will interest in collecting/art/hobbies etc. Your advice is certainly sound. Pardon me while I slit my throat!!
Dan C.
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I've learned to think in half-decade increments. Any larger spans will fail to anticipate new communication vehicles and new approaches to interaction. The iPad is a mere half-decade old but has revolutionized computing. I say this so that when I reply, I remember that thinking beyond that 5-year horizon is fraught with more unknowables than Rumsfeld could shake a stick at.
In the near-term, philately IS changing, but not necessarily dying. Comparing it to BB cards or coins helpful only to the point where we see what we might steal from them and understand their successes and failures and see how we might employ or avoid them.
Philately's strength comes from its adaptability to the interests of its participants. Where else does one see "collect how you want, what you want," and have a quazillion options. I have started and abandoned a score of major philatelic endeavors, with 50 minor ones in there as well.
That breadth of possibility leads to great health, both for the accumulator and the scholar; the one-of-a-kind collector and the ones who thrive on depth to see differences.
I just hit 60 and among the youngest in my club; but the collectors there are vibrant. And we can all look in SOR's mirror and see a healthy constituency.
I do think that some of the problems noted here are obstacles unlikely to be overcome: stamps aren't seen any more, despite their continued rabbit-like numbers. This both misses the kids who might have been attracted by the Toy Story and Shrek candy and the one-of-a-kind guy who throws up his hands instead of forking over his wallet. Still, there's lots to explore, and the internet provides entree for anyone willing to ask. Just look at the amazing outporing of expertise and generosity from our members: ask a question or need some stamps.... pooooof! people respond.
Anyway, i see no problem in the next 5 years, although our numbers might shrink. I think you'll see what Lars noted: each of us defines the limits of our collections. We'll see if we can add to our ranks.
David
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Happy Birthday David, i hope Dan does not slit his own throat..ugh,,pints of blood,as far as i am concerned Italians are not prone to suicide..live evolves but goes on !
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This topic has been beat to death on many a forum. The Hobby is dead- The Hobby is dead. Yet demand in quality items and prices increase almost every year. The hobby is not dead it is just taking a different path than most older collectors have traveled including myself. I do see in the future that higher value and grade of stamps will be more of a corporate investment as Art has become. I also see hobby becoming more of a topical society as this area of collecting has grown 10 fold compared to the standard form of filling album pages. Just my 2 cents.
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If you back into the philatelic press around 100 years ago, you will find articles and letters to the editors where people are bemoaning the demise of the hobby. Look at all the collecting "fads" that have come and gone over the decades. Philately is still here, and remains.
By the way, one can see the same type of discussions in most of the hobby "mainstream" hobbies as well, doll collecting, model railroading, etc. Those hobbies are still here as well.
Better time spent working on our hobbies and sharing them with others.
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@Dan:
There is no need to do anything remotely close to that; my point is, each person should enjoy their collections for what they are, our pastime and enjoyable hobby. We tend to get caught up in the thought that no-one else in our families have the remotest interest in what we have, beyond perhaps an avaricious thought of inheriting a fortune. It doesn't matter; if stamp collecting "dies" then it dies. But for the individual collector, it will still be alive. Consider the owners of Beannie Babies. Absolutely no market for them now, so you end up with two groups of people: One group, that decries the "loss of investment" and how no-one else wants the "toys", and the other, that pull out their stuffed toys now and again and enjoy them. Which camp do you want to be in? I choose the latter. And I'll keep my throat intact, because I won't get depressed thinking like the former.
@Ross:
Yes, the topic has been beaten to ... well, death! But I did not ring the death knell for the hobby's demise; I said it WILL die, that, to me, is inevitable. Maybe in a decade, or two, but eventually, it will, as will baseball cards, postcards, etc. Coins are more stable; currency is part of our cultures and besides, you can melt some coins for their inherent metal worth. Burn a stamp, postcard, baseball card, or Beannie Baby and you get ... nada. These only have value in the eyes of the collector, ultimately. So enjoy and fully participate.
It's a more hopeful message than I think I conveyed earlier.
Peter
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O.K.Peter, I'm feeling better now. I just don't know what to do with all the knives I was sent!!
All good thoughts,
Dan C.
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I am sad to hear that stamp collecting is dead...what are the stats on coin collecting,postcard collecting and ephemera ? I may need something to fall back on !
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i hope that cover collecting does not slip away during the night..for Roys sake !
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Dan, believe it or not, at one time I collected knives! LOL! Nothing fancy, just variations. I lost most of them during one ill-fated move across the country; I'm certain the moving company purposefully misplaced that one box. (they didn't take the stamps; what does that tell you?)
Phil, diversify your collecting portfolio; it isn't just good advice for retirement plans or stock market holdings. The trouble is, I have so many smaller areas of collecting they (1) take up all my available time from stamps, my first love, and (2) I can't get beyond that stage for them, if anything because of cost. My latest thing is some King and Country miniatures. Stop the madness!
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cocollectibles, when i left home to go in the service at 19 i had an army of British made toy soldiers..Indian lancers, guys with bearskin hats, Scots etc;. i had a cartridge collection it was fairly easy to get black powder cartridges and changeovers back then. what i really miss the most were my "Tales From the Crypt" comic books from the 1950's . Talk about realism. well anyway 4 years later no one had lost or broken my stamp collection. I stick with the stamps and covers !
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Looking down my corridor, the end of which is indiscernable and unlit,
I believe the future will take care of itself and all things in it.
Money-collecting, and in particular coins, seems to be sharing a fate
dissimilar to stamp collecting: hard currency production is shrinking and,
from what I read, is predicted soon (?) to be rarely used as other forms of
electronic currency and payment materialize.
My guess is that stamp collecting will always be a subset of human
activity.
Personally, I feel no compunction to recruit participants
to our hobby.
John Derry
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If i do any reading its history related or about stamps...i believe there will always be some folks interested in history and stamps. It won't be like the 1930s to 1950s..But there will always be some of us oddballs going against the wind !
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Frankly, I'm encouraged by the notes of optimism expressed here! I sincerely hope you are all correct.
Cheers to all,
Peter
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I've heard this same story about model train collecting, well, we're still here too! The unfortunate thing about model trains is they use hundreds of times more space than stamps. I may have a lot more stamps than models but the cost of the toy is based on the budget of the collector. My family is more worried about my train collection than the stamps, albeit pretty close to the same value. Stamps I've convinced them is a heirlom, trains were an enjoyable outlet of fun and education and who can put a price on that? When I'm gone, oh well, not my problem...to the delight of whoever gets the stuff.
I would hate to see stamp collecting disappear, it's been loads of fun and I put it away years ago while raising the family I can put it aside for future generations as everything comes and goes in life. Perry
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Didn't the hot rods and roadsters go out of fashion for a while ? Now when they have classic and hot rod shows twice a year at the Rhinebeck fairgrounds..people seem willing to pay a high price (to me) for a weekend ticket.
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Obviously you will see a roller-coaster pattern for most collectibles (and precious metals to boot)! Stamp collecting won't "die", and if interest wanes, prices will decline to the point that new or re-invigorated buyers step in. Free-market principles will keep things afloat through the Second Bureau (US), but after that there is a lot of "stuff" that might not be worth more that 75% of face mint. Especially the water-activated stamps from the '70s to the '90s.
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Well, I finally started something on the discussion board that got a lot of attention. Pardon me, while I break my arm patting myself on the back. I haven't read every post, yet.
I did not publicly disagree with my dealer friend, but I do feel that the reported demise of the hobby is a bit premature. The impression that I am drawing from reading Linn's is that the marketing executives in USPS Headquarters are encouraging the production of new stamps (Harry Potter) in hopes of increasing the interest in the hobby. Their theory is that stamps are a free revenue source. In my opinion, that kind of thinking is more appropriate to the Banana Republics, Former Communist States, and other nations who issued stamps not to carry the mail but to sell to collectors.
My dealer is trying to make a living on Numismatics by buying and selling coins. Given the relatively recent drop in metal prices, he has a sour taste in his mouth. He has pretty much given up on Philately. The real economics in stamp collecting always seemed to be in albums, mounts, hinges, accessories, and catalogs. H.E. Harris did not sell a bag of a thousand stamps for a dollar to sell stamps. He sold the bag to sell the albums, hinges, crystal mounts, glassine envelopes, and other things thought to be essential to the hobby.
I am not sure that the number of serious collectors relative to the population has really changed all that much. In fact, the internet with the concomitant increase in online sources for stamps may actually increase the number of collectors. I have noted an substantial increase in the number of visitors here. I also bet that our membership has increased since it is free to join.
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Hey Dan,
I have some really old but nice Barlow's and few newer Case's if you need them. Good for whittling, but not much good for slitting throats.
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Perhaps we were talking about stamp collecting in the U.S. Stamp collecting from what i observe is still popular in Canada,Western Europe and Asia.
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I have read that collecting in Asia is taking off tremendously.
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I'm optimistic about the hobby from my viewpoint, which is being able to acquire decent stamps at cheaper and cheaper prices. I'm pessimistic my stamps will be worth less than the bargain prices I am paying now.
But I wouldn't put much stock in the viewpoint of a brick and mortar dealer. As you said:
"He then pointed to the piles and piles of used stamp albums and stamps that he sells at catalogue no matter what the condition and supplies that are far higher than you can buy on line."
The reason the dealer sees only older folks at his store is they are the only ones willing to pay his prices, which are not competitive with the online venues the "younger" collectors are using. I've gone to retail establishments like this, where the dealer bemoans the lack of interest in his stamps and complains how he can't even get his own children to take an interest in the mountains of philatelic inventory he has. Mention the word "ebay" and these dealers turn red with anger. I won't shop there for stamps as they are just too expensive. On occasion I buy supplies from certain dealers just because its convenient.
The dealers that have internet store-fronts as well, such as Potomac Supplies, seem to have more competitive prices. Potomac Supplies is an exception I'll just mention them because I like them - they've been very helpful and I buy supplies from their brick and mortar store sometimes.
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This dealer does or did sell on eBay. And when I said that he sells at catalogue, that is what he marks on his inventory cards. Like most dealers today when he sell bulk lots, I really think that he is trying to get what he paid for the lot out of the sale. Some of his early bulk foreign collections show a bit of promise, but I am not willing to pay his asking price because I just do not have the interest in acquiring foreign stamps.
However, he is not just a brick and mortar dealer. He is aware of the technology and its impact on the market. It is difficult to tell the age of an eBay buyer. Many dealers are angry with eBay because they see inexpensive common stamps offered as more expensive varieties with low ball prices. Most reputable dealers are members of ASDA and APS and can suffer serious repercussions if they do that.
In my opinion, most of the stamp sales on eBay by private individuals go to "dealers" looking to re market the stamp at a higher price. A very reputable dealer told me that he would lose money if he sold anything on eBay for less than $2.00. Either the seller does not know what they are offering or they are deliberately pricing it below market to get rid of the stamp. I am not sure that eBay or any of the on line services is the place to estimate the true retail value of a stamp.
It is worth discussing since that the falling retail value seems to be the primary reason many think the hobby is dying. If retail values fall significantly then dealers can no longer remarket older stamps.
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"I am not sure that eBay or any of the on line services is the place to estimate the true retail value of a stamp."
As far as I'm concerned that IS the market (but maybe not for highly valued stamps). The fact that catalogs do not consider it the market may be part of the perception problem: the gulf between what people expect their stamps are worth and what they actually sell for. My viewpoint may be clouded because I have mainly purchased collections up to this point and those were regularly selling for less than 10% of CV, even taking into account the mixed quality. (But those collections typically don't have the highly valued stamps). But when collectors turn to buying collections from Ebay at wholesale prices rather than individual stamps from dealers at "retail" because its a much better deal, that is troublesome for traditional dealers I would think. It probably also indicates there is too much supply (of low to medium value stamps - it still seems hard to find the high value material).
Maybe the dealers that are in trouble are those invested in low to medium value stamps, which are losing value, as opposed to the rarer items, which are retaining value.
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I noticed an interesting fact today. If you factor inflation into the equation and purchased a US 1 mint copy in 1980 at full catalog, you would have paid over $8000 in today's dollars. Compare that with $ 3000 full catalog value in 2011. A classic stamp has not even kept pace with inflation.
My full set of Zeps are worth much less than I paid for them.
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03:00:30am
I assume you are referring to Scott's guestimates, Les.
I am thinking that during those thirty years didn't Scott do a massive revision in their pricing strategy at least once ?
My forgetter is getting better all the time but I seem to recall a great amount of pricing turmoil in the '80s which might make it near impossible to draw such a comparison.
It would be better to use the bid and asked prices of the day and compare them to a similar bid and asked source today.
According to an annual listing of the Consumer Price Index, which as you may suspect I keep on the small end table adjacent to my bed, an item that cost $0.82 and 4/10ths cents in 1980, was at $2.29 and 8/10ths at the end of 2012 despite, or perhaps as a result of, the recent recession that almost destroyed the country.
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Interesting commentary, Charlie.
My "forgetter" also gets better as time goes on. I have read that Scott did do a major pricing shift, but I do not remember the details. Katz talks about the stamp "investment market" in the 1970's as characterized by almost daily increases in value. I know that I let myself be suckered in to a subscription service that allegedly offered stamps with significant potential to increase in value. It was a scam. Caveat Emptor!
If Scott's pricing strategy is to survey auctions, retail, dealers, and (when available) private treaties, then they should have a very good handle on the market. Of course, what an organization says and what it does is often very different.
I have a copy of Scott's 1980 US specialized catalog and compared it to my 2011 US Specialized catalog. The first thing to note is that Scott Publishing was independent in 1979 and a division of Amos Press in 2011. Scott prices in 1980 were based on stamps in Fine condition and now it is Very Fine condition. In addition to the actual changes in the value of the dollar due to inflation, the conditional value of the product has been inflated as well. Back in 1979, the minimum price of a fine stamp was fixed at 3 cents, and today it is a very fine stamp with a minimum price of $0.20.
At the present time and even back then Stamps were a very bad investment. If in 1980, I had purchased an unused fine US 1 from a dealer, I would have paid $3000 at full Scott. Today my $3000 would buy $8,485 worth of goods and services and the stamp would be worth no more than $1200 at full Scott. Stamps have not only not kept pace with inflation but they have actually declined in catalogue value. And we all say that the "street value" is probably less than 50% of Scott for classic stamps which have a limited supply. That is probably why we see a decline in dealers and probably why the hobby is declining as well.
Scott does provide a good reference to relative value, but this is a free market and it obeys the classic laws of supply and demand. Demand is declining so prices are declining and small time dealers cannot make a living buying and selling. However, there is a lot of low quality stamps on the market.
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To clear up some of the mystery regarding the Scott catalogs:
- 1988 was the last year of the old valuation model
- the current model was put in place in 1989 with a large drop in stamp values from 1988 to 1989 editions and is supposed to represent the "retail marketplace". What it actually was intended to do (it didn't work) was to remove the ambiguity regarding the selling of stamps where dealers would discount stamp prices based on the country the stamp was from (for example and stamp from Chad might be discounted 60% from catalog value due to lack of demand, while a stamp from German might be discounted only 15%)
- in 2013, Scott raised the minimum catalog value of a stamp to 25 cents. That doesn't mean that a stamp with a 25 cents value is worth 25 cents. The stamp is worth 3 cents most likely, but the 25 cents is intended to cover the cost of a dealer doing business.
- Scott only has a few people who work on and edit the catalogs, They concentrate on the popular collecting areas and once every now and then look at other areas that haven't been reviewed in a while. That is why you see huge increases in values from time to time in some countries, like happened with Bolivia and Uruguay a few years back.
- Scott and Linn's have commented over recent years how the supply of higher-valued stamps is increasing as those items are coming onto the market as older collectors are passing on. That is holding down the values. As for the Zepps, there is actually a good supply of them all around. They hold a higher value, like the Penny Black, due to demand, but they are easy to obtain in most any condition.
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I am 43 and have been collecting since I was 8 years old. I have started many beginners, children, young and middle aged adults. I don't know if they stuck with it, but I do see many collectors on the internet. I think that the internet has become a place to find younger collectors.
I collect foreign stamps, not US stamps. I will say that the fact that the US has made it difficult to soak their stamps without it being a time consuming nightmare involving smelly chemicals has made me stop buying US Kiloware to trade to foreign collectors. They don't want the stamps on piece and I don't have time to fiddle with each stamp individually to get it off the paper. I just buy Canada or something else I can find cheap to build up trading stock.
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02:39:45am
" .... - 1988 was the last year of the old valuation model
- the current model was put in place in 1989 with a large drop in stamp values from 1988 to 1989 editions and is supposed to represent the "retail marketplace". What it actually was intended to do (it didn't work) was to remove the ambiguity regarding the selling of stamps ...."
Thanks, Michael, that is what I was thinking about. It was simply too much of a chore to go to the other end of the house and dig through my files of that era.
The changeover did create a major pile of unhappiness (Profanity deleted) for a year or so and then I believe Scott simply reverted, quietly, to a version of the original system. I know I have pages from the contemporary papers as well as the APS journal saved in a binder and some of the heated comments had to be handled with long barbeque tongs.
Collectors who were accustomed to buying stamps at a big discount from inflated prices simply refused to accept the "retail price" idea so dealers had to continue to offer discounts and several insisted on ignoring the then current Scotts, using the last one with the inflated prices until Scott relented.
Getting a 75% discount for a stamp that listed at several 100% above the actual market made collectors very happy despite the smoke and mirrors involved.
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Charlie, you are right. Many dealers raised a big-time fuss over the change. Many stated that the 1988 Scott Catalogs (yellow in color) would be the only ones that they would use for selling stamps "from now on". I went to a few dealer stores during this time, and also went to a few stamp shows. Until around 1992, the dealers still carried the 1988 catalog and not any of the newer ones. I knew one dealer who carried both the 1988 catalog set and the most current one. He said that it was the buyer's choice to use 1988 or current values for pricing. The dealer used different discount methodologies depending on which catalog was used.
Eventually, like you said, values in Scott started to go up. It wasn't long before things were pretty much back to where they were in 1988.
That was definitely a few exciting years in philately!
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Thanks Michael.
I wasn't aware of the upheaval.
Les
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I don't know how many have read Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (it's a really good book), but it poses an interesting question: how to kill something that is not an normal living being. In the case of the book it's the Hogfather (Discworlds substitute good ol' Santa), but with this discussion it's our common hobby.
I think it would be very, very hard. Almost impossible.
IMHO it all comes down to what motivates us to collect; not so much of what we collect. For example I know a fellow who's interested of anything related to railways. And he's become a topical stamp collector 'by accident' just because of interest to collect anything related on trains. And then theres the guy who's bird watching, but he's expanded also to photos and and stamps. And then there's... Each collector is different, they each have a different background and motives to collect.
It's possible to wipe out some interests; it's even natural as the world evolves. But something will always survive Even on the mankinds darkest moments (world wars, civil wars), stamp collecting has always survived. So as long as there are kids who collect rocks; or fellows who are into railways memorabilia, or just about any kind of collectors, our hobby will continue to exist one way another 
Just my 5 cents worth.
-k-
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Michael i remember the yellow 1988s..Big Shot Marlen stamps said that was the LAST catalog he would use. So much for that !
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Phil, he not only said it, his advertisements stated it!
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In my opinion going on price guides alone for selling is completely outdated. Price Guides are nice to give an idea of what is rare. Ebay which gives me thousands of completed sales on a variety of stamps every day gives me the best idea of what people are willing to pay, it seams to be about 10-15% scott catalog value for low and mid end stuff. I understant brick and mortar shops need to pay rent. Brick and mortar stamp stores have to be more of a hang out and supplies store and make their money from selling supplies and breaking down big collections into small lots, maybe do some consignment stuff. All the money being spent especially on low-mid range stuff is online, sadly most of it on Ebay. I say sadly because they charge big fees and unlike the brick and mortar owners, Ebay doesn't care about the hobby. Every $1 spent on ebay sucks 10 cents out of the hobby (I could see this leading to the death of the hobby quite quickly). In order for birth there must be death. Thanks to online stamp sites, I think SOR is a great one, we can buy and sell and trade quite conveniently online eliminating the middle man so to speak. It is to bad it will mean the death of hobby stores that refuse to keep up with the times and, excuse my french, rip off their valued customer on inflated prices for low-mid range stamps. How do they blame the customer from turning to the interweb. Maybe a rant for another day but in regards to the death of the hobby no way. In regards to the death of the price catalog heck yes and in regards to the death of brick and mortar shops...its complicated but that is what happens when you mix business and pleasure.
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SCB,
I hadn't quite thought about this previously with respect to our hobby, but the basic question you pose as to what motivates us to collect does ring a bell. We are hard-wired to do 'nesting activities'- and this can be observed across species.
Might our collecting hobby be yet a further example of that? If so, you are absolutely right that it may never be able to be stamped out(pun intended). To do so would probably doom the species.
Can it be that we, STAMP COLLECTORS OF THE WORLD! are our species continued hope for mankind!!! A staggering thought-I must sit down.
Deep in thought,
Dan C.
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dani20:
You can wade through my deepest thoughts and not even get your ankles wet.
My primitive analysis of this interesting thread is that, collectively, we have
carried our hobby into the cemetery but all decline to dig the burial plot.
John Derry
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Ciao SCB, Good to see you here...i truly believe the large auction houses will continue to prosper..lets hope that there will be enough "vestpocket" dealers around to cater to the little guys..the vast majority !!
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Can't be too dead. I'm still able to purchase Stamp Album Binders. Just ordered another one. Kind of stagnate till it arrives, hopefully by the end of the week.
Then I will stare at it for half a day in an attempt to decide what topicals to use it for, and then I will wish I had ordered more pages for it. 
All is still well and alive in Stamp Collecting..
Clayton
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As a word of encouragement... I am a new collector (yes there are some) and am having a great time laying the groundwork of my collection. A couple points.
The low prices are what is allowing me to jump into the hobby. Frankly, with kids starting college, I can't afford to collect anything else nearly as actively.
The internet (including ebay), with its world wide reach may be great for the hobby as it shrinks the world so dramatically. I can be in direct contact with collectors in Japan or Australia from my home Pennsylvania. That is exciting to me.
I have no doubt the hobby is changing - I've collected other things over the years and all collecting hobbies are changing. I think perhaps how collectors and dealers handle those changes will determine how the hobby grows or shrinks in coming years.
There is so much more I would like to type. I keep deleting and rewriting. I think I will just let this stand and hope this makes some sense.
You have a great site and discussion forum. I am learning a ton and having a blast doing it.
Bob
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This indeed has been a great discussion and we've stayed on point for a long time! Kudos to all!
I haven't really changed my opinion, but I concede that maybe what we will have in a decade or two, is the death of the hobby as we know it today, not totally. Those who said collecting will continue, are correct, as evidenced by our new collector friend bobhaf and others, and indeed in a upcoming decades, it will be a buyers market.
Cheers,
Peter
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Bob,
Welcome to the hobby and to the forum! You are correct - there is a LOT you can acquire for CHEAP!!! When you get into pricier areas, be sure to ask questions and educate yourself about potential fakes and frauds. Not much of a problem when you are getting started, but expanding your knowledge faster than your collection can save you a few bucks!
I like that! That's my new tagline!
Lars
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I turned 71 a couple of days ago. I fear that I may die before I can finish reading this thread! Don't you people have anything better to do? You should try stamp collecting!
Seriously, now, when my wife I moved to Vancouver in 2001 for what is euphemistically called "retirement," there were six stamp shops within walking distance of our apartment (we live about 12 blocks from Vancouver Centre). Not all suited my needs — one was just an office where you could look at great postal history, but the owner only sold on eBay. There were two more I could get to with a short bus ride, one that required a long bus ride, and another that involved a 45-minute endurance test on a very crowded bus (now replaced by fast, comfortable Canada Line subway/elevated train).
Today, there is only one stamp shop within walking distance, and it's quite a long walk. That's FvH Stamps on Cordova Street. The owner is nearing retirement age, and has so much stock that he'll never get to the bottom of it. A friend calls his storage room a philatelic alternate universe. All Nations Stamp and Coin, moved from downtown Vancouver to a location near UBC and requires a longish bus ride; another, Chantou Stamps, requires a shortish ride on the Canada Line and then a bus ride on a bus that is often very crowded.
One of our former stamp shops, Weeda Stamps, was a Vancouver philatelic legend, but several years ago the owners pulled up stakes and moved to Victoria. Weeda Stamps still exists, but only as an online bid board auction. The quality and quantity of their auctions (about 20 a year) has steadily gone up and up, along with their profits.
My stamp club, the BC Philatelic Society, is still healthy in terms of membership, and is probably the largest of a half-dozen clubs in Metro Vancouver with somewhere around 60 members. Weekly meetings bring out anywhere from a dozen to 30 members, depending on the program. The big problem we face is an aging executive, me among them. I recently decided to resign as president due to stress resulting from various factors, some club-related, some not. Only one member of the executive has indicated that he will stand for election at our AGM in March. I'm hoping that some of our newer, somewhat younger members will choose to become more involved.
Finally, the area of collecting that I have seen grow an incredible amount over the last 25 years is postal history. Around about 1980, a dealer in Prince George introduced me to cover collecting — postal history. He sold me a cover for a dollar; years later I traded it to another postal history dealer for a hundred dollars in other covers. Since then, postal history collecting has burgeoned. The majority of dealers at our annual show and bourse, VANPEX, sell postal history and only postal history. I myself mostly buy postal history and postcards. I use the postcards and stamps as collateral items to help illustrate web pages and talks about postal history. It's interesting that one of the fastest-growing clubs in Vancouver is the Vancouver Postcard Club.
Bob Ingraham
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Lars
Thanks for the advice. I'm concentrating on easy to find cheaper stamps no one would want to forge and that even I can identify.
Trying to learn as much as I can in the meantime so I can both keep from buying fakes but also so I can accurately identify what I have. (for now I just assume its the cheapest variety of whatever)
Great tagline
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Here's an interesting article about stamp collecting in Britain, from the April 2013 The Guardian newspaper. It is germane to this post.
Guardian article
Peter
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Thank you for posting that article, Peter, as I believe it accurately reflects
the hobby in the New World as well.
John Derry
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"The Royal Mail says the number of traditional addressed envelopes fell at a rate of 4%-7% a year between 2008 to 2011, but plummeted at an even faster pace after the steep increase in the price of first-class stamps to 60p last year."
No, really? Gee, every postal system complains that the "first class" mail keeps dropping, especially after they raise the rates. So, what do they do??? Keep raising the rates. Brainiacs.
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06:46:40am
I read the UK article and had to laugh.
I simply can't imagine someone fooling around with stamps since the '60s and it not dawning on him that stamps catalogues "Price" listing are akin to my desire to fly off to Japan for the weekend.
Gibbons listings are what they will as a retailer will sell a super fine example of a given stamp at, if they can.
It is the same with Scott, except they don't actually follow through and sell stamps any longer.
Using the words "value" or "worth" in the same sentence as one of the catalog printers is at best disingenuous.
personally "listing" as in "comparative catalog listing" is more accurate..
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Les,
Does your friend have stacks and stacks of covers? I will buy them at those diminished prices! Please contact me privately with his phone number if he does.
Bruce
PS: I think the stamp hobby is being trimmed but there may be a resurgence in the future. It may not be huge but it will see a revival of sorts. Seems to happen with everything except maybe Beta video tape.
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The hobby will survive me, So ?
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Not dead, but very different. 30 years ago Cincinnati had 3 downtown stamp/coin shops...today NONE. It was being able to walk into a shop and have the owner take time to
"teach" a kid the basics of the hobby that got me into stamps! Not dead just way different today!
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i guess its not a kids game anymore !
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i think Karl's post is instructive. It is NOT like it was 30 years ago. Dealers behind brick and mortar counters have been replaced by a much larger cohort of volunteers (and dealers) who are equally willing, often more so, to help young collectors. The medium has changed completely, but the basic idea remains in place, perhaps more effectively.
so, if it's schooling kids in stamps, look no further than us.
David
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The hobby is changing and it always has. Many of the developments interpreted as the signs of imminent death, disappearance of brick-and-mortar stamp shops, happen concurrently with an increase in internet shopping which puts all retailers under pressure. There probably is a decrease in any kind of specialty stores. And the emergence of internet shopping as the primary means to fill your shopping needs, is yet only one symptom of much broader societal trends.
As for the aging issue, I think there is some truth to it. The APS has a StampsTeach program which support teachers with lesson plans, teaching materials, and stamps, for school kids. The pilot finished last year with about 300 teachers putting stamps in front of 10,000 school kids nationwide. To get yet another different perspective on the death of the hobby issue you may want to read the report. I believe the APS is currently seeking grant money to employ a full time person responsible for the program. I have it in my little personal message that supporting the APS is the single most important step we can take as stamp collectors to support the hobby. Apart from the personal advancement one will experience in his or her collecting through the resources available from APS, only the APS has the critical mass to push programs at the national level.
Actually, if you decide to join the APS based on this discussion, it might be a nice touch to put the name of Stamporama as your affiliation on the application form. We are an APS affiliate stamp club and if we were to sponsor just ten members in a year, we would for sure get some attention. In fact, there is even an annual award for the group or individual sponsoring the most new members. I expect us to again be in the running for the APS website award, and as much as it is nice to be on the receiving end of APS sponsored programs, and recipient of APS recognition as an organization, it would be nice to also give back.
I am not accepting the death of the hobby as a foregone conclusion.
Arno
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12:57:42pm
" .... being able to walk into a shop and have the owner take time to
"teach" a kid the basics of the hobby that got me into stamps! ...."
What parent today is letting an impressive young child walk into any small, poorly lighted store front "down town" these days, anyway ?
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"What parent today is letting an impressive young child walk into any small, poorly lighted store front "down town" these days, anyway ?"
Well I would, if there were any decent stores "downtown" but they closed years ago and moved to malls. Of course I would have to accompany my child, whereas when I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, I would hop on a bus to go downtown to the hobby store or Gimble's (remember them?), maybe not for stamps so much, but for models, war games etc. Or I'd trek 10 miles on my bike across the river and up the "highway" to a hobby hop out near Fox Chapel.
I don't worry about how "impressive" my children are or how "impressionable". I just lament having to keep them on a leash until they're nearly adults.
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Okay, here is my two cents worth. I have collected for 49 years. Back in the late 70's/early 80's I thought stamp collecting was dead.
Fifteen years ago I joined my first stamp club as an adult. I told my wife that I was the youngest member of the club. Fifteen years later I am still one of the younger guys, but there are several younger than me. The average age in that club is 67 and that's what the average age was 15 years ago. Membership has gone from 53 members to 82 of which 50% or better come to the monthly meetings.
The good and the bad is that many more people are there to sell than buy. There is such an abundance of common stuff that it is driving prices down. There is way more supply than demand. I believe that trend will continue. I don't go to the meeting for the stamps and covers anymore. I go to socialize.
Stamps are a poor investment if you are collecting to make money. If you collect to meet interesting folks from all over the world from different walks of life, I think it's the greatest investment you can make. You can spend nothing or thousands a year.
I also think that as we age we need to keep our minds active. My interest in history grows as I age. What came first the chicken or the egg or in my case the cover or the history of such? The research and discovery keeps the gears grinding in my head. I need something to do besides watch shows about cupcakes or hillbillies making duck calls,( I do love those guys).
Lastly, The internet has opened a whole different world to stamp collecting. I could go on and on, but that's all you guys get for two cents.
Pat
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Good 2 cents Pat. You remind me of something that I thought worthy of sharing-but it may all be too obvious to everyone else other than me-but let's give it a shot.
The Internet is the new 'social hall' for those homebound for one reason or another. Yet sadly many of those who could benefit from that medium are too intimidated to try to utilize it. I am very computer challenged, but even I have been able to set up and use skype. (As a side note, if I can be of any help to our members in trying to set up skype on their machines please feel free to contact me.)
On at least a weekly basis, and sometimes on a daily basis, I do enjoy bantering with our great secretary Perry- I must share that we disagree about everything, and we do laugh at & with each other a lot.
Although the initial unifying thread was stamps, Pat is quite right that the social aspect far outweighs the hobby aspect and blossoms into friendships. Anything that can do that cannot die-it can only grow.
As I said, this may all be too obvious to everyone, but I thought it possibly worth a mention.
All good thoughts,
Dan C.
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10:50:35am
Well said, Dan! 
Mistrust of new things is both common and natural to us mere mortals, and sometimes we must use that "thing" which elevates us above the other creatures of this planet (no, not the opposable thumb) - our minds! The computer and, through it, the internet has given us a brave new world that we have to embrace or perish. Our hobby will not die, but it cannot continue in the same form. Change is natural and the sooner we stop fighting it and learn that swimming with the current is better than trying to emulate salmon in their spawning season, the sooner we can get to the happy place!
Just look at what we are doing HERE! We have a stamp club where we can meet any time we want - 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We can participate in auctions, we can go to stamp stores (check out the Links section - lots of shopping available there), we can view and purchase approvals while watching the Duck guys on TV - and all without walking out our front door.
Now I am not advocating becoming a hermit. Continue to go to physical stamp clubs. Continue to go to work each day. Continue to do family stuff (extremely important). But when you have the time and inclination, get online and enjoy stamping - any time and any place with WiFi (and dependence on WiFi may soon be a thing of the past also).
Have fun and promote philately - it will only die if we all lie down and give up on it! 
Bobby
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Good points Dan and Bobby, but I can't help but marvel at the dichotomy:
We started out in social camaraderie with our collecting friends plucking plum stamps from incoming mail, often from "pen pals". Now we are pen-pals in an online social forum discussing collecting strategies in an era of decreasing personal mail. The tool that did the most damage our hobby (e-mail) is the tool we use to exchange information to advance our hobby.
I think it's quite amazing. And fun!
Lars
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Lars,
I was a general contractor for 25 years. My first customer that REQUIRED all of our correspondence to be by email was.........(wait for it).......... You probably already guessed, The United States Postal Service. That was in 1994 and this whole internet and email thing was in it's infancy. The modems and computers were very slow. I thought it was all a huge pain in $#@#. We joked at the time that mailing it would be quicker, certainly a fax was faster than those early modems with their very slow transmission speeds. We also wondered what affect this would have on the mail.
So, They did this to themselves. Who would of thought the government would have such poor insight?
Pat
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12:38:14pm
"Who would of thought the government would have such poor insight?"
You're kidding, right?
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Roy,
Yes my attempt at humor or sarcasm. I chased federal construction projects for 25 years. I have stories.
Pat
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"The tool that did the most damage our hobby (e-mail) is the tool we use to exchange information to advance our hobby."
Email isn't killing the hobby. The self-adhesive stamp killed the hobby as far as modern stamp collecting. But there are plenty of stamps to collect from bygone eras when stamps were beautiful works of art.
Just because the stamp no longer serves a good purpose has no bearing on the whether the zillion stamps that DID serve a purpose are worth collecting. I mean people collect victrolas, world war II memorabelia etc. and don't require an ongoing war to make keep the hobby alive.
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Hard to tell with hobbies. As a kid, I thought electric trains were great. I made a nice layout for my son and I think I had more fun building it and thought neither he or my daughter really cared. Through the years my wife would buy me some things and we would go to see a model train exhibitions. When my children had their kids they asked if I would set up the trains. Now the grand kids get excited to see them.
I also remember getting starter kits for my children but they quickly lost interest since the electronic toys came on the market. However, they did know I had an interest and would watch me in my collecting efforts.
So, I think when they inherit my collections (whether they are stamps, coins or trains) either my children or grand children will maybe have a re kindled interest in these hobbies.
Things go in cycles.
I think the bigger issue will be the preservation of the stamp collections.
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I hope you guys are right, but I doubt it.
I collect stamps because it strikes a chord with my youth and the friends I made, the things I learned, and the challenge of finding moderns on cover in the incoming mail. My sons don't have that experience, so they won't make that connection. The year I started collecting used as a kid there were exactly 16 commemoratives that year and most inbound mail had a stamp. Now first class stamps are rare on inbound mail, and the chances a kid will even SEE more than 10% of the commemorative issues (I count 68 for last year at a quick glance) is slight.
Why WOULD any kid be interested in stamps other than from a historical standpoint? Sure, there will be a few of those, but not nearly enough. Excessive issuance of commemoratives starting around 1970 is what poisoned this hobby, IMHO.
Lars
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To add my two cent (red)...
I don't think this hobby is going anywhere, but it won't look the same.
Case in point - my thirteen year old daughter asked me for a record player for Christmas this year. All the kids wanted one. I had to scratch my head - I couldn't make the switch away from records to CD's fast enough as a teenager. No careful handling, no scratches and pops, it was fantastic. Why the heck would these kids with ipods that carry every single song they ever wanted in their pocket want to deal with vinyl?
Answer - "Retro is cool." Well, not an answer, and definitely not an indication if the fad will last longer than sillybands.
No one has a crystal ball. Will the eventual death of stamps cause interest to fall off? Or will it cause a resurgence of interest in something that has become "retro"? What stamp collecting cannot be is what it was when most of us started - picking stamps off the mail. It probably won't be about collecting every new thing that comes out each year - things made to be collectible are not. The money still follows quality and rarity - not for investment, for the desire to own "the best" and to hunt down the next "best." That money will pay to keep the rest alive. IMHO.
Philately will change....like everything else.
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10:19:17am
It appears to be true about "retro is cool". For some of us that are too young to know the golden age of films, we've fallen in love with them. I was at the store a few months ago to grab a few things and my jaw dropped when I saw the "new cool styles" in the women's department geared to high school/university students --> retro for them is the '80s. Skin-tight jeans, high top running shoes, etc. The clothes are similar to what I wore in high school, only the style of wearing them is different. Thank goodness they may have learned from "old" pictures that pastel make-up and a bottle of hairspray everyday did not look good. Lol
Stamp collecting will never disappear, as others mentioned, it will just evolve. There may be more of an historical focus on certain time periods and modern stamps may become a thing of the past, but just like there are people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have fallen in love with golden age films, the same will continue with stamps. When this younger generation who cannot survive without texting grow up and have their own children, their minds are going to change and they will not be pleased to see their own children glued to their phones or other electronic devices.
Electronic devices come and go but stamps will always be here even if they are no longer currently produced for everyday usage.
Kelly
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05:19:15pm
"...Retro is cool ..."
Wow that means that the multi media 33&1/3rd record player in my stamp room is cool and perhaps my Chopin and Beethoven long playing records still have a chance.
I may be ahead of the curve, imagine that!
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Let me blow the dust off my 8-track-tapes!
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I still have old 78 RPM records.
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I have enjoyed reading this thread.
My ultimate conclusion is that we are a hobby that will survive, but not without change and not without many challenges.
In the late 80s in Memphis, there would be 1-2 shows a year - that's not changed. There were two shops - a stamp shop and a stamp/coin shop. The stamp/coin shop is still there. When I was in the Coast Guard stationed in Boston (90-92), I could easily attend 3-4 shows a month. Not sure how many there are now.
In the 90s, I noticed something.
I'd walk into the shows in Boston. There were more than a few sour puss faces and dealers that I just had to question whether or not they wanted to sell stamps. Those who were friendly and inviting received my business. But it made me wonder how some dealers survived.
Another issue - and I'm not taking sides - was the debate in the States over the Harry Potter stamps recently issued. Some collectors were utterly irate over the issuing of these stamps and I do understand their protest, but at the same time, here is a set of stamps that could have some popular appeal and maybe get some kids interested in the hobby.
I am a member of APS and my primary reason for joining - as it is for my membership in any society - is to get the magazine. On another forum I recently asked what periodicals people subscribe to, and I was surprised at how many subscribe to none. And the reason was half money and half due how much information is available online.
I'm not sure looking at show attendance, or the number of shops, or the subscriber base of publications or membership of organizations is the primary criteria upon which we should base the health of the hobby. Most of these do indicate a decline, but the problem with viewing only those factors is the pesky online. It is darned hard, if not impossible, to develop real data on how many difference collectors are purchasing via Ebay and other online auction sites as well as online direct from dealers or society online auctions, etc.
How many people are buying online and not going to shows?
How much of the dealer death can be attributed to dealers who may not have been terribly business savvy or did not react to changing market conditions?
How many people in each age group are buying online?
What is a stamp collector? (I've been told that my postal history collection does not qualify. Hmmm).
How many people collect stamps but don't self-identify as stamp collectors.
The way many of us (I'm 45) used to buy stamps is in decline. That's for sure. But there may be a very quiet strength to the hobby floating around the interwebs.
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Yes, a very interesting conversation. The reality is that Philately is a hobby for older people (sorry everyone under 50 :-) ). But that is very understandable. There are very few of us that fell in love with the hobby at a very early age and have stayed with it all throughout our lives. I think most of you are like me. Started out at an early age, influenced by a parent or a friend, and then the realities of life kicked in e.g. college, mariage, kids, house maintenance etc etc etc. It is not until we get a little older (in most cases) that we have the time to put in to the hobby and also the money. When we were in the middle of bring up our kids, we just didn't have any extra money to spend on ourselves or our interests (hobbies).
We continually have new member joining Stamporama. If you watch the new members page, Perry has approved new members almost every day. (thanks Perry). There is still a lot of interest out there, and as we grow in membership, so does the hobby.
Regards ... Tim.
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10:57:47pm
While I agree that a large number of stamp/philatelic collectors are over 50, I can also see those of us in our 40s being a part of the "next generation" albeit we are the older ones. My generation is one of the most diverse generations so far. We were teenagers in the advent of the electronic age, saw the change from the "old ways" to the new. When we were kids we all enjoyed hobby shops. The children of my generation range from their 20s to newborns. There has never been that large of a generation gap - ever. I've started noticing a change amongst those in their 20s. Many are trying to find a "simpler life" - they are looking for ways to escape the chronic electronic dependence they have become accustomed to. With the vastness of the internet, the knowledge of the "older" generations, has a place in living history. The ability to make online purchases quickly and the large amount of philatelic material available - just look at the size of the stamp category on eBay, provides a way for those under 40 to have access that my generation did not. Hobby shops died out by the time we were finished university, the worldwide web was still in its infancy.
Those of us in our 40s remember the brown bag days, lunch counters at Woolworths, etc and we were also the first generation to see both parents having to work to maintain the household, even if the mother's employment was part time.
I do believe local stamp shops will completely close up, local stamp clubs and shows will dwindle and likely disappear. This is inevitable due to modern living - we no longer have small towns and the electronic age is here to stay.
Stamp exhibits will become websites, as we've already seen. But will stamp collecting become obsolete? Not a chance as long as there is an interest in history. History will continue to hold a large crowd of followers and within that crowd will always be those who collect stamps for their historical value. Modern collecting is already on it's way out the door. We can see that even here. Many collectors stop before the self-adhesive era. Even the dunes will be desirable in the future as more people see things through anthropological eyes. They will raise the question that we've already seen raised here - "Why would conservative Muslim countries distribute stamps with immodest subjects?"
History and anthropology will be a driving force among the next generation of collectors as it already is amongst my own. As collections become more available in the next 30 years, available to people around the globe thanks to the internet, I truly see stamp collecting come into the hands of those who are now in their teens to early thirties.
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I realize that one or two data points does not make a trend, but I have two sons and two nephews ranging in age from 7 to 14. Three collect coins. Zero collect stamps, even though they see me working with my stamp collection a LOT more than my coins. But they are THIRSTY for knowledge about US coins. They are FASCINATED by my Type Set collection of US coins. Would they be more interested in stamps if I was a topical stamp collector? Perhaps topical collecting would be more engaging. I am tempted to try that as an experiment. Start a modest topical stamp collection and see if there is any interest in my sons or nephews.
It would need to be a topic that meets the following criteria:
1) Diversity of issuing countries - there is a big educational value to deciphering country names!
2) Price - most stamps should be cheap (at least used)
3) Availability - it needs to be a commonly collected topic, perhaps with a good "starter pack" available from Subway or Mystic or similar.
4) Cost of completion - it's OK if there is one stamp that is pricey, but lots of high priced stamps is a non-starter.
5) Engagement - a topic that would interest boys aged 7-14.
Any topical collectors out there with any ideas? I can make my own pages, so no worries there.
Lars
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Not sure if I'm bucking the trend of this discussion but I see no death at all in this hobby of mine/ours.
Apart from various Internet forums,auctions,blogs and information sites there are still Exhibitions large and small, fairs/bourses and meetings.
Here in Israel, there are still many stamp shops. In Tel Aviv there are 11 shops, only two less than when I came here 22 years ago !!
Philately is alive and well for my eyes.
Londonbus1
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Lars,
Might the boys be interested in stamps that deal with coins/money? A topical theme that might fit well with their current interests?It could be country specific, or worldwide in scope.
Dan C.
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11:14:04am
Lars,
You might consider a starter based on each boy's general interest. A few years ago the 12 year old son of a friend of mine was helping me sort my collection that I was downsizing. He really became interested after a few weeks of watching me. So for Christmas a whole group of us here on SOR got together and made a wonderful Christmas box for him. He started out with a few collectors sending him sports and space stamps. He loved them. Especially the sports stamps. The dunes cine in handy when you're looking at cheap topicals.
I discovered after he got his Christmas box with a huge variety (no ugly dudes or nudes were his only request when it came to stamps), he loves covers. FDCs with a picture matching the stamp or something similar. Absolutely in love with them. He ended up spending the rest of the week putting them in binders that Roy had sent. The only downfall of covers is that he can't afford the sleeves for them.
But my suggestion is a starter for each boy that reflects their general interest.
Kelly
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Lars: Are any of the boys into dinosaurs? It looks like there's a host of free resources online, including some catalog-like resources. (I'd link but am waiting for clarification of the promotion rules.)
Also, sometimes from the same resources, info on fossils, etc., and other natural history angles to this. It looks like fun!
-- Dave
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Those are good ideas. Thanks, all!
Lars
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I have a slightly different view of this whole issue. From my personal perspective, I see the older 'classics' as miniature works of art. The engraving is so beautiful that there will always be a group of people who will appreciate these stamps for what they are, great works of art.
Secondly and probably more to the point of the initial statement that stamp collecting, as a hobby, is dead or dying, I submit that with the advent of electronic mail and postage metering, and computer generated postage, we will find that the actual postage stamp will start to disappear. With this disappearance will come a renewed and global interest in the rebirth of the hobby. This may not happen within our limited lifespans (the next 10-15 years) in many cases but it will certainly be the case where our children and grandchildren are concerned. Our collections may be a welcomed inheritance and a little time spent now exposing them to our collections might pay them great dividends in the future.
Joe C. sends
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Stamp collecting is not dead. Just because all you see is the wave's crest of white foam (or white hair) of the older members, does not mean that there isn't a wave of younger collectors behind them.
Yonger collectors generally do not "belong" to stamp clubs and less often buy stamps in the old-fashioned ways. They are also quick to understand the stamp market and what things are really worth (and avoid those catalog value stamp stores).
Another anecdote I hear alot is people in their 50's and 60's who take up collecting in retirement after having raised their families and developed their careers, which means that there are ever newer "older" collectors filling in the ranks.
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"Our collections may be a welcomed inheritance and a little time spent now exposing them to our collections might pay them great dividends in the future."
That may be true, but I wouldn't count on it.
"Another anecdote I hear alot is people in their 50's and 60's who take up collecting in retirement after having raised their families and developed their careers, which means that there are ever newer "older" collectors filling in the ranks."
If you are talking about people who collected as kids picking it up again as seniors, I would not doubt that. But someone who never collected stamps picking it up for the first time in their 50's or 60's? I would be surprised to learn that there are many of those folks out there.
I just discovered an interesting concept that I am going to try with my boys (ages 7 and 10). It's a stamp from every country, with an emphasis on geography and history. And it was inputs from others on this very thread that lead me to this concept (Thanks, ALL!) I'm just getting started with the process (album pages printed and "starter" set of stamps on order from Mr. Numbers), so I can't report yet on how they will take to it, but it may be the "hook" they need to gain interest. We shall see!
Lars
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Four and a half years have passed since the original post. It's July 2018 now and all signs indicate the hobby is still very much alive. Much has been said about younger people not getting involved in collecting but just go on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook and you'll see how many young people from around the world regularly post photos of the stamps they collect. There are thousands of Instagram accounts devoted to stamp collecting and I see younger people from the U.S., Europe, Asia and other places regularly posting photos of their stamps. And eBay still remains robust...whenever I go on there bidding wars continue and so many stamps and stamp-related products continue to sell well. So my opinion is that the hobby isn't dying...far from it. It's changing...it's evolving with the times. And young people are using their electronic devices like their phones to advance their hobby. They're taking photos of their stamps and sharing them on social media. Just go to Instagram, for example, to see for yourself what I'm talking about.
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Kye, I agree, and also I think it is up to the older "dinosaurs" to train their succession and move on. When I was president of the local stamp club in SF I stated that I would do it for a minimum of 2 years, but that I would pass on the presidency to a younger member who was to have been the VP for a year. I would assume the VP position just for enough time to get the next youngster into that spot! Mission accomplished more or less on schedule (everything takes a bit longer as you would expect). And I have now retreated completely, while still active in our meetings and activities. We actually have 4 former presidents still active!
The club is better off with a planned succession history. Yes we do have elections, but no one objected to a planned transition, which was confirmed with the votes...and no arm twisting.
The main thing that has changed in the hobby in my view, is directly due to the role of the internet. Virtual stores are more handy than the nearby walking one, and when you know a number of sellers...no matter where they are physically located, the experience is comparable, offers broader choices...and is cheaper to the collector. And pen palls and approvals yield instantaneous results!
I have always liked change. I think in all clubs, change is good! as long as the experienced members are around and willing to help when needed. I think we need more change here as well...not change for the sake of change, but because it is the duty of club officers to train their succession. And more volunteers.
Ian...change is good! 
rrr...
I also love the concept of stamps as teaching tool in schools. Look at the formal activity of the Postal History Foundation in Tucson www.postalhistoryfoundation.org
they have a full time paid education staff specialist working with teachers!
This may get us a few more youngsters!
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I have used stamps and mainly postal covers to teach history to my own students Guests in my home will often pick up a booklet that that I have put together using my postal stash All you need is to tell a story..and leave it lay on the coffee table...lol.
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At the same time some kiloware lots on Ebay consistently reach what I consider extravagant prices at $20+ for 100 grams. It looks like despite all efforts by most postal authorities to kill the hobby, it is still pretty much alive.
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It’s not easy to find a great deal on stamps on eBay nowadays. I’ve seen some of those kiloware lots and they do get expensive. I’m not going to pay 20 bucks for 100 grams of stamps, especially when I’m even sure what they are.
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"It’s not easy to find a great deal on stamps on eBay nowaday"
Look no further than Stamporama!!
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Hi all,
What an interesting concept... the death of a hobby...
Can a hobby actually die?
I lift weights for a hobby too, hope that doesn't die. LOL! 
I do it for recreation and relaxation, so can it actually die?
Maybe the hobby is dying as it's currently known?
I have read that most don't like the changes that they see in the hobby, but I just came to this hobby, so I have NOTHING to compare it to, thus I am not disappointed. I like what I see, and there is SO much to see!
I like that the internet has so many great resources, I like that I have "met" all of you people. I'm not bothered that we have not met in person, sometime maybe we will.
I don't mind that there are no stamps stores in my area and honestly I don't have time for a stamp club, but I can access SOR at anytime and you all have become my stamp club and I can access this site, any time and anywhere. So for me stamp collecting remains a fun pursuit.
I think about joining a club, but honestly don't want to take the time for meetings. I'm busy with a family and a full time IT career.
I guess the hobby is one of perspective. But maybe that goes for hobbies in general.
I used to build models and I heard that hobby was dying too. It isn't, it's just changing.
I guess a hobby dies when you let it.
JR
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One more comment...
For a dying hobby, stamps are still pretty expensive... again a thing of perspective...
But as a newcomer I have found NO shortage of things to spend money on, collect and "talk" with other stamp collectors about...
...the talking is just via the internet now...
My perspective on the "dying" comment is to do this...
Take you grandson or granddaughter, buy a big bag of stamps and tell them that "we're gonna collect all the kittens or all the airplanes we can find and make a really cool poster for your room..."
That will get a kid to dip a toe in the water if you ask me...
JR
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Dear all,
Stamp collecting is not dead.
.
I & millions of people around the world collect stamps, but we don't attend stamp expo or participate any organizations. We don't visit stamp shops or auctions. We don't even socialize with stamp collectors & dealers.
.
We browsed the websites around the world & purchased stamps quietly. We are private individual & preferred to stay low profile.
We collect world stamps or topical or individual nations. We have our own preference. Most of us don't share our hobby with family, friends or co-workers. We enjoyed ourselves with stamps we accumulated over the years.
We love collecting stamps for many reasons & I don't want to spend hours explaining why.
.
I'm from Taiwan, I collect French Polynesian stamps only. I collect stamps not because of history, geography or an investment. My culture is connected to French Polynesian culture. It's an intimate relationship that I kept to myself. My world & their world emerges into one. An identity that rooted deeply upon me. The culture represents my past, present & future. Therefore, stamps is the best representation of my culture.
.
Stamp collecting exist because of "supplies in demand". Some of you lost on Ebay bid because collectors like us are willing to pursue regardless. We search for stamps we desired. We have no interest what the public or media said about Stamp Collecting. They have no influence on us.
.
Some people blamed stamp declining on internet, texting message & social media. Actually, it doesn't matter. Stamp collecting has always been part of global culture just like Freedom. People will always value "Freedom" regardless situations. People will always value "stamp" regardless situations. Both Stamp & Freedom will be around until the end of time.
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08:50:17pm
An excellent short dissertation, David.
There is little more I could add beyond
my agreement that I collect things that
amuse me and carry me to somewhere just
south of dreamland.
When the mail arrives
I often feel the thrill of childhood
getting a new toy.
When I open an album
and browse through the pages and stamps
that I've acquired over many years and
at so many places I get the same feeling.
While you may choose a course of solitary
collecting, I on the other hand enjoy
the cyber camaraderie I get corresponding
and dealing with fellow SoR members.
Peu importe des flotteurs votre bateau.
Good luck with your collection de Philatélie
de la Polynésie Française.
Charlie.
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This hobby’s demographic has always been older people. Here is an APS manual meeting from over 50 years ago (1968), how many younger folks can you see?
Of course attracting kids is a good thing but the truth is that our hobby losses many (majority?) of young people as they start a career and family. Life gets in the way and the stamps get put into a closet until later in life. Due to this, I consider trying to attract kids to the hobby as a long term effort. It is a bit like planting a fruit tree, you are going to wait a while before it bears fruit.
Lastly, it is inevitable that anytime you hear someone say the hobby is dying that they are ignoring the explosion of online activity and are relying upon metrics from the 1960s or 1970s. Metrics like the declining memberships in philatelic organizations or the closing of brick and mortar stamps stores. The internet turned more than just our hobby on its ear, it impacted other hobby’s, the publishing industry, the recording industry, library sciences, the educational system, and postal systems just to name a few.
But change does not equal death (although obviously many folks struggle with accepting change). Our hobby has transitioned, people no longer have to rely upon brick and mortar stores to buy stamps and supplies. Collectors no longer have to join an organization to get philatelic information.
And as Charlie mentions above, our hobby is often a solitary one. While many of us enough spreading out our stamps, albums, and catalogs across a table on a winters night, it can be difficult to drag around heavy albums for show and tell. So in many ways philately is very well suited for its transition to an online hobby. Support like this forum is available 24/7. Being able to lookup and access information is far easier than trudging down to the library. There is less need to spend money on memberships and we can use this to buy more stamps and covers.
Don
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APS membership does not necessarily reflect the demographics or complete status of stamp collecting in general. Current APS membership levels are down from the peak and close to the levels 40 years ago. What is important to APS is their overhead has increased dramatically (Match Factory, etc) so memberships are not enough to sustain the expenses.
It is not uncommon these days to call anything in decline a death spiral.
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Awhile back I received a letter and brochure from Mystic Stamp Company expressing interest in buying my collection. Not quite read to sell yet, but there was an item in the brochure (posted below) that impressed me. It was the one claiming that Mystic has 150 "stamp professionals" working for it. It is my impression that Mystic sells primarily to entry level stamp collectors. Mystic must have a very high volume of sales to meet the payroll of 150 employees and also be profitable. Seems to me that such a company would not be engaged in supplying the needs of a dead hobby.
FF
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Sick, yes. Dead never!
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In 2018, I sent a large collection of stamps of the type that Mystic advertises that they want to buy to the Mystic buyers. I got a buy offer of just 2/10th of 1% of the total catalog value. When I questioned their offer, the buyers told me, "People aren't buying stamps anymore, so we can't offer anything for stamps."
Their barrage of ads states "Paying top dollar!", "Huge demand for stamps". Is this false advertising?
I have since sold a few stamps from that collection, and have gotten more than Mystic's offer already.
I am realistic and know that they can't pay a large percentage of catalog value, but they did not even look at the stamps. Their BS offer coincidentally just covered the postage that I paid to send the stamps to them. I guess they figure that people will accept such offers so as not to be out the money paid for postage. For me, the shipping cost was well over $200. I vehemently rejected their offer.
I sent a letter of complaint to Sundman. I have not heard a word from him. I now refuse to do business with them, and I started buying from them in 1965. Does Sundman care? I guess until/if ever I receive a response from him, the answer is ,"No".
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When i began actively collecting again a few years ago I replied to all the silly ads basically like i did when i was ten years old. One of them was mystic. The crap they sent and the price they asked made ebay pirates look like santa claus.
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"Their barrage of ads states "Paying top dollar!", "Huge demand for stamps". Is this false advertising?"
Michael, wholesale lying on corporate commercials is the norm.
Sometime back I asked, how do you spell free. According to commercials is FREE*
Enjoy your collection and don't expect much out of it. My brother-in-law went through the same thing, when he tried to sell his collection, mind you they were mostly mint stamps, they laugh at him and don't even make him an offer.
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The death of the hobby obviously depends on whether you are buying or selling. The hobby is more collector (in effect part time dealers) to collector than ever especially since it is not financially affordable for a traditional dealer to handle the ever increasing common material propped up by minimum catalog prices. The catalog prices do not reflect this shift in the stamp economy.
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Tony, I have been collecting for over 50 years, and selling for over 40. One thing I learned early on was market value versus catalog value. Market value is the only true indicator. Catalog values are meaningless.
Where so many dealers are missing the train is that the stamp market has evolved into a collector-based market. Collectors are the major players now with buying and selling. The number of dealers continues to dwindle as dealers fail with an archaic business model. The few dealers who have incorporated the new market will continue. However, the bulk of collector-to-collector transactions will continue to grow.
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09:02:56pm
"the stamp market has evolved into a collector-based market. Collectors are the major players now with buying and selling. The number of dealers continues to dwindle as dealers fail with an archaic business model."
Michael, I agree with you 100%.
I would be interested in your thoughts on what the significant elements of this "archaic business model" are.
Roy
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Here are some off the top of my head. Not all relate to all "archaic" dealers, but some do.
- brick and mortar store only
- no internet presence (refuse to go online)
- selling too high at non-competitive prices
- paying too low
- provide poor/no customer service (won't answer/return phone calls; won't contact customers; won't respond to written inquiries)
- disrespect new collectors and collectors who want to buy common stamps
- value only high dollar buyers
- complain that the hobby is dying, but do nothing to support/help collectors learn the hobby
That should be enough to get the idea. Probably others can supplement the list.
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I very much agree with Michaels list and would add that a lot of the auction houses need to change some of their ways. As an example the ones who charge a buyers premium, or who will not accept a bid of less than 80% of their estimate.
Many only provide one scan (or none)of an item that may contain a few albums and many pages (usually not a good scan either). One exception is a European based internet site that shows every page in a lot.
Slow service, I just waited a month to even get an invoice.
Here in Manitoba we have a number of dealers in Winnipeg, none outside, who do not have stores but work out of the home. One arranged the purchase for me of some stamps that I had to send back because they were Photo rather than the Litho I'd requested, they really ought to know the difference.
Or am I just a grumpy old philatelist?
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My long-winded opinion on dealer websites...
An ‘internet presence’ is a concept from 1998; in this day and age an ‘internet presence’ website is not going to be effective. Many stamp dealers were very late to the internet (in denial?) and even now simply throw an ‘internet presence’ website out there. An ‘internet presence’ websites are really nothing more than a yellow pages ad, basically only offering some contact info. It is inevitable that an ‘internet presence’ website gets very little traffic. Many dealers spend as little money as they can (probably because that do not believe in the internet) and often only invest in the initial development. When this kind of website does not increase or impact their sales, they claim that online efforts are a waste of money.
Dealers need to have a website that draws traffic, give collectors a reason to visit and visit often if you also want them to buy something. Dealer websites should make shopping online quick and easy. This means developing a website that allows buyers to quickly find what they are looking for, makes check out easy, and makes buying as risk free as possible. You also need a website that ‘holds’ people on it for as long as possible; the longer a person is on a website the more likely they are to buy something (‘internet presence’ websites rarely hold visitors longer than a minute or two).
To emulate the value of legacy brick and mortar dealers, dealers should develop an online help solution. This means having a real-time ability to assist a buyer (i.e chat tool). You have to offer a simple and easy return policy and automated procedures. Ideally, include a prepaid return shipping label with every purchase. (If customers are pleased with their purchases this will never be used). Shipping needs to occur blazingly fast, typically same day.
Dealer websites need to have a solution for collectors to be able to easily upload images and you have to become proficient in being able to analyze material and make offers to buy using online tools. (This also facilitates helping collectors when they have questions and want to send you an image of a stamp or cover.)
Dealers need websites that do not look like it was designed in 1998; they need a website that looks as good on a 2048 pixel wide desktop monitor as it does on a 300 pixel wide mobile device.
Dealers need to invest in SEO (search engine optimization) and market the website properly. Not only does a dealer website need to adhere to the current SEO coding and design practices, but they have to either invest time or money into getting it ranked in the various search engines.
Dealers need to analyze their website metrics daily. Using the metrics they can see which parts of the site are working and which parts are not. Use this information to make improvements, getting rid of the dead wood web pages and replacing it with pages which are more popular. Note which pages most visitors leave the site on, figure out why folks are doing this.
To summarize, establishing a good website is the same as opening a second brick and mortar store. ‘Internet presence’ are typically done by paying some kid a few hundred dollars to build a WordPress template website, buying a .99 cent domain name and cheaping out monthly GoDaddy hosting fees. This is equivalent to trying to open a second brick and mortar at a local run-down flea market stall. It is a significant investment to not only develop the site but more importantly to keep it maintained with new content and reasons for buyers to visit it often. Far too many dealer viewed their website like they were publishing a catalog or price list; a one time cost. A website is not a ‘one and done’ thing, it is something that needs constant attention just like a second brick and mortar store.
Don
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I doubt many dealers have any technical savvy on setting up a website such as Don suggests. Now one may think a dealer organization could assist to help spread the IT expertise and expense needed for this. This type of work would be for very large dealers and auction houses at the moment. Even APS outsources their IT but that is another topic.
For example, the Internet Philatelic Dealer Association has a relevant name but their web site does not appear to offer much to help a dealer on the Internet establish and sustain a website. Stamp clubs are mostly stuck in the physical world too.
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If a "dealer" with a bricks & mortar store is making a living and is quite happy why should he bother with the internet?
Especially with all the extra work he has to do if he follows Don's "long winded opinion".
Some shop owners are quite happy with their lot and think that the hassle and aggravation of the internet model is not for them.
Would the "extra" internet sales pay for the extra costs of installing and more importantly the extra costs of maintaining Don's super duper website???
Many shop owners do not have the up front capital to invest in their own website. They use various platforms instead like ebay, Delcampe etc etc. which are expensive but the costs are paid out monthly and are more controllable.
One of the problems of direct internet selling is that the majority of "customers" want to purchase at the lowest possible price, they are always looking for a "deal" and spend copious amounts of time searching for that deal and comparing prices.
Ebay now have an offer system which drives prices lower. I had a set of Portugal stamps for sale at £19.00, one offer I had was £12.00. A total insult.
In conclusion if shop owners that are happy with their business do not want to go on the internet and they do not want the hassle and aggravation of extra work then so be it. Who are we to expect otherwise?
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"I doubt many dealers have any technical savvy on setting up a website..."
Hi Al,
True, but there is a huge website development industry which any dealer can use if they wanted to.
I have talked to a number (6-8) of people/organizations over the years and suggested to them that they do what you say, specifically help stamp dealers build and perhaps even host effective websites. So far no one has turned this viable idea into action.
But while a stamp specific web development service might be a good idea, there is no need to reinvent the wheel; China, India, and a slew of other countries are full of coders who will work for very reasonable fees.
In my opinion the issue is a lack of vision, commitment, and wiliness to take an online chance.
Don
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"In my opinion the issue is a lack of vision, commitment, and wiliness to take an online chance"
Why should they?
Businesses are always given "advice" by people both within and without the organisation.
We have a built in pessimism because EVERYONE can run our business better than we can!!
Normally the advice we are given is by people who when asked to put their money into their advice run a mile!!!!
Talk is cheap!!
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"If a "dealer" with a bricks & mortar store is making a living and is quite happy why should he bother with the internet?"
Agreed, if a brick and mortar store is doing great than don't bother. But I think the issue is that most are not doing great or have already closed up.
"Especially with all the extra work he has to do if he follows Don's "long winded opinion"."
"Some shop owners are quite happy with their lot and think that the hassle and aggravation of the internet model is not for them."
Agreed, the highly successful bricks & mortar store owner should stay the course. Great Britain stamp stores must be different than those in USA, the few that are left here are struggling.
"Would the "extra" internet sales pay for the extra costs of installing and more importantly the extra costs of maintaining Don's super duper website???"
What I described is not a 'super-duper' site, it is a typical ecommerce website with competent management. It just seems super-duper' because our hobby is just full of half-baked dealer websites, really poor efforts.
Folks can argue that online commerce is not the future if they want, I have no desire to debate this. My post was simply an outline to use if a dealer wanted to properly compete in the ecommerce marketplace.
Don
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"Talk is cheap!!"
Indeed.
I have proven that my 'talk' works and have donated to the hobby a website that generates over one million page views per year. Since I did not have any budget, I used the brute force approach, and just applied my time.
Again, I am not saying that any dealer has to do ecommerce; my point is that they need to do it correctly.
Don
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"there is a huge website development industry which any dealer can use if they wanted to."
TRUE.
BUT we have all seen websites that have cost companies thousands of pounds that are pretty crap.
Even Her Brittanic Majesty's Government have spent millions on websites that have been useless.
So what chance Joe Bloggs Stamp Shop getting it right???
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"I have proven that my 'talk' works and have donated to the hobby a website that generates over one million page views per year. Since I did not have any budget, I used the brute force approach, and just applied my time."
Yes you have to be commended.
BUT
Where did the start up capital come from?
What is the total amount of money generated by your website?
What capital expenditure has occurred?
How many man hours at the minimum wage has it cost you?
How much has it cost you in services ie Electricity etc etc
AND
How many man hours will it cost you over the next five years?
What are your running costs for the next five years?
What is your capital expenditure going to be over the next five years?
What is your income from the website going to be over the next five years?
What are your contingency plans if you do not meet your sales targets?
The above items and many policies like staffing, shipping, insurance, stock levels etc etc have to be considered.
As I said talk is cheap!!
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Both of you are way off base. The most successful dealers don't use websites or brick and mortar stores. They work out of a briefcase selling the rarest and most desirable material and also by arranging private treaty sales.
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Ernie:- You are correct.
Those with the big bucks don't lower themselves to us minions level!!
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Brechinite,
Stamp Smarter costs are about $300(US) per year; startup costs were zero, I used the tools I had and my own time. This is only an option for a dealer who wanted to ‘roll their own’.
Dealers should look at a new ecommerce website just like investing in a new store so the NRE and maintenance costs would have to justified just like a brick and mortar store. We would not expect that many brick and mortar store owners would cut wood for walls, run electrical, do the plumbing and the roofing; they outsource these things.
I agree with you that many dealers went out and spent stupid amounts of money on bad websites. This is no different than stupidly spending money on opening a new/second brick and mortar store. There are contractors who will rip you off in web development just as there are builders, plumbers, and electricians who will rip you off when you build/rent a brick and mortar store. It is the same amount of work/investment for either in my experience (which includes 18 year owner of a brick and mortar store and a 25 year career as a technology engineer).
This has been my point, doing online ecommerce is not a simple ‘web presence’. It takes vision, it takes investment, it take commitment to do it right. It is no different than opening a new (or second) brick and mortar store.
Don
Edit: Stamp Smarter is not an ecommerce site. The donations have covered the annual costs since it started excluding my time. This was my objective. So the remaining questions you ask are not applicable for Stamp Smarter but do apply to a ecommerce site. The same questions also apply to a brick and mortar store.
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Michael raised the point on dealer behavior so one question is how important are dealers to the hobby. The dealers that attend shows are diminishing so this puts pressure on shows as dealers often subsidize most of the expense. This likely means fewer and smaller shows. Then the question is how important are shows. They are important for exhibitors under current rules as they rely on shows to cover the cost of floor space the frames occupy.
The dealer has traditionally been the primary middlemen by buying collections and then re-selling to collectors. Today, there are more direct collector to collector opportunities. I find the dealer is not a cost effective way to buy common stamps where price, condition, or historical significance (postal history) are not involved.
The point was that some dealers are not taking advantage of opportunities that are possible due to the Internet for whatever reason if they want to be more successful. That is not lament the hobby is dying.
Yes, dealers can be successful through many ways but not sure how one can say definitively that the most successful dealers operate without brick and mortar or websites.
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"True, but there is a huge website development industry which any dealer can use if they wanted to."
Key part of this is "...IF THEY WANT TO."
Many don't.
Many have no interest in doing so.
Many are fine as they are, selling at local and/or national levels at shows.
Many tell me they buy stock off the 'net, but have no intention of ever selling there on a personal site, stating too much time and work to do so. Much easier to sell at shows, they say.
The point here is this, I think;
the look/face of this hobby has changed, yes.
But has it lessened? Have collectors become fewer? Is, as "they" say, stamp collecting dying out??
Plainly and simply - NO.
Granted, it is CHANGING in the way we collect; the fact that you are reading this post on this platform is obvious evidence of that.
The 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's were the heyday.
The 60's, 70's, 80's and a portion of the 90's were a lull, at best.
Late 90's and on brought it back with the advent of the internet.
I have NO DOUBT that it is near what it once was - BUT IN A DIFFERENT FORM.
No one has EVER OFFERED PROOF that it is a dying hobby today. (I said PROOF - not opinion.)
The rocking scale between 'show dealer' and 'online dealer' will continue to sway for quite some time yet. But I DON'T believe this will cause the death/demise of stamp collecting. It will only change the look of the landscape!
As they said on a particular game show - "...and that's my final answer!"
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A most interesting discussion!! It strikes me that there may be a missing ingredient-friendship. Collector to collector taps into that. Store to collector appears not to. The more successful brick/mortar stores in the past did do that. Our SOR does try to do that, for even on the selling platforms(auctions/books etc.) our focus is the member.
On the investment side, best deals are able to be struck between friends. On a personal note I have swapped/sold/bought several thousand cat. val. items over the years. There are wonderful swap possibilities for those trying to enter/improve/leave their collections. Take a leap of faith and reach out to our members- you will find reach rewards in the exchanges.
Dan C.
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What did traditional brick and mortar dealers offer that the online experience is missing today? Many folks have blindly bought into the idea that eBay has shoved down our throats, that it is perfectly fine to spend large amounts of money with a person who you have never met buying things you have never seen in person.
In my opinion, this is workable approach if I am buying inexpensive stamps or if I have extraordinary experience. But what about folks who are just starting? The current situation is a setup for disaster. They take the advice to get a costly catalog, look at the values, sort eBay on cheapest first, buy a bunch of stuff, then they tell their family that they have assembled a collection which will put the kids through college. They are proud in their 'smart buying' at getting discounts from the catalog values. Nothing but bad things come from this situation. It is full of disappointment and failed expectations.
Dealers often enter the picture when someone goes to sell their material; they are the messengers who get shot. Any logical person knows that dealer make their money when they buy, not when they sell. But add to this unrealistic expectations and I do not envy any dealer today.
This is why today’s online dealer need to have a website which interacts with users; a way to do real-time communication and allows them to assist new hobbyists. Those that figure out how to hold the hands of new hobbyists and support them as they learn our hobby. They need to push back on eBays’ marketing hype that you can blindly drop big money buying from a unknown person on the other side of the earth. Online dealers need to figure out how to build solid, long term relationships with collectors.
Don
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Micheal, I agree with your statements and I firmly believe that hobbies just don't die, sometimes they get neglected but eventually they will resurface. Like you, I've been collecting for over 60 years now and while I agree that sometimes was less enthusiastic about it, always it came back to me with more force.
Back in the sixties when I first started trading stamps over the mail, all of my trading partners were male collectors, later on a lot of females join stamp collecting and even though times have changed a lot of
kids are joining in now. Sadly, here in our country we see stamp collecting more like a business than a hobby and use the catalog like a bible, personally I use it as a tool to know which stamps I need more that a price guide. I have some stamps in my collection that catalog for over $3,000.00, I wonder what kind of offer I would get from that dude that offer you 2/10 of 1% for your collection, then again I'll never know because the day stamp collecting dies is because I'm dead.
Let me repeat my motto "to a dealer my collection is worthless, to me it is priceless, what kind of price tag would you put on 60 years of enjoyment?"
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Death of the Hobby!!
YES it may well die. In fact it probably will!!
But not in my lifetime!!
Why?
Everything will be internet controlled. Postal Agencies will stop issuing stamps. All items will just have a barcode or the equivalent.
Even today the younger generations do not Own things like books, music, dvd's etc.
Everything that our generation own is now streamed, or downloaded ready to be wiped from existence once it has been viewed or listened to.
So ENJOY your hobby while you can 'cos it will DIE!!!
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"What did traditional brick and mortar dealers offer that the online experience is missing today?"
Human Contact!! To be able to look the dealer in the eye! Examine their stock!!
The ability to meet, speak, learn, communicate on a one to one basis. Get a feel whether the dealer is personable, truthful, sincere, honest and trustworthy.
Be able to show that you the customer have the same qualities as the dealer.
The biggest advantage is that you can choose, pay and take your item home there and then!!!!
When were you last in your nearest Stamp Shop ???
To go off in a tangent:- Christmas is coming. Will you buy your Christmas gifts from your local independent stores? or will you just buy them from WalMart, Costco etc etc or sit in your chair and send your "gift" as an emailed Gift Card from Amazon???
I know which option I will be doing!!
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Don, one question,
Have you ever done a computer system, installation and ongoing running cost specification, Invitation to Tender for a small business?
For those who do not see what I am getting at, it is to prepare a schedule of a companies requirements, needs etc for purchasing. installing and maintaining the correct hardware and software to run an ecommerce site and put it out to various companies to cost and supply your requirements.
You have to think of everything from the number of transactions it can handle, how you are going to manage those transactions, with whom are you going to manage them with, do you have to change your current manual systems with, how much is training going to cost, etc etc etc etc etc to how you are going to keep and store the records for a number of years and how many boxes to keep them in.
The above is why many dealers have half hearted terrible websites. They DO NOT have the where-with-all in education and fall for the mantra of sales people and listen to the parrot like populace of the mindless.
" You must have a website"" You must have a website"" You must have a website"!!
I am getting off my soapbox and heading for a glass of wine and a nice hot bath.
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Al, you brought up something: "The dealers that attend shows are diminishing..."
I have tried to get into regional and local stamp shows. The dealers who attended the shows put up blocks ("we don't know if you're an expert in the hobby", is what I get the most) to prevent new "blood" from setting up tables at shows. This is a protectionism attitude that is killing the local shows.
This is the only hobby that I have seen (maybe coins dealers do the same?) that does this. It is easy to check on a potential new seller by contacting bonafide references. I have suggested that, and was told that they don't check references. Again, to me, this is simply protectionism. The bottom line is that two or three stamp dealer at a bource does not make a good show.
Model railroad shows have ten times and more dealers/sellers at shows. Paper Collecting shows (includes postcards) that I have seen have many more sellers. Craft, gun, antique and many other types of shows have more sellers. No one requires authentication of proficiency prior to being allowed to sell. (Some show types may require special licenses, such as gun shows.)
I am not going to travel very far to go to a show/bourse that only has two or three sellers. Other collectors will do the same. These shows will die as the same dealers bring the same unsold material time and time again.
For well over 130 years, dealers and the philatelic press have bemoaned the death of stamp collecting. I had philatelic newspapers from the midwest dated in the 1880s where the doom and gloom was forecast. Take notice of who is now saying that the hobby is dying. Is it the dealers who are keeping new sellers out of their shows as they see no buyers coming through the doors? The hobby won't die. It will change. It has changed in the past, and it is changing again. Those who do not adapt to the changes will be the ones who actually die, not the hobby.
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Michael, I suspect this may be an overzealous attempt to prevent the stamp show to become a flea market (people with a lot of nothing) as you see at flea markets. If they are weeding out too many, then it is their own loss unless the dealers are trying to protect themselves. To me a bourse is all about dealers and whomever is sponsoring the bourse.
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Yes there is protectionism by dealers at their shows. They also have the right to refuse or admit any newcomers.
It all depends what the "newcomer" is offering for sale.
As a collector would you go to a fair/show that only had say Eastern Europe Stamps and Postal History if you collected South America? Of course not!!
There has to be a balance in any fair/show.
As an employer I always knew whether I would employ someone within 20 seconds of meeting them. Therefore your approach to fair/show organisers is critical. (Been There. Done That)
Of course the organiser could just be a self centred meglomaniac!!
The simple answer is ........................start your own fair!!
You will probably find that there are fewer dealers at fairs/shows is the simple economic fact that it is not economically viable for them.
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"...As an employer I always knew whether I would employ someone within 20 seconds of meeting them..."
That’s called ‘profiling’ and is often frowned upon by the politically correct.
A US comedian summed up ‘profiling’ pretty well when he said, “The other night I was driving home when the police arrested me, but it was a clear case of ‘profiling’. Apparently on this particular night, they were pulling over everyone who was driving on the sidewalk, obviously profiling!”
Don
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"As an employer I always knew whether I would employ someone within 20 seconds of meeting them"
Call it what you like.
It all boiled down to their presentation of themselves. When they arrived. How they spoke. Their personality. The way they carried themselves. Whether they would fit into the team!
As for the politically correct to quote Sir Geoffrey Boycott "I don't give a toss!"
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Just found this article on BBC site.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49632306
(Modified by Moderator on 2019-09-17 15:10:23)
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Kudos for Anita, she's my type of collector!
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"It all boiled down to their presentation of themselves. When they arrived. How they spoke. Their personality. The way they carried themselves. Whether they would fit into the team!"
I once hired a guy who was my favorite server at a local restaurant. He was friendly and professional. He never wrote down your order, but never got anything wrong. He always brought extra napkins and other things he knew you'd need before you asked. When you asked for your bill, he already had it printed and in his back pocket.
Why did I hire him to be a facilities coordinator? I can teach the job, but not the attitude! He did wonderfully!
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I work in R&D and interview the candidates. Resumes tell the story. They may be the most talented but their attitude makes as much of a difference in actual success at a job. I do not consider selecting someone who is less qualified as profiling because they would be a better fit. I am not talking about the legal definition. Sometimes too smart for their own good is not good.
But I guess we are getting off topic.
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I agree that most brick and mortar stamp operations are obsolete. Most since about 1995 were only hanging on because they were part of a coin shop as well. After 2000 the nearest brick and mortar stamp shop I knew of was 5 hours away in Atlanta. Last time I was there was 15 years ago and I have no idea if he is still there (or alive). That's just the way it is. But there is a new need that isn't being served by the digital community and that is in-person screening of stamps.
As we become more self-reliant and empowered, we need to be able to do a better job of detecting fakes. That means that when we go to a face-to-face venue like a stamp show, we need to be our own experts on the issues we are looking for. Up to a point. At certain price points I will be looking for 3rd party expertization.
The real questions is: Are there enough collectors that really care that much about weeds in their collections?
Lars
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Ahhh, the death of stamp collecting;
If we are to believe the so-called 'experts' who are claiming this,
then the hobby has been DYING LONGER THAN I HAVE BEEN ALIVE.
I had an Aunt - long since passed - who, for many years if you asked her
how she was, her answer was always, "Why, I'm about to die!"
She was 'about to die' for more than 20 years!
Stamp collecting may wane...may shrink...but I seriously doubt it will ever die.
And even if EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD stops producing stamps, people will STILL CONTINUE to collect them.
WHY??
Because THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE DO.
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ALL brick and mortar stores, no matter what they sell, are struggling and many are closing because buying online is so much more convenient.
BUT, I saw a video somewhere of a stamp show and auction in Hong Kong. It was PACKED with YOUNG people. Supposedly stamp collecting is a status symbol among the middle class in China. Colonial British issues are especially in demand.
So while things are changing here in the USA, the hobby is thriving in other parts of the world.
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"because buying online is so much more convenient."
It may be for the disabled and housebound but for everyday folks it is either laziness or poor time management or dare I say it stupidity.
I have seen people in shops look at items even try on clothes and then say I can't be bothered I'll get it online. It is then I pray that their item arrives either in the wrong size, broken or even better never arrive at all!!!
A lot of these internet companies pay their staff poorly and do not pay their fair share of taxes, so the next time your car tyre is damaged by a hole in the road, or your taxes go up, it is all down to the "convenience of internet shopping".
Christmas is coming. Will you buy your Christmas gifts from your local independent stores? or will you just buy them from WalMart, Costco etc etc or sit in your chair and send your "gift" as an emailed Gift Card from Amazon???
May I suggest that you all get out your chairs and support your local store. You may find you actually enjoy the experience of meeting and talking with people and may be even enjoy the exercise.
Here endeth the lesson.
Kindest regards,
(preacher) Brechinite
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When I shop online, I am able to almost instantly compare multiple sources to get the best price. To do that by brick and mortar stores would mean driving all over wasting gas, time, money and creating more pollution. I think shopping online is smart, not “stupid.”
And have you considered the size & scale of the USA and the distances between stores here in America? You could fit your entire country within my home state! Would you drive from Birmingham to London to comparison shop?
Your comment is extremely insulting. It is one thing to try to make a point, but implying that another member is lazy and stupid is incredibly rude behavior. Knock it off, pal.
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When I started collecting years ago, we were living in Brooklyn NY so visited mostly a stamp shop on 5th Avenue and Brooklyn Stamps (still advertise in Linn's). The stamp prices at 5th Avenue were based upon Harris catalog and all supplies were list. This was the days of Crystal Mounts!
Even then (over 40+ years) I started purchasing more mail order and shows to save money. In those days there were local dealers who were at shows too. Raymond Snitow was one I did a lot of early business.
Online is like mail order except the prices lists are online rather than published in Linn's so that aspect has not really changed. Of course Linn's circulation has dropped dramatically. You can see images for most everything and that was not done in the prior days.
In many areas in the southern US, there was not much "local" like it was in the more populated northeast and midwest. To go into town was a major event!
As an aside, there were stores that were like catalog showrooms (printed a catalog of stock) but all these disappeared but in reality they were what an amazon.com could be if there was such as store. With asles of display samples, you ordered them in store and they pulled from stock. Along with a Sears or JC Penney there was not many places to shop. This is how it was in many areas.
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"Knock it off, pal" ??? Incredibly rude and uncalled for. Although maybe not put as eloquently as could be, Brechinite's point is well taken. This country (USA) was built by small businesses. The locally owned grocery stores, butchers, deli's, hardware stores, furniture stores etc..---- the key being locally owned and operated by your neighbors in your community or small city. I owned a community general store for 33 years. Could I compete price-wise with box stores or online stores? No. But I could offer something much more valuable- personal service and a place for pleasant conversation and to see your neighbors. Even now, still living in a smaller community, I keep my shopping as local as I can, trying to spend my money with our local businessmen as often as I can. I'd rather spend 10-20% more than I would pay at a box store or online knowing I have supported my community by supporting the businesses in my community. Point well taken Brechinite.
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""Knock it off, pal" ???"
Acceptable and appropriate.
Those who scoff are the ones who refuse to accept that times are different.
Notice - I did not say BETTER, only different.
Common sense tells us to seek out the lowest price, which the vast majority of
the time will be on the internet - even with shipping cost.
Why? Lower overhead - NO STOREFRONT TO PAY FOR.
Purchasing strictly thru storefronts is not going to magically make the
internet go away.
And as far as the comment about "small businesses built this country", very true!
And they still continue to exist - with a very large presence ONLINE.
Ian's point is understood, if not 100% correct.
But there's no reason for the name calling. This is a discussion - feel free to have a difference of opinion...I can respect that.
But lay off the name calling.
'Nuff said.
(This seems to be veering away from the stamp collecting portion of the discussion)
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I find it ironic that anyone would log into a free online ecommerce forum, one that is kindly donated by Roy and generously staffed by volunteers, and be critical of ecommerce and online technologies.
Apparently it has escaped notice that every generation laments the 'good old days'. Were the good old days really that good?
Good if you didn't get lynched or get polio. Good if you were not a kid as young as 7 years old working a 12 hour shift in a mill or factory. Good if you were a woman who didn't want to vote. Good if you did not want a dishwasher or air conditioner. Good if you don't mind working to get a horse and carriage ready to make a trip into town. Good if you liked arranged marriages. Good if you disliked toilet paper and indoor plumbing. Good if you like famines and a short life expectancy.
But why is it that every generation feels that the ‘good old days’ were good when the facts clearly show the opposite? From Psychology Today
"Because your brain focuses on what you lack, and takes for granted what you have. If you feel you lack leisurely dinners with friends, and you imagine people having them in the past, then the past seems better regardless of the facts. When you feel you lack something, your brain rings the alarm that says your survival is threatened. Obviously, lacking friendly dinners is not life-threatening, but if it's the biggest lack on your mind, your brain processes it with equipment that evolved to confront survival challenges."
I have found that being kept alive by a machine and only being able to participate in our hobby online due to physical/travel limitations has helped me not to take things for granted.
I get up at 3AM so I can be at the dialysis center at 4AM. I stick myself with two #15 needles and hook up the lines to my machine. I sit there for 4 hours as all my blood is removed from my body and cycled through the machine a number of times. I pull my needles and hold my arm for 10 minutes until the blood stops squiring all over the chair and floor. Then I go home and try to recover for the next 12-15 hours knowing that in 36 hours later I have to go through the process again. On my non-dialysis days I typically go to labs, imaging, doctor appointments, and/or chemo. More needles, more invasive treatments, 200 medical appointments per year.
But even though this has been my life for the last 5-6 years, I have managed to hold down 2 jobs working from home via the computer, build an award winning website from scratch, and donate endless hours moderating the SCF forum.
So next time anyone thinks that ecommerce and online technologies suck, I invite them to live my life for a week and then tell me that I am lazy, have poor time management, or am stupid.
Don
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I agree with Ian statements for the sole reason that even idiots are entitled to their own opinion.
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"It may be for the disabled and housebound"
That was my very first point. It is convenient for those people with health difficulties.
"This country (USA) was built by small businesses. The locally owned grocery stores, butchers, deli's, hardware stores, furniture stores etc..---- the key being locally owned and operated by your neighbors in your community or small city."
The USA was not the only country built on small businesses. Napoleon called the UK a nation of shopkeepers.
If your community loses its small businesses and you are only left with the likes of Amazon etc etc Then your community will suffer a decline. When shops are not supported by their local community and close less taxes are paid, people are unemployed, they cannot purchase anything thus the decline continues, house prices fall, people leave their community thus the decline spirals deeper in the end you end up with a ghost town.
All for convenience.
"I find it ironic that anyone would log into a free online ecommerce forum, one that is kindly donated by Roy and generously staffed by volunteers, and be critical of ecommerce and online technologies"
I was not being critical of ecommerce and on line technologies.
I was being critical of those that do not support their own community by buying on line.
In this country some of the big on line clothing companies are sick fed up of the number of returns they are getting by people ordering clothes, wearing them and then returning them saying they do not fit and demanding a refund. (In some cases the returns made to some companies is 10%+.) A few stupid people will spoil it for the many. Why? A new security tag has been developed, you can take it off an item but you can't put it back on and when the item is returned to the supplier no refund will be forthcoming. Even those with a genuine reason for returning the item will receive no refund if the tag has been taken off!!
I will say no more other than quote stokesville on behalf of your local shops and other local businesses:-
" I could offer something much more valuable- personal service and a place for pleasant conversation and to see your neighbors. Even now, still living in a smaller community, I keep my shopping as local as I can, trying to spend my money with our local businessmen as often as I can. I'd rather spend 10-20% more than I would pay at a box store or online knowing I have supported my community by supporting the businesses in my community."
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Very nicely written. It is much more pleasant and conducive to encouraging others to see your point of view when name calling is omitted. I actually agree with some of the points that you make and am willing comment positively when presented in this way.
However, business is business. If a local business is still relevant and can provide needed services or goods at competitive prices, they will succeed. I support many of my local businesses for many of the reasons cited and will happily continue to do so as long as they do not have exorbitant prices and continue to provide good service. But I won’t support a poorly managed business just to be nice. After all they are not charities.
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I did not name call.
I only took the last phrase in your sentence, put it into quotation marks as a heading.
If you took it as a personal slight then I am sorry that you did so.
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Brechinite is one of the good guys. He also has a robust sense of humor. I know he would never intentionally offend anyone on here. Go Jags!
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"I did not name call."
...really??
"It may be for the disabled and housebound but for everyday folks it is either laziness or poor time management or dare I say it stupidity."
I think we are all smart enough to know better.
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"I think we are all smart enough to know better" Well I guess I'm not that smart then. I choose to take the high road and believe that many times things are said and words are chosen out of frustration or with emotion in the moment and doesn't truly reflect the personality or beliefs of the person speaking.
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Oh for Heaven’s sake, are we picking teams for a Dodgeball game now? I felt affronted and he apologized for any unintended hurt. That resolved the matter in my eyes. Let it go already.
And hey, there aren’t that many of us so we should treat each of our fellow philatelists as rare treasures and support each other. We need to stick together and not squabble.
And a friendly tip to avoid future problems. Don’t quote someone and then launch into a long, negative speech. It makes it appear that all your vitriol is aimed at the person you quoted. Rant against the issue or concept, NOT the person expressing an opposing opinion. Also, please remember that we can’t see your face or hear the intonations in your voice or see your body language as clues to understanding your intent.
The title of this thread is THE DEATH OF THE HOBBY. What a big fat downer! Let’s quit bemoaning the downturn here already and start looking at the rest of the world where philately is thriving. Maybe we need to encourage some collectors from other countries to join us and infuse this place with some fresh enthusiasm. So enough of this, let’s try to have some freaking fun.
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"I was being critical of those that do not support their own community by buying on line."
If my local postal outlet did not carry recent Canadian commemorative stamps, I would definitely be buying those on line and using them on my mail to fellow collectors. I would have told the outlet that if they had those on their shelves, they would have my business.
Better kill a few local outlets than kill the hobby.
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12:03:32pm
" .... (This seems to be veering away from the stamp collecting portion of the discussion) ...."
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn there is "Veering"
going on here. Oh the humanity !
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Yes, Charlie -
we have VEERING going on....right under our noses!!
Harrumphh!!!
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Sorry. This was way off topic.
(Modified by Moderator on 2019-09-25 09:42:38)
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Well I veered so badly it got deleted!
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I will put my hand up to say for someone living along way from alot of people Stamp Collecting is fantastic. I'm hooked, just finding out about the history with the stamps. No matter what, I still say this site is the best site to get help with stamps, my husband shows Bantams, me I got hooked just by joining this site.
There is one thing that is slowly dying HAND MILKING A COW but there will still be people milking but not like it was. To me there will still be stamps and this site.
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If only one of them a day becomes a Stamp Collector we'll be fine and that's just England !
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It should be easier to get 50+ year olds collecting than those under 30 years old.
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"Yes, Charlie -
we have VEERING going on....right under our noses!!
Harrumphh!!!"
"Hey, I didn't get a harrumph from that guy!"
OK, so back to the topic at hand. I think there were a lot of good points made and some passions aroused, but I thought the latest thread was about brick and mortar v. in person stamp show v. online transactions FOR PHILATELY. Bemoaning the demise of local businesses in general is a worthy topic, but I would think a SEPARATE topic. As to philately, the conversation shouldn't be about bringing back a business model that is no longer relevant (except in rather limited circumstances), but discussing how different approaches may work in the 21st century economy.
JMHO
Lars
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Like all markets Philately can be divided into various segments.
Each business will know their segment and will work in their own way to maintain their business. If necessary they will alter, amend and change their business model to suit themselves as they see it.
Collectors will collect in a method to suit themselves and buy from businesses that meet their needs.
To find an example of this you need go no further than stamporama. We have two systems to buy from, namely auctions and approvals. Some members who buy from the approval system never by from the auctions and vice versa.
No philatelic business will ever meet the demands of all collectors. Therefore collectors must accept that they may have to buy from various sources to meet their needs.
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Ian,
Guess what!?
I concur!!!
-----------------------
Lars,
Just for you -
'HARRUMPHH!!!'
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Yesterday, I escorted a British friend of mine to a dealer's place of business. This dealer started as a stamp collector, but sold most of his collection to finance his entry into coins as well as stamps. I have a small collection of Morgan dollars and the dealer immediately started to sell his silver to me. My British friend who comes to the states very frequently was looking for gold Sovereigns and had little interest in silver or US bullion since he did not want to pay the high duties to bring it back to the UK.
We turned the discussion to Philatelic concerns. The dealer bemoaned the fact that most of his stamp customers were in the late 60's and many of them were not buying but selling to him. He said he keeps offering less and less money, but they still are very willing to accept his offer. He then pointed to the piles and piles of used stamp albums and stamps that he sells at catalogue no matter what the condition and supplies that are far higher than you can buy on line.
Then he predicts that the hobby of stamp collecting will die in 6 years along with us older collectors. Each month I make it a point to review the applications to APS and note that there are a lot of us old folks who are joining and not many youngsters. Is that a sign of our times when kids are more interested in surfing the internet than forming stamp collections? Or is there something else afoot?
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re: Death of the Hobby
Les,
IMHO the problem with the future of collecting US is the impossibility for kids to find very many used commemorative stamps in the incoming household mail, combined with the proliferation of new issues. In other words, young collectors aren't likely to see many commemoratives on the meager amount of incoming mail that actually has a stamp, so they are not likely to see a very high percentage of each year's commemoratives in the mailstream. That, in turn, makes collecting unattractive.
When those collectors in their late 60's you mentioned started collecting as kids, it was likely in the mid-1950's. You only needed a network of a few friends to keep an eye on incoming mail and do some swapping to keep up with a collection of used stamps back then, so stamp collecting was a rewarding hobby.
I house my US collection on White Ace pages in White Ace binders, and I store Commemoratives separate from Definitives, Airmail and BOB. Commemorative album #1 (COM1) consists of 1893-1949. Over 50 years of commemorative stamps! COM2 is 1950-1969 (20 years). COM3 is 1970-1979 (10 years). COM4 is 1980-1986 (7 years). COM5 is 1987-1991 (5 years). After that, every album is 3 or 4 years of Commemoratives. That's all that will fit!
My 9-year-old has no interest in stamps or coins. My 7-year-old has started his coin collection and his 10-year-old cousin and 14-year-old cousin also have coin collections. They can find coins in circulation, and finding a coin issued 5 years ago is not a huge challenge. They might even find a really old coin on occasion. Good luck with that with stamps.
I doubt my kids will EVER be interested in collecting US stamps, so I plan to end my collection at 2016 with the next stamp expo in the US. I will still work on older issues, so I'm not giving up philately, but the number of new issues pumped out since 1980 or so has been a nail in the coffin for collecting US, IMHO.
I do plan to spend more time in numismatics because kids DO go there for a hobby. Don't blame "surfing the Internet" as the culprit. I have two boys and they have two male cousins. Three of the 4 collect coins. ZERO collect stamps in spite of my obvious interest in stamps. Stamp collecting, not the kids, is the problem.
One area where I see potential for my kids, anyway, is topical collecting. They could learn about a topic AND geography at the same time! So stamp collecting isn't dead or dying, but it is morphing. As governments abuse stamp collectors more and more with new issues, we will adapt and modify our parameters to fit OUR needs. At least I will.
Cheers!
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
I am definantaly the only person my age (31) I know that collects stamps. I think most people are too busy. I find that most people have little time between work, kids, facebook, cell phones to do anything let alone a very time consuming and finicky hobby like stamp collection. People often ask me why I do it. When they ask how much stamps are worth and I say 5 cents for most stamps they ask me why I bother. People just don't see it as productive (a chance to make money) and therefor they don't think it is worth their time. I am not sure if the hobby is dead, I think it is probably more of a cyclical thing. We just live in such a fast paced world that most people are much to distracted to sit down and do anything that takes time. I think another factor is that collectors are burnt out after the 90 where we collected everything from dolls to hockeycards to comic books. Ultimately I think collectors will always come back to stamps because they are so perfect for collecting. But for now the collections that were made up in the 90s have a lot of people distracted. Fast paced society just doesn't allow most people the time.
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07:15:12am
re: Death of the Hobby
I am very pessimistic about the future of the hobby, so if you're looking for a rallying cry and balm of hope in the future of the next generations picking it up, don't read on.
It seems to me that most of older collectors (and I include myself, at the cusp of 60, in that group), collected in this pattern in their lifetime: We started collecting as kids because our parents, grandparents, or other relatives collected; our friends collected for the same reason, and that was how we socialized, trading, admiring items, etc.; and as Lars pointed out, there was the intrigue of getting interesting stamped mail. We then hit our teens to 30s and put away the collections for the most part, until in our 40s/50s when we resurrected the hobby.
While we were being a philatelic Rip Van Winkle, the generation being raised during this time didn't have the active role models we had; had friends who were no longer collecting; and mail became increasingly boring, with metered envelopes and bills dominating the daily delivery. As this generation grew up, we were their children's philatelic role models, older uncles, aunts, and grandparents, and their social world changed completely with the boom in electronic interests (read: distracting bright shiny objects) and social media sites. Now kids don't start with the excited anticipation of interesting mail; they have an exciting world of gaming, surfing, and what not on their phone, tablets, computers, etc.
I would be surprised if the hobby survives another decade, but I'm not optimistic it will. The question isn't whether stamp collecting will die, but when and what will happen to all those collections? As dealer/collectors disappear too, it will be at the auction houses where these albums, stock books, boxes of philatelic material get dumped. Prices will fall as fewer bid, and the market will shrink for the remaining burgeoning stock. Common issues deemed of "no value" by some alleged market authority, will be chucked; you can only donate so much to Scout troops, schools projects, and creative artists.
So enjoy your hobby for yourself, and consider educating your next generations about the value of your collection as a family heirloom, not a source of money in the future.
Peter
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re: Death of the Hobby
Ah Peter,
Your words make logical sense, and your outlook a distinct possibility. There is the counter argument that as our leisure time grows, so will interest in collecting/art/hobbies etc. Your advice is certainly sound. Pardon me while I slit my throat!!
Dan C.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I've learned to think in half-decade increments. Any larger spans will fail to anticipate new communication vehicles and new approaches to interaction. The iPad is a mere half-decade old but has revolutionized computing. I say this so that when I reply, I remember that thinking beyond that 5-year horizon is fraught with more unknowables than Rumsfeld could shake a stick at.
In the near-term, philately IS changing, but not necessarily dying. Comparing it to BB cards or coins helpful only to the point where we see what we might steal from them and understand their successes and failures and see how we might employ or avoid them.
Philately's strength comes from its adaptability to the interests of its participants. Where else does one see "collect how you want, what you want," and have a quazillion options. I have started and abandoned a score of major philatelic endeavors, with 50 minor ones in there as well.
That breadth of possibility leads to great health, both for the accumulator and the scholar; the one-of-a-kind collector and the ones who thrive on depth to see differences.
I just hit 60 and among the youngest in my club; but the collectors there are vibrant. And we can all look in SOR's mirror and see a healthy constituency.
I do think that some of the problems noted here are obstacles unlikely to be overcome: stamps aren't seen any more, despite their continued rabbit-like numbers. This both misses the kids who might have been attracted by the Toy Story and Shrek candy and the one-of-a-kind guy who throws up his hands instead of forking over his wallet. Still, there's lots to explore, and the internet provides entree for anyone willing to ask. Just look at the amazing outporing of expertise and generosity from our members: ask a question or need some stamps.... pooooof! people respond.
Anyway, i see no problem in the next 5 years, although our numbers might shrink. I think you'll see what Lars noted: each of us defines the limits of our collections. We'll see if we can add to our ranks.
David
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re: Death of the Hobby
Happy Birthday David, i hope Dan does not slit his own throat..ugh,,pints of blood,as far as i am concerned Italians are not prone to suicide..live evolves but goes on !
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To error is human -to really fowl things up takes a computer
08 Jan 2014
10:55:33am
re: Death of the Hobby
This topic has been beat to death on many a forum. The Hobby is dead- The Hobby is dead. Yet demand in quality items and prices increase almost every year. The hobby is not dead it is just taking a different path than most older collectors have traveled including myself. I do see in the future that higher value and grade of stamps will be more of a corporate investment as Art has become. I also see hobby becoming more of a topical society as this area of collecting has grown 10 fold compared to the standard form of filling album pages. Just my 2 cents.
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12:23:46pm
re: Death of the Hobby
If you back into the philatelic press around 100 years ago, you will find articles and letters to the editors where people are bemoaning the demise of the hobby. Look at all the collecting "fads" that have come and gone over the decades. Philately is still here, and remains.
By the way, one can see the same type of discussions in most of the hobby "mainstream" hobbies as well, doll collecting, model railroading, etc. Those hobbies are still here as well.
Better time spent working on our hobbies and sharing them with others.
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12:31:36pm
re: Death of the Hobby
@Dan:
There is no need to do anything remotely close to that; my point is, each person should enjoy their collections for what they are, our pastime and enjoyable hobby. We tend to get caught up in the thought that no-one else in our families have the remotest interest in what we have, beyond perhaps an avaricious thought of inheriting a fortune. It doesn't matter; if stamp collecting "dies" then it dies. But for the individual collector, it will still be alive. Consider the owners of Beannie Babies. Absolutely no market for them now, so you end up with two groups of people: One group, that decries the "loss of investment" and how no-one else wants the "toys", and the other, that pull out their stuffed toys now and again and enjoy them. Which camp do you want to be in? I choose the latter. And I'll keep my throat intact, because I won't get depressed thinking like the former.
@Ross:
Yes, the topic has been beaten to ... well, death! But I did not ring the death knell for the hobby's demise; I said it WILL die, that, to me, is inevitable. Maybe in a decade, or two, but eventually, it will, as will baseball cards, postcards, etc. Coins are more stable; currency is part of our cultures and besides, you can melt some coins for their inherent metal worth. Burn a stamp, postcard, baseball card, or Beannie Baby and you get ... nada. These only have value in the eyes of the collector, ultimately. So enjoy and fully participate.
It's a more hopeful message than I think I conveyed earlier.
Peter
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re: Death of the Hobby
O.K.Peter, I'm feeling better now. I just don't know what to do with all the knives I was sent!!
All good thoughts,
Dan C.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I am sad to hear that stamp collecting is dead...what are the stats on coin collecting,postcard collecting and ephemera ? I may need something to fall back on !
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re: Death of the Hobby
i hope that cover collecting does not slip away during the night..for Roys sake !
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02:18:35pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Dan, believe it or not, at one time I collected knives! LOL! Nothing fancy, just variations. I lost most of them during one ill-fated move across the country; I'm certain the moving company purposefully misplaced that one box. (they didn't take the stamps; what does that tell you?)
Phil, diversify your collecting portfolio; it isn't just good advice for retirement plans or stock market holdings. The trouble is, I have so many smaller areas of collecting they (1) take up all my available time from stamps, my first love, and (2) I can't get beyond that stage for them, if anything because of cost. My latest thing is some King and Country miniatures. Stop the madness!
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re: Death of the Hobby
cocollectibles, when i left home to go in the service at 19 i had an army of British made toy soldiers..Indian lancers, guys with bearskin hats, Scots etc;. i had a cartridge collection it was fairly easy to get black powder cartridges and changeovers back then. what i really miss the most were my "Tales From the Crypt" comic books from the 1950's . Talk about realism. well anyway 4 years later no one had lost or broken my stamp collection. I stick with the stamps and covers !
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
08 Jan 2014
04:11:38pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Looking down my corridor, the end of which is indiscernable and unlit,
I believe the future will take care of itself and all things in it.
Money-collecting, and in particular coins, seems to be sharing a fate
dissimilar to stamp collecting: hard currency production is shrinking and,
from what I read, is predicted soon (?) to be rarely used as other forms of
electronic currency and payment materialize.
My guess is that stamp collecting will always be a subset of human
activity.
Personally, I feel no compunction to recruit participants
to our hobby.
John Derry
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re: Death of the Hobby
If i do any reading its history related or about stamps...i believe there will always be some folks interested in history and stamps. It won't be like the 1930s to 1950s..But there will always be some of us oddballs going against the wind !
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06:14:10pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Frankly, I'm encouraged by the notes of optimism expressed here! I sincerely hope you are all correct.
Cheers to all,
Peter
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re: Death of the Hobby
I've heard this same story about model train collecting, well, we're still here too! The unfortunate thing about model trains is they use hundreds of times more space than stamps. I may have a lot more stamps than models but the cost of the toy is based on the budget of the collector. My family is more worried about my train collection than the stamps, albeit pretty close to the same value. Stamps I've convinced them is a heirlom, trains were an enjoyable outlet of fun and education and who can put a price on that? When I'm gone, oh well, not my problem...to the delight of whoever gets the stuff.
I would hate to see stamp collecting disappear, it's been loads of fun and I put it away years ago while raising the family I can put it aside for future generations as everything comes and goes in life. Perry
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re: Death of the Hobby
Didn't the hot rods and roadsters go out of fashion for a while ? Now when they have classic and hot rod shows twice a year at the Rhinebeck fairgrounds..people seem willing to pay a high price (to me) for a weekend ticket.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Obviously you will see a roller-coaster pattern for most collectibles (and precious metals to boot)! Stamp collecting won't "die", and if interest wanes, prices will decline to the point that new or re-invigorated buyers step in. Free-market principles will keep things afloat through the Second Bureau (US), but after that there is a lot of "stuff" that might not be worth more that 75% of face mint. Especially the water-activated stamps from the '70s to the '90s.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Well, I finally started something on the discussion board that got a lot of attention. Pardon me, while I break my arm patting myself on the back. I haven't read every post, yet.
I did not publicly disagree with my dealer friend, but I do feel that the reported demise of the hobby is a bit premature. The impression that I am drawing from reading Linn's is that the marketing executives in USPS Headquarters are encouraging the production of new stamps (Harry Potter) in hopes of increasing the interest in the hobby. Their theory is that stamps are a free revenue source. In my opinion, that kind of thinking is more appropriate to the Banana Republics, Former Communist States, and other nations who issued stamps not to carry the mail but to sell to collectors.
My dealer is trying to make a living on Numismatics by buying and selling coins. Given the relatively recent drop in metal prices, he has a sour taste in his mouth. He has pretty much given up on Philately. The real economics in stamp collecting always seemed to be in albums, mounts, hinges, accessories, and catalogs. H.E. Harris did not sell a bag of a thousand stamps for a dollar to sell stamps. He sold the bag to sell the albums, hinges, crystal mounts, glassine envelopes, and other things thought to be essential to the hobby.
I am not sure that the number of serious collectors relative to the population has really changed all that much. In fact, the internet with the concomitant increase in online sources for stamps may actually increase the number of collectors. I have noted an substantial increase in the number of visitors here. I also bet that our membership has increased since it is free to join.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Hey Dan,
I have some really old but nice Barlow's and few newer Case's if you need them. Good for whittling, but not much good for slitting throats.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Perhaps we were talking about stamp collecting in the U.S. Stamp collecting from what i observe is still popular in Canada,Western Europe and Asia.
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03:04:08pm
re: Death of the Hobby
I have read that collecting in Asia is taking off tremendously.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I'm optimistic about the hobby from my viewpoint, which is being able to acquire decent stamps at cheaper and cheaper prices. I'm pessimistic my stamps will be worth less than the bargain prices I am paying now.
But I wouldn't put much stock in the viewpoint of a brick and mortar dealer. As you said:
"He then pointed to the piles and piles of used stamp albums and stamps that he sells at catalogue no matter what the condition and supplies that are far higher than you can buy on line."
The reason the dealer sees only older folks at his store is they are the only ones willing to pay his prices, which are not competitive with the online venues the "younger" collectors are using. I've gone to retail establishments like this, where the dealer bemoans the lack of interest in his stamps and complains how he can't even get his own children to take an interest in the mountains of philatelic inventory he has. Mention the word "ebay" and these dealers turn red with anger. I won't shop there for stamps as they are just too expensive. On occasion I buy supplies from certain dealers just because its convenient.
The dealers that have internet store-fronts as well, such as Potomac Supplies, seem to have more competitive prices. Potomac Supplies is an exception I'll just mention them because I like them - they've been very helpful and I buy supplies from their brick and mortar store sometimes.
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re: Death of the Hobby
This dealer does or did sell on eBay. And when I said that he sells at catalogue, that is what he marks on his inventory cards. Like most dealers today when he sell bulk lots, I really think that he is trying to get what he paid for the lot out of the sale. Some of his early bulk foreign collections show a bit of promise, but I am not willing to pay his asking price because I just do not have the interest in acquiring foreign stamps.
However, he is not just a brick and mortar dealer. He is aware of the technology and its impact on the market. It is difficult to tell the age of an eBay buyer. Many dealers are angry with eBay because they see inexpensive common stamps offered as more expensive varieties with low ball prices. Most reputable dealers are members of ASDA and APS and can suffer serious repercussions if they do that.
In my opinion, most of the stamp sales on eBay by private individuals go to "dealers" looking to re market the stamp at a higher price. A very reputable dealer told me that he would lose money if he sold anything on eBay for less than $2.00. Either the seller does not know what they are offering or they are deliberately pricing it below market to get rid of the stamp. I am not sure that eBay or any of the on line services is the place to estimate the true retail value of a stamp.
It is worth discussing since that the falling retail value seems to be the primary reason many think the hobby is dying. If retail values fall significantly then dealers can no longer remarket older stamps.
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re: Death of the Hobby
"I am not sure that eBay or any of the on line services is the place to estimate the true retail value of a stamp."
As far as I'm concerned that IS the market (but maybe not for highly valued stamps). The fact that catalogs do not consider it the market may be part of the perception problem: the gulf between what people expect their stamps are worth and what they actually sell for. My viewpoint may be clouded because I have mainly purchased collections up to this point and those were regularly selling for less than 10% of CV, even taking into account the mixed quality. (But those collections typically don't have the highly valued stamps). But when collectors turn to buying collections from Ebay at wholesale prices rather than individual stamps from dealers at "retail" because its a much better deal, that is troublesome for traditional dealers I would think. It probably also indicates there is too much supply (of low to medium value stamps - it still seems hard to find the high value material).
Maybe the dealers that are in trouble are those invested in low to medium value stamps, which are losing value, as opposed to the rarer items, which are retaining value.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I noticed an interesting fact today. If you factor inflation into the equation and purchased a US 1 mint copy in 1980 at full catalog, you would have paid over $8000 in today's dollars. Compare that with $ 3000 full catalog value in 2011. A classic stamp has not even kept pace with inflation.
My full set of Zeps are worth much less than I paid for them.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
12 Jan 2014
03:00:30am
re: Death of the Hobby
I assume you are referring to Scott's guestimates, Les.
I am thinking that during those thirty years didn't Scott do a massive revision in their pricing strategy at least once ?
My forgetter is getting better all the time but I seem to recall a great amount of pricing turmoil in the '80s which might make it near impossible to draw such a comparison.
It would be better to use the bid and asked prices of the day and compare them to a similar bid and asked source today.
According to an annual listing of the Consumer Price Index, which as you may suspect I keep on the small end table adjacent to my bed, an item that cost $0.82 and 4/10ths cents in 1980, was at $2.29 and 8/10ths at the end of 2012 despite, or perhaps as a result of, the recent recession that almost destroyed the country.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Interesting commentary, Charlie.
My "forgetter" also gets better as time goes on. I have read that Scott did do a major pricing shift, but I do not remember the details. Katz talks about the stamp "investment market" in the 1970's as characterized by almost daily increases in value. I know that I let myself be suckered in to a subscription service that allegedly offered stamps with significant potential to increase in value. It was a scam. Caveat Emptor!
If Scott's pricing strategy is to survey auctions, retail, dealers, and (when available) private treaties, then they should have a very good handle on the market. Of course, what an organization says and what it does is often very different.
I have a copy of Scott's 1980 US specialized catalog and compared it to my 2011 US Specialized catalog. The first thing to note is that Scott Publishing was independent in 1979 and a division of Amos Press in 2011. Scott prices in 1980 were based on stamps in Fine condition and now it is Very Fine condition. In addition to the actual changes in the value of the dollar due to inflation, the conditional value of the product has been inflated as well. Back in 1979, the minimum price of a fine stamp was fixed at 3 cents, and today it is a very fine stamp with a minimum price of $0.20.
At the present time and even back then Stamps were a very bad investment. If in 1980, I had purchased an unused fine US 1 from a dealer, I would have paid $3000 at full Scott. Today my $3000 would buy $8,485 worth of goods and services and the stamp would be worth no more than $1200 at full Scott. Stamps have not only not kept pace with inflation but they have actually declined in catalogue value. And we all say that the "street value" is probably less than 50% of Scott for classic stamps which have a limited supply. That is probably why we see a decline in dealers and probably why the hobby is declining as well.
Scott does provide a good reference to relative value, but this is a free market and it obeys the classic laws of supply and demand. Demand is declining so prices are declining and small time dealers cannot make a living buying and selling. However, there is a lot of low quality stamps on the market.
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03:14:29pm
re: Death of the Hobby
To clear up some of the mystery regarding the Scott catalogs:
- 1988 was the last year of the old valuation model
- the current model was put in place in 1989 with a large drop in stamp values from 1988 to 1989 editions and is supposed to represent the "retail marketplace". What it actually was intended to do (it didn't work) was to remove the ambiguity regarding the selling of stamps where dealers would discount stamp prices based on the country the stamp was from (for example and stamp from Chad might be discounted 60% from catalog value due to lack of demand, while a stamp from German might be discounted only 15%)
- in 2013, Scott raised the minimum catalog value of a stamp to 25 cents. That doesn't mean that a stamp with a 25 cents value is worth 25 cents. The stamp is worth 3 cents most likely, but the 25 cents is intended to cover the cost of a dealer doing business.
- Scott only has a few people who work on and edit the catalogs, They concentrate on the popular collecting areas and once every now and then look at other areas that haven't been reviewed in a while. That is why you see huge increases in values from time to time in some countries, like happened with Bolivia and Uruguay a few years back.
- Scott and Linn's have commented over recent years how the supply of higher-valued stamps is increasing as those items are coming onto the market as older collectors are passing on. That is holding down the values. As for the Zepps, there is actually a good supply of them all around. They hold a higher value, like the Penny Black, due to demand, but they are easy to obtain in most any condition.
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07:03:06pm
re: Death of the Hobby
I am 43 and have been collecting since I was 8 years old. I have started many beginners, children, young and middle aged adults. I don't know if they stuck with it, but I do see many collectors on the internet. I think that the internet has become a place to find younger collectors.
I collect foreign stamps, not US stamps. I will say that the fact that the US has made it difficult to soak their stamps without it being a time consuming nightmare involving smelly chemicals has made me stop buying US Kiloware to trade to foreign collectors. They don't want the stamps on piece and I don't have time to fiddle with each stamp individually to get it off the paper. I just buy Canada or something else I can find cheap to build up trading stock.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
13 Jan 2014
02:39:45am
re: Death of the Hobby
" .... - 1988 was the last year of the old valuation model
- the current model was put in place in 1989 with a large drop in stamp values from 1988 to 1989 editions and is supposed to represent the "retail marketplace". What it actually was intended to do (it didn't work) was to remove the ambiguity regarding the selling of stamps ...."
Thanks, Michael, that is what I was thinking about. It was simply too much of a chore to go to the other end of the house and dig through my files of that era.
The changeover did create a major pile of unhappiness (Profanity deleted) for a year or so and then I believe Scott simply reverted, quietly, to a version of the original system. I know I have pages from the contemporary papers as well as the APS journal saved in a binder and some of the heated comments had to be handled with long barbeque tongs.
Collectors who were accustomed to buying stamps at a big discount from inflated prices simply refused to accept the "retail price" idea so dealers had to continue to offer discounts and several insisted on ignoring the then current Scotts, using the last one with the inflated prices until Scott relented.
Getting a 75% discount for a stamp that listed at several 100% above the actual market made collectors very happy despite the smoke and mirrors involved.
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02:45:57am
re: Death of the Hobby
Charlie, you are right. Many dealers raised a big-time fuss over the change. Many stated that the 1988 Scott Catalogs (yellow in color) would be the only ones that they would use for selling stamps "from now on". I went to a few dealer stores during this time, and also went to a few stamp shows. Until around 1992, the dealers still carried the 1988 catalog and not any of the newer ones. I knew one dealer who carried both the 1988 catalog set and the most current one. He said that it was the buyer's choice to use 1988 or current values for pricing. The dealer used different discount methodologies depending on which catalog was used.
Eventually, like you said, values in Scott started to go up. It wasn't long before things were pretty much back to where they were in 1988.
That was definitely a few exciting years in philately!
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re: Death of the Hobby
Thanks Michael.
I wasn't aware of the upheaval.
Les
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re: Death of the Hobby
I don't know how many have read Terry Pratchett's Hogfather (it's a really good book), but it poses an interesting question: how to kill something that is not an normal living being. In the case of the book it's the Hogfather (Discworlds substitute good ol' Santa), but with this discussion it's our common hobby.
I think it would be very, very hard. Almost impossible.
IMHO it all comes down to what motivates us to collect; not so much of what we collect. For example I know a fellow who's interested of anything related to railways. And he's become a topical stamp collector 'by accident' just because of interest to collect anything related on trains. And then theres the guy who's bird watching, but he's expanded also to photos and and stamps. And then there's... Each collector is different, they each have a different background and motives to collect.
It's possible to wipe out some interests; it's even natural as the world evolves. But something will always survive Even on the mankinds darkest moments (world wars, civil wars), stamp collecting has always survived. So as long as there are kids who collect rocks; or fellows who are into railways memorabilia, or just about any kind of collectors, our hobby will continue to exist one way another
Just my 5 cents worth.
-k-
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re: Death of the Hobby
Michael i remember the yellow 1988s..Big Shot Marlen stamps said that was the LAST catalog he would use. So much for that !
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02:15:51pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Phil, he not only said it, his advertisements stated it!
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re: Death of the Hobby
In my opinion going on price guides alone for selling is completely outdated. Price Guides are nice to give an idea of what is rare. Ebay which gives me thousands of completed sales on a variety of stamps every day gives me the best idea of what people are willing to pay, it seams to be about 10-15% scott catalog value for low and mid end stuff. I understant brick and mortar shops need to pay rent. Brick and mortar stamp stores have to be more of a hang out and supplies store and make their money from selling supplies and breaking down big collections into small lots, maybe do some consignment stuff. All the money being spent especially on low-mid range stuff is online, sadly most of it on Ebay. I say sadly because they charge big fees and unlike the brick and mortar owners, Ebay doesn't care about the hobby. Every $1 spent on ebay sucks 10 cents out of the hobby (I could see this leading to the death of the hobby quite quickly). In order for birth there must be death. Thanks to online stamp sites, I think SOR is a great one, we can buy and sell and trade quite conveniently online eliminating the middle man so to speak. It is to bad it will mean the death of hobby stores that refuse to keep up with the times and, excuse my french, rip off their valued customer on inflated prices for low-mid range stamps. How do they blame the customer from turning to the interweb. Maybe a rant for another day but in regards to the death of the hobby no way. In regards to the death of the price catalog heck yes and in regards to the death of brick and mortar shops...its complicated but that is what happens when you mix business and pleasure.
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re: Death of the Hobby
SCB,
I hadn't quite thought about this previously with respect to our hobby, but the basic question you pose as to what motivates us to collect does ring a bell. We are hard-wired to do 'nesting activities'- and this can be observed across species.
Might our collecting hobby be yet a further example of that? If so, you are absolutely right that it may never be able to be stamped out(pun intended). To do so would probably doom the species.
Can it be that we, STAMP COLLECTORS OF THE WORLD! are our species continued hope for mankind!!! A staggering thought-I must sit down.
Deep in thought,
Dan C.
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
13 Jan 2014
04:20:29pm
re: Death of the Hobby
dani20:
You can wade through my deepest thoughts and not even get your ankles wet.
My primitive analysis of this interesting thread is that, collectively, we have
carried our hobby into the cemetery but all decline to dig the burial plot.
John Derry
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re: Death of the Hobby
Ciao SCB, Good to see you here...i truly believe the large auction houses will continue to prosper..lets hope that there will be enough "vestpocket" dealers around to cater to the little guys..the vast majority !!
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re: Death of the Hobby
Can't be too dead. I'm still able to purchase Stamp Album Binders. Just ordered another one. Kind of stagnate till it arrives, hopefully by the end of the week.
Then I will stare at it for half a day in an attempt to decide what topicals to use it for, and then I will wish I had ordered more pages for it.
All is still well and alive in Stamp Collecting..
Clayton
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08:47:04pm
re: Death of the Hobby
As a word of encouragement... I am a new collector (yes there are some) and am having a great time laying the groundwork of my collection. A couple points.
The low prices are what is allowing me to jump into the hobby. Frankly, with kids starting college, I can't afford to collect anything else nearly as actively.
The internet (including ebay), with its world wide reach may be great for the hobby as it shrinks the world so dramatically. I can be in direct contact with collectors in Japan or Australia from my home Pennsylvania. That is exciting to me.
I have no doubt the hobby is changing - I've collected other things over the years and all collecting hobbies are changing. I think perhaps how collectors and dealers handle those changes will determine how the hobby grows or shrinks in coming years.
There is so much more I would like to type. I keep deleting and rewriting. I think I will just let this stand and hope this makes some sense.
You have a great site and discussion forum. I am learning a ton and having a blast doing it.
Bob
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07:13:36am
re: Death of the Hobby
This indeed has been a great discussion and we've stayed on point for a long time! Kudos to all!
I haven't really changed my opinion, but I concede that maybe what we will have in a decade or two, is the death of the hobby as we know it today, not totally. Those who said collecting will continue, are correct, as evidenced by our new collector friend bobhaf and others, and indeed in a upcoming decades, it will be a buyers market.
Cheers,
Peter
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re: Death of the Hobby
Bob,
Welcome to the hobby and to the forum! You are correct - there is a LOT you can acquire for CHEAP!!! When you get into pricier areas, be sure to ask questions and educate yourself about potential fakes and frauds. Not much of a problem when you are getting started, but expanding your knowledge faster than your collection can save you a few bucks!
I like that! That's my new tagline!
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
I turned 71 a couple of days ago. I fear that I may die before I can finish reading this thread! Don't you people have anything better to do? You should try stamp collecting!
Seriously, now, when my wife I moved to Vancouver in 2001 for what is euphemistically called "retirement," there were six stamp shops within walking distance of our apartment (we live about 12 blocks from Vancouver Centre). Not all suited my needs — one was just an office where you could look at great postal history, but the owner only sold on eBay. There were two more I could get to with a short bus ride, one that required a long bus ride, and another that involved a 45-minute endurance test on a very crowded bus (now replaced by fast, comfortable Canada Line subway/elevated train).
Today, there is only one stamp shop within walking distance, and it's quite a long walk. That's FvH Stamps on Cordova Street. The owner is nearing retirement age, and has so much stock that he'll never get to the bottom of it. A friend calls his storage room a philatelic alternate universe. All Nations Stamp and Coin, moved from downtown Vancouver to a location near UBC and requires a longish bus ride; another, Chantou Stamps, requires a shortish ride on the Canada Line and then a bus ride on a bus that is often very crowded.
One of our former stamp shops, Weeda Stamps, was a Vancouver philatelic legend, but several years ago the owners pulled up stakes and moved to Victoria. Weeda Stamps still exists, but only as an online bid board auction. The quality and quantity of their auctions (about 20 a year) has steadily gone up and up, along with their profits.
My stamp club, the BC Philatelic Society, is still healthy in terms of membership, and is probably the largest of a half-dozen clubs in Metro Vancouver with somewhere around 60 members. Weekly meetings bring out anywhere from a dozen to 30 members, depending on the program. The big problem we face is an aging executive, me among them. I recently decided to resign as president due to stress resulting from various factors, some club-related, some not. Only one member of the executive has indicated that he will stand for election at our AGM in March. I'm hoping that some of our newer, somewhat younger members will choose to become more involved.
Finally, the area of collecting that I have seen grow an incredible amount over the last 25 years is postal history. Around about 1980, a dealer in Prince George introduced me to cover collecting — postal history. He sold me a cover for a dollar; years later I traded it to another postal history dealer for a hundred dollars in other covers. Since then, postal history collecting has burgeoned. The majority of dealers at our annual show and bourse, VANPEX, sell postal history and only postal history. I myself mostly buy postal history and postcards. I use the postcards and stamps as collateral items to help illustrate web pages and talks about postal history. It's interesting that one of the fastest-growing clubs in Vancouver is the Vancouver Postcard Club.
Bob Ingraham
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05:09:02pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Lars
Thanks for the advice. I'm concentrating on easy to find cheaper stamps no one would want to forge and that even I can identify.
Trying to learn as much as I can in the meantime so I can both keep from buying fakes but also so I can accurately identify what I have. (for now I just assume its the cheapest variety of whatever)
Great tagline
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07:33:53pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Here's an interesting article about stamp collecting in Britain, from the April 2013 The Guardian newspaper. It is germane to this post.
Guardian article
Peter
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
16 Jan 2014
07:46:39pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Thank you for posting that article, Peter, as I believe it accurately reflects
the hobby in the New World as well.
John Derry
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09:33:54pm
re: Death of the Hobby
"The Royal Mail says the number of traditional addressed envelopes fell at a rate of 4%-7% a year between 2008 to 2011, but plummeted at an even faster pace after the steep increase in the price of first-class stamps to 60p last year."
No, really? Gee, every postal system complains that the "first class" mail keeps dropping, especially after they raise the rates. So, what do they do??? Keep raising the rates. Brainiacs.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
17 Jan 2014
06:46:40am
re: Death of the Hobby
I read the UK article and had to laugh.
I simply can't imagine someone fooling around with stamps since the '60s and it not dawning on him that stamps catalogues "Price" listing are akin to my desire to fly off to Japan for the weekend.
Gibbons listings are what they will as a retailer will sell a super fine example of a given stamp at, if they can.
It is the same with Scott, except they don't actually follow through and sell stamps any longer.
Using the words "value" or "worth" in the same sentence as one of the catalog printers is at best disingenuous.
personally "listing" as in "comparative catalog listing" is more accurate..
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11:26:23pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Les,
Does your friend have stacks and stacks of covers? I will buy them at those diminished prices! Please contact me privately with his phone number if he does.
Bruce
PS: I think the stamp hobby is being trimmed but there may be a resurgence in the future. It may not be huge but it will see a revival of sorts. Seems to happen with everything except maybe Beta video tape.
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re: Death of the Hobby
The hobby will survive me, So ?
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12:15:10pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Not dead, but very different. 30 years ago Cincinnati had 3 downtown stamp/coin shops...today NONE. It was being able to walk into a shop and have the owner take time to
"teach" a kid the basics of the hobby that got me into stamps! Not dead just way different today!
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re: Death of the Hobby
i guess its not a kids game anymore !
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re: Death of the Hobby
i think Karl's post is instructive. It is NOT like it was 30 years ago. Dealers behind brick and mortar counters have been replaced by a much larger cohort of volunteers (and dealers) who are equally willing, often more so, to help young collectors. The medium has changed completely, but the basic idea remains in place, perhaps more effectively.
so, if it's schooling kids in stamps, look no further than us.
David
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re: Death of the Hobby
The hobby is changing and it always has. Many of the developments interpreted as the signs of imminent death, disappearance of brick-and-mortar stamp shops, happen concurrently with an increase in internet shopping which puts all retailers under pressure. There probably is a decrease in any kind of specialty stores. And the emergence of internet shopping as the primary means to fill your shopping needs, is yet only one symptom of much broader societal trends.
As for the aging issue, I think there is some truth to it. The APS has a StampsTeach program which support teachers with lesson plans, teaching materials, and stamps, for school kids. The pilot finished last year with about 300 teachers putting stamps in front of 10,000 school kids nationwide. To get yet another different perspective on the death of the hobby issue you may want to read the report. I believe the APS is currently seeking grant money to employ a full time person responsible for the program. I have it in my little personal message that supporting the APS is the single most important step we can take as stamp collectors to support the hobby. Apart from the personal advancement one will experience in his or her collecting through the resources available from APS, only the APS has the critical mass to push programs at the national level.
Actually, if you decide to join the APS based on this discussion, it might be a nice touch to put the name of Stamporama as your affiliation on the application form. We are an APS affiliate stamp club and if we were to sponsor just ten members in a year, we would for sure get some attention. In fact, there is even an annual award for the group or individual sponsoring the most new members. I expect us to again be in the running for the APS website award, and as much as it is nice to be on the receiving end of APS sponsored programs, and recipient of APS recognition as an organization, it would be nice to also give back.
I am not accepting the death of the hobby as a foregone conclusion.
Arno
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22 Jan 2014
12:57:42pm
re: Death of the Hobby
" .... being able to walk into a shop and have the owner take time to
"teach" a kid the basics of the hobby that got me into stamps! ...."
What parent today is letting an impressive young child walk into any small, poorly lighted store front "down town" these days, anyway ?
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re: Death of the Hobby
"What parent today is letting an impressive young child walk into any small, poorly lighted store front "down town" these days, anyway ?"
Well I would, if there were any decent stores "downtown" but they closed years ago and moved to malls. Of course I would have to accompany my child, whereas when I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, I would hop on a bus to go downtown to the hobby store or Gimble's (remember them?), maybe not for stamps so much, but for models, war games etc. Or I'd trek 10 miles on my bike across the river and up the "highway" to a hobby hop out near Fox Chapel.
I don't worry about how "impressive" my children are or how "impressionable". I just lament having to keep them on a leash until they're nearly adults.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Okay, here is my two cents worth. I have collected for 49 years. Back in the late 70's/early 80's I thought stamp collecting was dead.
Fifteen years ago I joined my first stamp club as an adult. I told my wife that I was the youngest member of the club. Fifteen years later I am still one of the younger guys, but there are several younger than me. The average age in that club is 67 and that's what the average age was 15 years ago. Membership has gone from 53 members to 82 of which 50% or better come to the monthly meetings.
The good and the bad is that many more people are there to sell than buy. There is such an abundance of common stuff that it is driving prices down. There is way more supply than demand. I believe that trend will continue. I don't go to the meeting for the stamps and covers anymore. I go to socialize.
Stamps are a poor investment if you are collecting to make money. If you collect to meet interesting folks from all over the world from different walks of life, I think it's the greatest investment you can make. You can spend nothing or thousands a year.
I also think that as we age we need to keep our minds active. My interest in history grows as I age. What came first the chicken or the egg or in my case the cover or the history of such? The research and discovery keeps the gears grinding in my head. I need something to do besides watch shows about cupcakes or hillbillies making duck calls,( I do love those guys).
Lastly, The internet has opened a whole different world to stamp collecting. I could go on and on, but that's all you guys get for two cents.
Pat
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re: Death of the Hobby
Good 2 cents Pat. You remind me of something that I thought worthy of sharing-but it may all be too obvious to everyone else other than me-but let's give it a shot.
The Internet is the new 'social hall' for those homebound for one reason or another. Yet sadly many of those who could benefit from that medium are too intimidated to try to utilize it. I am very computer challenged, but even I have been able to set up and use skype. (As a side note, if I can be of any help to our members in trying to set up skype on their machines please feel free to contact me.)
On at least a weekly basis, and sometimes on a daily basis, I do enjoy bantering with our great secretary Perry- I must share that we disagree about everything, and we do laugh at & with each other a lot.
Although the initial unifying thread was stamps, Pat is quite right that the social aspect far outweighs the hobby aspect and blossoms into friendships. Anything that can do that cannot die-it can only grow.
As I said, this may all be too obvious to everyone, but I thought it possibly worth a mention.
All good thoughts,
Dan C.
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They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. -Benjamin Franklin
23 Jan 2014
10:50:35am
re: Death of the Hobby
Well said, Dan!
Mistrust of new things is both common and natural to us mere mortals, and sometimes we must use that "thing" which elevates us above the other creatures of this planet (no, not the opposable thumb) - our minds! The computer and, through it, the internet has given us a brave new world that we have to embrace or perish. Our hobby will not die, but it cannot continue in the same form. Change is natural and the sooner we stop fighting it and learn that swimming with the current is better than trying to emulate salmon in their spawning season, the sooner we can get to the happy place!
Just look at what we are doing HERE! We have a stamp club where we can meet any time we want - 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We can participate in auctions, we can go to stamp stores (check out the Links section - lots of shopping available there), we can view and purchase approvals while watching the Duck guys on TV - and all without walking out our front door.
Now I am not advocating becoming a hermit. Continue to go to physical stamp clubs. Continue to go to work each day. Continue to do family stuff (extremely important). But when you have the time and inclination, get online and enjoy stamping - any time and any place with WiFi (and dependence on WiFi may soon be a thing of the past also).
Have fun and promote philately - it will only die if we all lie down and give up on it!
Bobby
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re: Death of the Hobby
Good points Dan and Bobby, but I can't help but marvel at the dichotomy:
We started out in social camaraderie with our collecting friends plucking plum stamps from incoming mail, often from "pen pals". Now we are pen-pals in an online social forum discussing collecting strategies in an era of decreasing personal mail. The tool that did the most damage our hobby (e-mail) is the tool we use to exchange information to advance our hobby.
I think it's quite amazing. And fun!
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
Lars,
I was a general contractor for 25 years. My first customer that REQUIRED all of our correspondence to be by email was.........(wait for it).......... You probably already guessed, The United States Postal Service. That was in 1994 and this whole internet and email thing was in it's infancy. The modems and computers were very slow. I thought it was all a huge pain in $#@#. We joked at the time that mailing it would be quicker, certainly a fax was faster than those early modems with their very slow transmission speeds. We also wondered what affect this would have on the mail.
So, They did this to themselves. Who would of thought the government would have such poor insight?
Pat
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BuckaCover.com - 80,000 covers priced 60c to $1.50 - Easy browsing 500 categories
24 Jan 2014
12:38:14pm
re: Death of the Hobby
"Who would of thought the government would have such poor insight?"
You're kidding, right?
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re: Death of the Hobby
Roy,
Yes my attempt at humor or sarcasm. I chased federal construction projects for 25 years. I have stories.
Pat
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re: Death of the Hobby
"The tool that did the most damage our hobby (e-mail) is the tool we use to exchange information to advance our hobby."
Email isn't killing the hobby. The self-adhesive stamp killed the hobby as far as modern stamp collecting. But there are plenty of stamps to collect from bygone eras when stamps were beautiful works of art.
Just because the stamp no longer serves a good purpose has no bearing on the whether the zillion stamps that DID serve a purpose are worth collecting. I mean people collect victrolas, world war II memorabelia etc. and don't require an ongoing war to make keep the hobby alive.
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07:31:56pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Hard to tell with hobbies. As a kid, I thought electric trains were great. I made a nice layout for my son and I think I had more fun building it and thought neither he or my daughter really cared. Through the years my wife would buy me some things and we would go to see a model train exhibitions. When my children had their kids they asked if I would set up the trains. Now the grand kids get excited to see them.
I also remember getting starter kits for my children but they quickly lost interest since the electronic toys came on the market. However, they did know I had an interest and would watch me in my collecting efforts.
So, I think when they inherit my collections (whether they are stamps, coins or trains) either my children or grand children will maybe have a re kindled interest in these hobbies.
Things go in cycles.
I think the bigger issue will be the preservation of the stamp collections.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I hope you guys are right, but I doubt it.
I collect stamps because it strikes a chord with my youth and the friends I made, the things I learned, and the challenge of finding moderns on cover in the incoming mail. My sons don't have that experience, so they won't make that connection. The year I started collecting used as a kid there were exactly 16 commemoratives that year and most inbound mail had a stamp. Now first class stamps are rare on inbound mail, and the chances a kid will even SEE more than 10% of the commemorative issues (I count 68 for last year at a quick glance) is slight.
Why WOULD any kid be interested in stamps other than from a historical standpoint? Sure, there will be a few of those, but not nearly enough. Excessive issuance of commemoratives starting around 1970 is what poisoned this hobby, IMHO.
Lars
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07:58:04am
re: Death of the Hobby
To add my two cent (red)...
I don't think this hobby is going anywhere, but it won't look the same.
Case in point - my thirteen year old daughter asked me for a record player for Christmas this year. All the kids wanted one. I had to scratch my head - I couldn't make the switch away from records to CD's fast enough as a teenager. No careful handling, no scratches and pops, it was fantastic. Why the heck would these kids with ipods that carry every single song they ever wanted in their pocket want to deal with vinyl?
Answer - "Retro is cool." Well, not an answer, and definitely not an indication if the fad will last longer than sillybands.
No one has a crystal ball. Will the eventual death of stamps cause interest to fall off? Or will it cause a resurgence of interest in something that has become "retro"? What stamp collecting cannot be is what it was when most of us started - picking stamps off the mail. It probably won't be about collecting every new thing that comes out each year - things made to be collectible are not. The money still follows quality and rarity - not for investment, for the desire to own "the best" and to hunt down the next "best." That money will pay to keep the rest alive. IMHO.
Philately will change....like everything else.
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25 Jan 2014
10:19:17am
re: Death of the Hobby
It appears to be true about "retro is cool". For some of us that are too young to know the golden age of films, we've fallen in love with them. I was at the store a few months ago to grab a few things and my jaw dropped when I saw the "new cool styles" in the women's department geared to high school/university students --> retro for them is the '80s. Skin-tight jeans, high top running shoes, etc. The clothes are similar to what I wore in high school, only the style of wearing them is different. Thank goodness they may have learned from "old" pictures that pastel make-up and a bottle of hairspray everyday did not look good. Lol
Stamp collecting will never disappear, as others mentioned, it will just evolve. There may be more of an historical focus on certain time periods and modern stamps may become a thing of the past, but just like there are people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have fallen in love with golden age films, the same will continue with stamps. When this younger generation who cannot survive without texting grow up and have their own children, their minds are going to change and they will not be pleased to see their own children glued to their phones or other electronic devices.
Electronic devices come and go but stamps will always be here even if they are no longer currently produced for everyday usage.
Kelly
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27 Jan 2014
05:19:15pm
re: Death of the Hobby
"...Retro is cool ..."
Wow that means that the multi media 33&1/3rd record player in my stamp room is cool and perhaps my Chopin and Beethoven long playing records still have a chance.
I may be ahead of the curve, imagine that!
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re: Death of the Hobby
Let me blow the dust off my 8-track-tapes!
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01:25:04am
re: Death of the Hobby
I still have old 78 RPM records.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I have enjoyed reading this thread.
My ultimate conclusion is that we are a hobby that will survive, but not without change and not without many challenges.
In the late 80s in Memphis, there would be 1-2 shows a year - that's not changed. There were two shops - a stamp shop and a stamp/coin shop. The stamp/coin shop is still there. When I was in the Coast Guard stationed in Boston (90-92), I could easily attend 3-4 shows a month. Not sure how many there are now.
In the 90s, I noticed something.
I'd walk into the shows in Boston. There were more than a few sour puss faces and dealers that I just had to question whether or not they wanted to sell stamps. Those who were friendly and inviting received my business. But it made me wonder how some dealers survived.
Another issue - and I'm not taking sides - was the debate in the States over the Harry Potter stamps recently issued. Some collectors were utterly irate over the issuing of these stamps and I do understand their protest, but at the same time, here is a set of stamps that could have some popular appeal and maybe get some kids interested in the hobby.
I am a member of APS and my primary reason for joining - as it is for my membership in any society - is to get the magazine. On another forum I recently asked what periodicals people subscribe to, and I was surprised at how many subscribe to none. And the reason was half money and half due how much information is available online.
I'm not sure looking at show attendance, or the number of shops, or the subscriber base of publications or membership of organizations is the primary criteria upon which we should base the health of the hobby. Most of these do indicate a decline, but the problem with viewing only those factors is the pesky online. It is darned hard, if not impossible, to develop real data on how many difference collectors are purchasing via Ebay and other online auction sites as well as online direct from dealers or society online auctions, etc.
How many people are buying online and not going to shows?
How much of the dealer death can be attributed to dealers who may not have been terribly business savvy or did not react to changing market conditions?
How many people in each age group are buying online?
What is a stamp collector? (I've been told that my postal history collection does not qualify. Hmmm).
How many people collect stamps but don't self-identify as stamp collectors.
The way many of us (I'm 45) used to buy stamps is in decline. That's for sure. But there may be a very quiet strength to the hobby floating around the interwebs.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Yes, a very interesting conversation. The reality is that Philately is a hobby for older people (sorry everyone under 50 :-) ). But that is very understandable. There are very few of us that fell in love with the hobby at a very early age and have stayed with it all throughout our lives. I think most of you are like me. Started out at an early age, influenced by a parent or a friend, and then the realities of life kicked in e.g. college, mariage, kids, house maintenance etc etc etc. It is not until we get a little older (in most cases) that we have the time to put in to the hobby and also the money. When we were in the middle of bring up our kids, we just didn't have any extra money to spend on ourselves or our interests (hobbies).
We continually have new member joining Stamporama. If you watch the new members page, Perry has approved new members almost every day. (thanks Perry). There is still a lot of interest out there, and as we grow in membership, so does the hobby.
Regards ... Tim.
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03 Feb 2014
10:57:47pm
re: Death of the Hobby
While I agree that a large number of stamp/philatelic collectors are over 50, I can also see those of us in our 40s being a part of the "next generation" albeit we are the older ones. My generation is one of the most diverse generations so far. We were teenagers in the advent of the electronic age, saw the change from the "old ways" to the new. When we were kids we all enjoyed hobby shops. The children of my generation range from their 20s to newborns. There has never been that large of a generation gap - ever. I've started noticing a change amongst those in their 20s. Many are trying to find a "simpler life" - they are looking for ways to escape the chronic electronic dependence they have become accustomed to. With the vastness of the internet, the knowledge of the "older" generations, has a place in living history. The ability to make online purchases quickly and the large amount of philatelic material available - just look at the size of the stamp category on eBay, provides a way for those under 40 to have access that my generation did not. Hobby shops died out by the time we were finished university, the worldwide web was still in its infancy.
Those of us in our 40s remember the brown bag days, lunch counters at Woolworths, etc and we were also the first generation to see both parents having to work to maintain the household, even if the mother's employment was part time.
I do believe local stamp shops will completely close up, local stamp clubs and shows will dwindle and likely disappear. This is inevitable due to modern living - we no longer have small towns and the electronic age is here to stay.
Stamp exhibits will become websites, as we've already seen. But will stamp collecting become obsolete? Not a chance as long as there is an interest in history. History will continue to hold a large crowd of followers and within that crowd will always be those who collect stamps for their historical value. Modern collecting is already on it's way out the door. We can see that even here. Many collectors stop before the self-adhesive era. Even the dunes will be desirable in the future as more people see things through anthropological eyes. They will raise the question that we've already seen raised here - "Why would conservative Muslim countries distribute stamps with immodest subjects?"
History and anthropology will be a driving force among the next generation of collectors as it already is amongst my own. As collections become more available in the next 30 years, available to people around the globe thanks to the internet, I truly see stamp collecting come into the hands of those who are now in their teens to early thirties.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I realize that one or two data points does not make a trend, but I have two sons and two nephews ranging in age from 7 to 14. Three collect coins. Zero collect stamps, even though they see me working with my stamp collection a LOT more than my coins. But they are THIRSTY for knowledge about US coins. They are FASCINATED by my Type Set collection of US coins. Would they be more interested in stamps if I was a topical stamp collector? Perhaps topical collecting would be more engaging. I am tempted to try that as an experiment. Start a modest topical stamp collection and see if there is any interest in my sons or nephews.
It would need to be a topic that meets the following criteria:
1) Diversity of issuing countries - there is a big educational value to deciphering country names!
2) Price - most stamps should be cheap (at least used)
3) Availability - it needs to be a commonly collected topic, perhaps with a good "starter pack" available from Subway or Mystic or similar.
4) Cost of completion - it's OK if there is one stamp that is pricey, but lots of high priced stamps is a non-starter.
5) Engagement - a topic that would interest boys aged 7-14.
Any topical collectors out there with any ideas? I can make my own pages, so no worries there.
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
Not sure if I'm bucking the trend of this discussion but I see no death at all in this hobby of mine/ours.
Apart from various Internet forums,auctions,blogs and information sites there are still Exhibitions large and small, fairs/bourses and meetings.
Here in Israel, there are still many stamp shops. In Tel Aviv there are 11 shops, only two less than when I came here 22 years ago !!
Philately is alive and well for my eyes.
Londonbus1
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re: Death of the Hobby
Lars,
Might the boys be interested in stamps that deal with coins/money? A topical theme that might fit well with their current interests?It could be country specific, or worldwide in scope.
Dan C.
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04 Feb 2014
11:14:04am
re: Death of the Hobby
Lars,
You might consider a starter based on each boy's general interest. A few years ago the 12 year old son of a friend of mine was helping me sort my collection that I was downsizing. He really became interested after a few weeks of watching me. So for Christmas a whole group of us here on SOR got together and made a wonderful Christmas box for him. He started out with a few collectors sending him sports and space stamps. He loved them. Especially the sports stamps. The dunes cine in handy when you're looking at cheap topicals.
I discovered after he got his Christmas box with a huge variety (no ugly dudes or nudes were his only request when it came to stamps), he loves covers. FDCs with a picture matching the stamp or something similar. Absolutely in love with them. He ended up spending the rest of the week putting them in binders that Roy had sent. The only downfall of covers is that he can't afford the sleeves for them.
But my suggestion is a starter for each boy that reflects their general interest.
Kelly
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re: Death of the Hobby
Lars: Are any of the boys into dinosaurs? It looks like there's a host of free resources online, including some catalog-like resources. (I'd link but am waiting for clarification of the promotion rules.)
Also, sometimes from the same resources, info on fossils, etc., and other natural history angles to this. It looks like fun!
-- Dave
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re: Death of the Hobby
Those are good ideas. Thanks, all!
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
I have a slightly different view of this whole issue. From my personal perspective, I see the older 'classics' as miniature works of art. The engraving is so beautiful that there will always be a group of people who will appreciate these stamps for what they are, great works of art.
Secondly and probably more to the point of the initial statement that stamp collecting, as a hobby, is dead or dying, I submit that with the advent of electronic mail and postage metering, and computer generated postage, we will find that the actual postage stamp will start to disappear. With this disappearance will come a renewed and global interest in the rebirth of the hobby. This may not happen within our limited lifespans (the next 10-15 years) in many cases but it will certainly be the case where our children and grandchildren are concerned. Our collections may be a welcomed inheritance and a little time spent now exposing them to our collections might pay them great dividends in the future.
Joe C. sends
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re: Death of the Hobby
Stamp collecting is not dead. Just because all you see is the wave's crest of white foam (or white hair) of the older members, does not mean that there isn't a wave of younger collectors behind them.
Yonger collectors generally do not "belong" to stamp clubs and less often buy stamps in the old-fashioned ways. They are also quick to understand the stamp market and what things are really worth (and avoid those catalog value stamp stores).
Another anecdote I hear alot is people in their 50's and 60's who take up collecting in retirement after having raised their families and developed their careers, which means that there are ever newer "older" collectors filling in the ranks.
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re: Death of the Hobby
"Our collections may be a welcomed inheritance and a little time spent now exposing them to our collections might pay them great dividends in the future."
That may be true, but I wouldn't count on it.
"Another anecdote I hear alot is people in their 50's and 60's who take up collecting in retirement after having raised their families and developed their careers, which means that there are ever newer "older" collectors filling in the ranks."
If you are talking about people who collected as kids picking it up again as seniors, I would not doubt that. But someone who never collected stamps picking it up for the first time in their 50's or 60's? I would be surprised to learn that there are many of those folks out there.
I just discovered an interesting concept that I am going to try with my boys (ages 7 and 10). It's a stamp from every country, with an emphasis on geography and history. And it was inputs from others on this very thread that lead me to this concept (Thanks, ALL!) I'm just getting started with the process (album pages printed and "starter" set of stamps on order from Mr. Numbers), so I can't report yet on how they will take to it, but it may be the "hook" they need to gain interest. We shall see!
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
Four and a half years have passed since the original post. It's July 2018 now and all signs indicate the hobby is still very much alive. Much has been said about younger people not getting involved in collecting but just go on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook and you'll see how many young people from around the world regularly post photos of the stamps they collect. There are thousands of Instagram accounts devoted to stamp collecting and I see younger people from the U.S., Europe, Asia and other places regularly posting photos of their stamps. And eBay still remains robust...whenever I go on there bidding wars continue and so many stamps and stamp-related products continue to sell well. So my opinion is that the hobby isn't dying...far from it. It's changing...it's evolving with the times. And young people are using their electronic devices like their phones to advance their hobby. They're taking photos of their stamps and sharing them on social media. Just go to Instagram, for example, to see for yourself what I'm talking about.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Kye, I agree, and also I think it is up to the older "dinosaurs" to train their succession and move on. When I was president of the local stamp club in SF I stated that I would do it for a minimum of 2 years, but that I would pass on the presidency to a younger member who was to have been the VP for a year. I would assume the VP position just for enough time to get the next youngster into that spot! Mission accomplished more or less on schedule (everything takes a bit longer as you would expect). And I have now retreated completely, while still active in our meetings and activities. We actually have 4 former presidents still active!
The club is better off with a planned succession history. Yes we do have elections, but no one objected to a planned transition, which was confirmed with the votes...and no arm twisting.
The main thing that has changed in the hobby in my view, is directly due to the role of the internet. Virtual stores are more handy than the nearby walking one, and when you know a number of sellers...no matter where they are physically located, the experience is comparable, offers broader choices...and is cheaper to the collector. And pen palls and approvals yield instantaneous results!
I have always liked change. I think in all clubs, change is good! as long as the experienced members are around and willing to help when needed. I think we need more change here as well...not change for the sake of change, but because it is the duty of club officers to train their succession. And more volunteers.
Ian...change is good!
rrr...
I also love the concept of stamps as teaching tool in schools. Look at the formal activity of the Postal History Foundation in Tucson www.postalhistoryfoundation.org
they have a full time paid education staff specialist working with teachers!
This may get us a few more youngsters!
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01:02:17pm
re: Death of the Hobby
I have used stamps and mainly postal covers to teach history to my own students Guests in my home will often pick up a booklet that that I have put together using my postal stash All you need is to tell a story..and leave it lay on the coffee table...lol.
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re: Death of the Hobby
At the same time some kiloware lots on Ebay consistently reach what I consider extravagant prices at $20+ for 100 grams. It looks like despite all efforts by most postal authorities to kill the hobby, it is still pretty much alive.
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re: Death of the Hobby
It’s not easy to find a great deal on stamps on eBay nowadays. I’ve seen some of those kiloware lots and they do get expensive. I’m not going to pay 20 bucks for 100 grams of stamps, especially when I’m even sure what they are.
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03:45:35pm
Auctions - Approvals
re: Death of the Hobby
"It’s not easy to find a great deal on stamps on eBay nowaday"
Look no further than Stamporama!!
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re: Death of the Hobby
Hi all,
What an interesting concept... the death of a hobby...
Can a hobby actually die?
I lift weights for a hobby too, hope that doesn't die. LOL! I do it for recreation and relaxation, so can it actually die?
Maybe the hobby is dying as it's currently known?
I have read that most don't like the changes that they see in the hobby, but I just came to this hobby, so I have NOTHING to compare it to, thus I am not disappointed. I like what I see, and there is SO much to see!
I like that the internet has so many great resources, I like that I have "met" all of you people. I'm not bothered that we have not met in person, sometime maybe we will.
I don't mind that there are no stamps stores in my area and honestly I don't have time for a stamp club, but I can access SOR at anytime and you all have become my stamp club and I can access this site, any time and anywhere. So for me stamp collecting remains a fun pursuit.
I think about joining a club, but honestly don't want to take the time for meetings. I'm busy with a family and a full time IT career.
I guess the hobby is one of perspective. But maybe that goes for hobbies in general.
I used to build models and I heard that hobby was dying too. It isn't, it's just changing.
I guess a hobby dies when you let it.
JR
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re: Death of the Hobby
One more comment...
For a dying hobby, stamps are still pretty expensive... again a thing of perspective...
But as a newcomer I have found NO shortage of things to spend money on, collect and "talk" with other stamp collectors about...
...the talking is just via the internet now...
My perspective on the "dying" comment is to do this...
Take you grandson or granddaughter, buy a big bag of stamps and tell them that "we're gonna collect all the kittens or all the airplanes we can find and make a really cool poster for your room..."
That will get a kid to dip a toe in the water if you ask me...
JR
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re: Death of the Hobby
Dear all,
Stamp collecting is not dead.
.
I & millions of people around the world collect stamps, but we don't attend stamp expo or participate any organizations. We don't visit stamp shops or auctions. We don't even socialize with stamp collectors & dealers.
.
We browsed the websites around the world & purchased stamps quietly. We are private individual & preferred to stay low profile.
We collect world stamps or topical or individual nations. We have our own preference. Most of us don't share our hobby with family, friends or co-workers. We enjoyed ourselves with stamps we accumulated over the years.
We love collecting stamps for many reasons & I don't want to spend hours explaining why.
.
I'm from Taiwan, I collect French Polynesian stamps only. I collect stamps not because of history, geography or an investment. My culture is connected to French Polynesian culture. It's an intimate relationship that I kept to myself. My world & their world emerges into one. An identity that rooted deeply upon me. The culture represents my past, present & future. Therefore, stamps is the best representation of my culture.
.
Stamp collecting exist because of "supplies in demand". Some of you lost on Ebay bid because collectors like us are willing to pursue regardless. We search for stamps we desired. We have no interest what the public or media said about Stamp Collecting. They have no influence on us.
.
Some people blamed stamp declining on internet, texting message & social media. Actually, it doesn't matter. Stamp collecting has always been part of global culture just like Freedom. People will always value "Freedom" regardless situations. People will always value "stamp" regardless situations. Both Stamp & Freedom will be around until the end of time.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
12 Sep 2019
08:50:17pm
re: Death of the Hobby
An excellent short dissertation, David.
There is little more I could add beyond
my agreement that I collect things that
amuse me and carry me to somewhere just
south of dreamland.
When the mail arrives
I often feel the thrill of childhood
getting a new toy.
When I open an album
and browse through the pages and stamps
that I've acquired over many years and
at so many places I get the same feeling.
While you may choose a course of solitary
collecting, I on the other hand enjoy
the cyber camaraderie I get corresponding
and dealing with fellow SoR members.
Peu importe des flotteurs votre bateau.
Good luck with your collection de Philatélie
de la Polynésie Française.
Charlie.
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re: Death of the Hobby
This hobby’s demographic has always been older people. Here is an APS manual meeting from over 50 years ago (1968), how many younger folks can you see?
Of course attracting kids is a good thing but the truth is that our hobby losses many (majority?) of young people as they start a career and family. Life gets in the way and the stamps get put into a closet until later in life. Due to this, I consider trying to attract kids to the hobby as a long term effort. It is a bit like planting a fruit tree, you are going to wait a while before it bears fruit.
Lastly, it is inevitable that anytime you hear someone say the hobby is dying that they are ignoring the explosion of online activity and are relying upon metrics from the 1960s or 1970s. Metrics like the declining memberships in philatelic organizations or the closing of brick and mortar stamps stores. The internet turned more than just our hobby on its ear, it impacted other hobby’s, the publishing industry, the recording industry, library sciences, the educational system, and postal systems just to name a few.
But change does not equal death (although obviously many folks struggle with accepting change). Our hobby has transitioned, people no longer have to rely upon brick and mortar stores to buy stamps and supplies. Collectors no longer have to join an organization to get philatelic information.
And as Charlie mentions above, our hobby is often a solitary one. While many of us enough spreading out our stamps, albums, and catalogs across a table on a winters night, it can be difficult to drag around heavy albums for show and tell. So in many ways philately is very well suited for its transition to an online hobby. Support like this forum is available 24/7. Being able to lookup and access information is far easier than trudging down to the library. There is less need to spend money on memberships and we can use this to buy more stamps and covers.
Don
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re: Death of the Hobby
APS membership does not necessarily reflect the demographics or complete status of stamp collecting in general. Current APS membership levels are down from the peak and close to the levels 40 years ago. What is important to APS is their overhead has increased dramatically (Match Factory, etc) so memberships are not enough to sustain the expenses.
It is not uncommon these days to call anything in decline a death spiral.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Awhile back I received a letter and brochure from Mystic Stamp Company expressing interest in buying my collection. Not quite read to sell yet, but there was an item in the brochure (posted below) that impressed me. It was the one claiming that Mystic has 150 "stamp professionals" working for it. It is my impression that Mystic sells primarily to entry level stamp collectors. Mystic must have a very high volume of sales to meet the payroll of 150 employees and also be profitable. Seems to me that such a company would not be engaged in supplying the needs of a dead hobby.
FF
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re: Death of the Hobby
Sick, yes. Dead never!
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09:31:01pm
re: Death of the Hobby
In 2018, I sent a large collection of stamps of the type that Mystic advertises that they want to buy to the Mystic buyers. I got a buy offer of just 2/10th of 1% of the total catalog value. When I questioned their offer, the buyers told me, "People aren't buying stamps anymore, so we can't offer anything for stamps."
Their barrage of ads states "Paying top dollar!", "Huge demand for stamps". Is this false advertising?
I have since sold a few stamps from that collection, and have gotten more than Mystic's offer already.
I am realistic and know that they can't pay a large percentage of catalog value, but they did not even look at the stamps. Their BS offer coincidentally just covered the postage that I paid to send the stamps to them. I guess they figure that people will accept such offers so as not to be out the money paid for postage. For me, the shipping cost was well over $200. I vehemently rejected their offer.
I sent a letter of complaint to Sundman. I have not heard a word from him. I now refuse to do business with them, and I started buying from them in 1965. Does Sundman care? I guess until/if ever I receive a response from him, the answer is ,"No".
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12:36:45am
re: Death of the Hobby
When i began actively collecting again a few years ago I replied to all the silly ads basically like i did when i was ten years old. One of them was mystic. The crap they sent and the price they asked made ebay pirates look like santa claus.
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re: Death of the Hobby
"Their barrage of ads states "Paying top dollar!", "Huge demand for stamps". Is this false advertising?"
Michael, wholesale lying on corporate commercials is the norm.
Sometime back I asked, how do you spell free. According to commercials is FREE*
Enjoy your collection and don't expect much out of it. My brother-in-law went through the same thing, when he tried to sell his collection, mind you they were mostly mint stamps, they laugh at him and don't even make him an offer.
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re: Death of the Hobby
The death of the hobby obviously depends on whether you are buying or selling. The hobby is more collector (in effect part time dealers) to collector than ever especially since it is not financially affordable for a traditional dealer to handle the ever increasing common material propped up by minimum catalog prices. The catalog prices do not reflect this shift in the stamp economy.
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08:53:23pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Tony, I have been collecting for over 50 years, and selling for over 40. One thing I learned early on was market value versus catalog value. Market value is the only true indicator. Catalog values are meaningless.
Where so many dealers are missing the train is that the stamp market has evolved into a collector-based market. Collectors are the major players now with buying and selling. The number of dealers continues to dwindle as dealers fail with an archaic business model. The few dealers who have incorporated the new market will continue. However, the bulk of collector-to-collector transactions will continue to grow.
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BuckaCover.com - 80,000 covers priced 60c to $1.50 - Easy browsing 500 categories
14 Sep 2019
09:02:56pm
re: Death of the Hobby
"the stamp market has evolved into a collector-based market. Collectors are the major players now with buying and selling. The number of dealers continues to dwindle as dealers fail with an archaic business model."
Michael, I agree with you 100%.
I would be interested in your thoughts on what the significant elements of this "archaic business model" are.
Roy
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09:17:17pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Here are some off the top of my head. Not all relate to all "archaic" dealers, but some do.
- brick and mortar store only
- no internet presence (refuse to go online)
- selling too high at non-competitive prices
- paying too low
- provide poor/no customer service (won't answer/return phone calls; won't contact customers; won't respond to written inquiries)
- disrespect new collectors and collectors who want to buy common stamps
- value only high dollar buyers
- complain that the hobby is dying, but do nothing to support/help collectors learn the hobby
That should be enough to get the idea. Probably others can supplement the list.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I very much agree with Michaels list and would add that a lot of the auction houses need to change some of their ways. As an example the ones who charge a buyers premium, or who will not accept a bid of less than 80% of their estimate.
Many only provide one scan (or none)of an item that may contain a few albums and many pages (usually not a good scan either). One exception is a European based internet site that shows every page in a lot.
Slow service, I just waited a month to even get an invoice.
Here in Manitoba we have a number of dealers in Winnipeg, none outside, who do not have stores but work out of the home. One arranged the purchase for me of some stamps that I had to send back because they were Photo rather than the Litho I'd requested, they really ought to know the difference.
Or am I just a grumpy old philatelist?
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re: Death of the Hobby
My long-winded opinion on dealer websites...
An ‘internet presence’ is a concept from 1998; in this day and age an ‘internet presence’ website is not going to be effective. Many stamp dealers were very late to the internet (in denial?) and even now simply throw an ‘internet presence’ website out there. An ‘internet presence’ websites are really nothing more than a yellow pages ad, basically only offering some contact info. It is inevitable that an ‘internet presence’ website gets very little traffic. Many dealers spend as little money as they can (probably because that do not believe in the internet) and often only invest in the initial development. When this kind of website does not increase or impact their sales, they claim that online efforts are a waste of money.
Dealers need to have a website that draws traffic, give collectors a reason to visit and visit often if you also want them to buy something. Dealer websites should make shopping online quick and easy. This means developing a website that allows buyers to quickly find what they are looking for, makes check out easy, and makes buying as risk free as possible. You also need a website that ‘holds’ people on it for as long as possible; the longer a person is on a website the more likely they are to buy something (‘internet presence’ websites rarely hold visitors longer than a minute or two).
To emulate the value of legacy brick and mortar dealers, dealers should develop an online help solution. This means having a real-time ability to assist a buyer (i.e chat tool). You have to offer a simple and easy return policy and automated procedures. Ideally, include a prepaid return shipping label with every purchase. (If customers are pleased with their purchases this will never be used). Shipping needs to occur blazingly fast, typically same day.
Dealer websites need to have a solution for collectors to be able to easily upload images and you have to become proficient in being able to analyze material and make offers to buy using online tools. (This also facilitates helping collectors when they have questions and want to send you an image of a stamp or cover.)
Dealers need websites that do not look like it was designed in 1998; they need a website that looks as good on a 2048 pixel wide desktop monitor as it does on a 300 pixel wide mobile device.
Dealers need to invest in SEO (search engine optimization) and market the website properly. Not only does a dealer website need to adhere to the current SEO coding and design practices, but they have to either invest time or money into getting it ranked in the various search engines.
Dealers need to analyze their website metrics daily. Using the metrics they can see which parts of the site are working and which parts are not. Use this information to make improvements, getting rid of the dead wood web pages and replacing it with pages which are more popular. Note which pages most visitors leave the site on, figure out why folks are doing this.
To summarize, establishing a good website is the same as opening a second brick and mortar store. ‘Internet presence’ are typically done by paying some kid a few hundred dollars to build a WordPress template website, buying a .99 cent domain name and cheaping out monthly GoDaddy hosting fees. This is equivalent to trying to open a second brick and mortar at a local run-down flea market stall. It is a significant investment to not only develop the site but more importantly to keep it maintained with new content and reasons for buyers to visit it often. Far too many dealer viewed their website like they were publishing a catalog or price list; a one time cost. A website is not a ‘one and done’ thing, it is something that needs constant attention just like a second brick and mortar store.
Don
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re: Death of the Hobby
I doubt many dealers have any technical savvy on setting up a website such as Don suggests. Now one may think a dealer organization could assist to help spread the IT expertise and expense needed for this. This type of work would be for very large dealers and auction houses at the moment. Even APS outsources their IT but that is another topic.
For example, the Internet Philatelic Dealer Association has a relevant name but their web site does not appear to offer much to help a dealer on the Internet establish and sustain a website. Stamp clubs are mostly stuck in the physical world too.
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07:20:11am
Auctions - Approvals
re: Death of the Hobby
If a "dealer" with a bricks & mortar store is making a living and is quite happy why should he bother with the internet?
Especially with all the extra work he has to do if he follows Don's "long winded opinion".
Some shop owners are quite happy with their lot and think that the hassle and aggravation of the internet model is not for them.
Would the "extra" internet sales pay for the extra costs of installing and more importantly the extra costs of maintaining Don's super duper website???
Many shop owners do not have the up front capital to invest in their own website. They use various platforms instead like ebay, Delcampe etc etc. which are expensive but the costs are paid out monthly and are more controllable.
One of the problems of direct internet selling is that the majority of "customers" want to purchase at the lowest possible price, they are always looking for a "deal" and spend copious amounts of time searching for that deal and comparing prices.
Ebay now have an offer system which drives prices lower. I had a set of Portugal stamps for sale at £19.00, one offer I had was £12.00. A total insult.
In conclusion if shop owners that are happy with their business do not want to go on the internet and they do not want the hassle and aggravation of extra work then so be it. Who are we to expect otherwise?
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re: Death of the Hobby
"I doubt many dealers have any technical savvy on setting up a website..."
Hi Al,
True, but there is a huge website development industry which any dealer can use if they wanted to.
I have talked to a number (6-8) of people/organizations over the years and suggested to them that they do what you say, specifically help stamp dealers build and perhaps even host effective websites. So far no one has turned this viable idea into action.
But while a stamp specific web development service might be a good idea, there is no need to reinvent the wheel; China, India, and a slew of other countries are full of coders who will work for very reasonable fees.
In my opinion the issue is a lack of vision, commitment, and wiliness to take an online chance.
Don
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07:29:48am
Auctions - Approvals
re: Death of the Hobby
"In my opinion the issue is a lack of vision, commitment, and wiliness to take an online chance"
Why should they?
Businesses are always given "advice" by people both within and without the organisation.
We have a built in pessimism because EVERYONE can run our business better than we can!!
Normally the advice we are given is by people who when asked to put their money into their advice run a mile!!!!
Talk is cheap!!
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re: Death of the Hobby
"If a "dealer" with a bricks & mortar store is making a living and is quite happy why should he bother with the internet?"
Agreed, if a brick and mortar store is doing great than don't bother. But I think the issue is that most are not doing great or have already closed up.
"Especially with all the extra work he has to do if he follows Don's "long winded opinion"."
"Some shop owners are quite happy with their lot and think that the hassle and aggravation of the internet model is not for them."
Agreed, the highly successful bricks & mortar store owner should stay the course. Great Britain stamp stores must be different than those in USA, the few that are left here are struggling.
"Would the "extra" internet sales pay for the extra costs of installing and more importantly the extra costs of maintaining Don's super duper website???"
What I described is not a 'super-duper' site, it is a typical ecommerce website with competent management. It just seems super-duper' because our hobby is just full of half-baked dealer websites, really poor efforts.
Folks can argue that online commerce is not the future if they want, I have no desire to debate this. My post was simply an outline to use if a dealer wanted to properly compete in the ecommerce marketplace.
Don
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re: Death of the Hobby
"Talk is cheap!!"
Indeed.
I have proven that my 'talk' works and have donated to the hobby a website that generates over one million page views per year. Since I did not have any budget, I used the brute force approach, and just applied my time.
Again, I am not saying that any dealer has to do ecommerce; my point is that they need to do it correctly.
Don
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07:38:43am
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re: Death of the Hobby
"there is a huge website development industry which any dealer can use if they wanted to."
TRUE.
BUT we have all seen websites that have cost companies thousands of pounds that are pretty crap.
Even Her Brittanic Majesty's Government have spent millions on websites that have been useless.
So what chance Joe Bloggs Stamp Shop getting it right???
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07:55:28am
Auctions - Approvals
re: Death of the Hobby
"I have proven that my 'talk' works and have donated to the hobby a website that generates over one million page views per year. Since I did not have any budget, I used the brute force approach, and just applied my time."
Yes you have to be commended.
BUT
Where did the start up capital come from?
What is the total amount of money generated by your website?
What capital expenditure has occurred?
How many man hours at the minimum wage has it cost you?
How much has it cost you in services ie Electricity etc etc
AND
How many man hours will it cost you over the next five years?
What are your running costs for the next five years?
What is your capital expenditure going to be over the next five years?
What is your income from the website going to be over the next five years?
What are your contingency plans if you do not meet your sales targets?
The above items and many policies like staffing, shipping, insurance, stock levels etc etc have to be considered.
As I said talk is cheap!!
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08:04:30am
re: Death of the Hobby
Both of you are way off base. The most successful dealers don't use websites or brick and mortar stores. They work out of a briefcase selling the rarest and most desirable material and also by arranging private treaty sales.
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08:07:01am
Auctions - Approvals
re: Death of the Hobby
Ernie:- You are correct.
Those with the big bucks don't lower themselves to us minions level!!
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re: Death of the Hobby
Brechinite,
Stamp Smarter costs are about $300(US) per year; startup costs were zero, I used the tools I had and my own time. This is only an option for a dealer who wanted to ‘roll their own’.
Dealers should look at a new ecommerce website just like investing in a new store so the NRE and maintenance costs would have to justified just like a brick and mortar store. We would not expect that many brick and mortar store owners would cut wood for walls, run electrical, do the plumbing and the roofing; they outsource these things.
I agree with you that many dealers went out and spent stupid amounts of money on bad websites. This is no different than stupidly spending money on opening a new/second brick and mortar store. There are contractors who will rip you off in web development just as there are builders, plumbers, and electricians who will rip you off when you build/rent a brick and mortar store. It is the same amount of work/investment for either in my experience (which includes 18 year owner of a brick and mortar store and a 25 year career as a technology engineer).
This has been my point, doing online ecommerce is not a simple ‘web presence’. It takes vision, it takes investment, it take commitment to do it right. It is no different than opening a new (or second) brick and mortar store.
Don
Edit: Stamp Smarter is not an ecommerce site. The donations have covered the annual costs since it started excluding my time. This was my objective. So the remaining questions you ask are not applicable for Stamp Smarter but do apply to a ecommerce site. The same questions also apply to a brick and mortar store.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Michael raised the point on dealer behavior so one question is how important are dealers to the hobby. The dealers that attend shows are diminishing so this puts pressure on shows as dealers often subsidize most of the expense. This likely means fewer and smaller shows. Then the question is how important are shows. They are important for exhibitors under current rules as they rely on shows to cover the cost of floor space the frames occupy.
The dealer has traditionally been the primary middlemen by buying collections and then re-selling to collectors. Today, there are more direct collector to collector opportunities. I find the dealer is not a cost effective way to buy common stamps where price, condition, or historical significance (postal history) are not involved.
The point was that some dealers are not taking advantage of opportunities that are possible due to the Internet for whatever reason if they want to be more successful. That is not lament the hobby is dying.
Yes, dealers can be successful through many ways but not sure how one can say definitively that the most successful dealers operate without brick and mortar or websites.
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"True, but there is a huge website development industry which any dealer can use if they wanted to."
Key part of this is "...IF THEY WANT TO."
Many don't.
Many have no interest in doing so.
Many are fine as they are, selling at local and/or national levels at shows.
Many tell me they buy stock off the 'net, but have no intention of ever selling there on a personal site, stating too much time and work to do so. Much easier to sell at shows, they say.
The point here is this, I think;
the look/face of this hobby has changed, yes.
But has it lessened? Have collectors become fewer? Is, as "they" say, stamp collecting dying out??
Plainly and simply - NO.
Granted, it is CHANGING in the way we collect; the fact that you are reading this post on this platform is obvious evidence of that.
The 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's were the heyday.
The 60's, 70's, 80's and a portion of the 90's were a lull, at best.
Late 90's and on brought it back with the advent of the internet.
I have NO DOUBT that it is near what it once was - BUT IN A DIFFERENT FORM.
No one has EVER OFFERED PROOF that it is a dying hobby today. (I said PROOF - not opinion.)
The rocking scale between 'show dealer' and 'online dealer' will continue to sway for quite some time yet. But I DON'T believe this will cause the death/demise of stamp collecting. It will only change the look of the landscape!
As they said on a particular game show - "...and that's my final answer!"
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re: Death of the Hobby
A most interesting discussion!! It strikes me that there may be a missing ingredient-friendship. Collector to collector taps into that. Store to collector appears not to. The more successful brick/mortar stores in the past did do that. Our SOR does try to do that, for even on the selling platforms(auctions/books etc.) our focus is the member.
On the investment side, best deals are able to be struck between friends. On a personal note I have swapped/sold/bought several thousand cat. val. items over the years. There are wonderful swap possibilities for those trying to enter/improve/leave their collections. Take a leap of faith and reach out to our members- you will find reach rewards in the exchanges.
Dan C.
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re: Death of the Hobby
What did traditional brick and mortar dealers offer that the online experience is missing today? Many folks have blindly bought into the idea that eBay has shoved down our throats, that it is perfectly fine to spend large amounts of money with a person who you have never met buying things you have never seen in person.
In my opinion, this is workable approach if I am buying inexpensive stamps or if I have extraordinary experience. But what about folks who are just starting? The current situation is a setup for disaster. They take the advice to get a costly catalog, look at the values, sort eBay on cheapest first, buy a bunch of stuff, then they tell their family that they have assembled a collection which will put the kids through college. They are proud in their 'smart buying' at getting discounts from the catalog values. Nothing but bad things come from this situation. It is full of disappointment and failed expectations.
Dealers often enter the picture when someone goes to sell their material; they are the messengers who get shot. Any logical person knows that dealer make their money when they buy, not when they sell. But add to this unrealistic expectations and I do not envy any dealer today.
This is why today’s online dealer need to have a website which interacts with users; a way to do real-time communication and allows them to assist new hobbyists. Those that figure out how to hold the hands of new hobbyists and support them as they learn our hobby. They need to push back on eBays’ marketing hype that you can blindly drop big money buying from a unknown person on the other side of the earth. Online dealers need to figure out how to build solid, long term relationships with collectors.
Don
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re: Death of the Hobby
Micheal, I agree with your statements and I firmly believe that hobbies just don't die, sometimes they get neglected but eventually they will resurface. Like you, I've been collecting for over 60 years now and while I agree that sometimes was less enthusiastic about it, always it came back to me with more force.
Back in the sixties when I first started trading stamps over the mail, all of my trading partners were male collectors, later on a lot of females join stamp collecting and even though times have changed a lot of
kids are joining in now. Sadly, here in our country we see stamp collecting more like a business than a hobby and use the catalog like a bible, personally I use it as a tool to know which stamps I need more that a price guide. I have some stamps in my collection that catalog for over $3,000.00, I wonder what kind of offer I would get from that dude that offer you 2/10 of 1% for your collection, then again I'll never know because the day stamp collecting dies is because I'm dead.
Let me repeat my motto "to a dealer my collection is worthless, to me it is priceless, what kind of price tag would you put on 60 years of enjoyment?"
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02:18:30pm
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re: Death of the Hobby
Death of the Hobby!!
YES it may well die. In fact it probably will!!
But not in my lifetime!!
Why?
Everything will be internet controlled. Postal Agencies will stop issuing stamps. All items will just have a barcode or the equivalent.
Even today the younger generations do not Own things like books, music, dvd's etc.
Everything that our generation own is now streamed, or downloaded ready to be wiped from existence once it has been viewed or listened to.
So ENJOY your hobby while you can 'cos it will DIE!!!
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02:31:45pm
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re: Death of the Hobby
"What did traditional brick and mortar dealers offer that the online experience is missing today?"
Human Contact!! To be able to look the dealer in the eye! Examine their stock!!
The ability to meet, speak, learn, communicate on a one to one basis. Get a feel whether the dealer is personable, truthful, sincere, honest and trustworthy.
Be able to show that you the customer have the same qualities as the dealer.
The biggest advantage is that you can choose, pay and take your item home there and then!!!!
When were you last in your nearest Stamp Shop ???
To go off in a tangent:- Christmas is coming. Will you buy your Christmas gifts from your local independent stores? or will you just buy them from WalMart, Costco etc etc or sit in your chair and send your "gift" as an emailed Gift Card from Amazon???
I know which option I will be doing!!
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02:56:15pm
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re: Death of the Hobby
Don, one question,
Have you ever done a computer system, installation and ongoing running cost specification, Invitation to Tender for a small business?
For those who do not see what I am getting at, it is to prepare a schedule of a companies requirements, needs etc for purchasing. installing and maintaining the correct hardware and software to run an ecommerce site and put it out to various companies to cost and supply your requirements.
You have to think of everything from the number of transactions it can handle, how you are going to manage those transactions, with whom are you going to manage them with, do you have to change your current manual systems with, how much is training going to cost, etc etc etc etc etc to how you are going to keep and store the records for a number of years and how many boxes to keep them in.
The above is why many dealers have half hearted terrible websites. They DO NOT have the where-with-all in education and fall for the mantra of sales people and listen to the parrot like populace of the mindless.
" You must have a website"" You must have a website"" You must have a website"!!
I am getting off my soapbox and heading for a glass of wine and a nice hot bath.
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02:10:14am
re: Death of the Hobby
Al, you brought up something: "The dealers that attend shows are diminishing..."
I have tried to get into regional and local stamp shows. The dealers who attended the shows put up blocks ("we don't know if you're an expert in the hobby", is what I get the most) to prevent new "blood" from setting up tables at shows. This is a protectionism attitude that is killing the local shows.
This is the only hobby that I have seen (maybe coins dealers do the same?) that does this. It is easy to check on a potential new seller by contacting bonafide references. I have suggested that, and was told that they don't check references. Again, to me, this is simply protectionism. The bottom line is that two or three stamp dealer at a bource does not make a good show.
Model railroad shows have ten times and more dealers/sellers at shows. Paper Collecting shows (includes postcards) that I have seen have many more sellers. Craft, gun, antique and many other types of shows have more sellers. No one requires authentication of proficiency prior to being allowed to sell. (Some show types may require special licenses, such as gun shows.)
I am not going to travel very far to go to a show/bourse that only has two or three sellers. Other collectors will do the same. These shows will die as the same dealers bring the same unsold material time and time again.
For well over 130 years, dealers and the philatelic press have bemoaned the death of stamp collecting. I had philatelic newspapers from the midwest dated in the 1880s where the doom and gloom was forecast. Take notice of who is now saying that the hobby is dying. Is it the dealers who are keeping new sellers out of their shows as they see no buyers coming through the doors? The hobby won't die. It will change. It has changed in the past, and it is changing again. Those who do not adapt to the changes will be the ones who actually die, not the hobby.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Michael, I suspect this may be an overzealous attempt to prevent the stamp show to become a flea market (people with a lot of nothing) as you see at flea markets. If they are weeding out too many, then it is their own loss unless the dealers are trying to protect themselves. To me a bourse is all about dealers and whomever is sponsoring the bourse.
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09:54:17am
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re: Death of the Hobby
Yes there is protectionism by dealers at their shows. They also have the right to refuse or admit any newcomers.
It all depends what the "newcomer" is offering for sale.
As a collector would you go to a fair/show that only had say Eastern Europe Stamps and Postal History if you collected South America? Of course not!!
There has to be a balance in any fair/show.
As an employer I always knew whether I would employ someone within 20 seconds of meeting them. Therefore your approach to fair/show organisers is critical. (Been There. Done That)
Of course the organiser could just be a self centred meglomaniac!!
The simple answer is ........................start your own fair!!
You will probably find that there are fewer dealers at fairs/shows is the simple economic fact that it is not economically viable for them.
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re: Death of the Hobby
"...As an employer I always knew whether I would employ someone within 20 seconds of meeting them..."
That’s called ‘profiling’ and is often frowned upon by the politically correct.
A US comedian summed up ‘profiling’ pretty well when he said, “The other night I was driving home when the police arrested me, but it was a clear case of ‘profiling’. Apparently on this particular night, they were pulling over everyone who was driving on the sidewalk, obviously profiling!”
Don
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10:47:11am
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re: Death of the Hobby
"As an employer I always knew whether I would employ someone within 20 seconds of meeting them"
Call it what you like.
It all boiled down to their presentation of themselves. When they arrived. How they spoke. Their personality. The way they carried themselves. Whether they would fit into the team!
As for the politically correct to quote Sir Geoffrey Boycott "I don't give a toss!"
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09:00:20pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Just found this article on BBC site.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49632306
(Modified by Moderator on 2019-09-17 15:10:23)
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Kudos for Anita, she's my type of collector!
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re: Death of the Hobby
"It all boiled down to their presentation of themselves. When they arrived. How they spoke. Their personality. The way they carried themselves. Whether they would fit into the team!"
I once hired a guy who was my favorite server at a local restaurant. He was friendly and professional. He never wrote down your order, but never got anything wrong. He always brought extra napkins and other things he knew you'd need before you asked. When you asked for your bill, he already had it printed and in his back pocket.
Why did I hire him to be a facilities coordinator? I can teach the job, but not the attitude! He did wonderfully!
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re: Death of the Hobby
I work in R&D and interview the candidates. Resumes tell the story. They may be the most talented but their attitude makes as much of a difference in actual success at a job. I do not consider selecting someone who is less qualified as profiling because they would be a better fit. I am not talking about the legal definition. Sometimes too smart for their own good is not good.
But I guess we are getting off topic.
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re: Death of the Hobby
I agree that most brick and mortar stamp operations are obsolete. Most since about 1995 were only hanging on because they were part of a coin shop as well. After 2000 the nearest brick and mortar stamp shop I knew of was 5 hours away in Atlanta. Last time I was there was 15 years ago and I have no idea if he is still there (or alive). That's just the way it is. But there is a new need that isn't being served by the digital community and that is in-person screening of stamps.
As we become more self-reliant and empowered, we need to be able to do a better job of detecting fakes. That means that when we go to a face-to-face venue like a stamp show, we need to be our own experts on the issues we are looking for. Up to a point. At certain price points I will be looking for 3rd party expertization.
The real questions is: Are there enough collectors that really care that much about weeds in their collections?
Lars
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re: Death of the Hobby
Ahhh, the death of stamp collecting;
If we are to believe the so-called 'experts' who are claiming this,
then the hobby has been DYING LONGER THAN I HAVE BEEN ALIVE.
I had an Aunt - long since passed - who, for many years if you asked her
how she was, her answer was always, "Why, I'm about to die!"
She was 'about to die' for more than 20 years!
Stamp collecting may wane...may shrink...but I seriously doubt it will ever die.
And even if EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD stops producing stamps, people will STILL CONTINUE to collect them.
WHY??
Because THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE DO.
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re: Death of the Hobby
ALL brick and mortar stores, no matter what they sell, are struggling and many are closing because buying online is so much more convenient.
BUT, I saw a video somewhere of a stamp show and auction in Hong Kong. It was PACKED with YOUNG people. Supposedly stamp collecting is a status symbol among the middle class in China. Colonial British issues are especially in demand.
So while things are changing here in the USA, the hobby is thriving in other parts of the world.
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03:09:53pm
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re: Death of the Hobby
"because buying online is so much more convenient."
It may be for the disabled and housebound but for everyday folks it is either laziness or poor time management or dare I say it stupidity.
I have seen people in shops look at items even try on clothes and then say I can't be bothered I'll get it online. It is then I pray that their item arrives either in the wrong size, broken or even better never arrive at all!!!
A lot of these internet companies pay their staff poorly and do not pay their fair share of taxes, so the next time your car tyre is damaged by a hole in the road, or your taxes go up, it is all down to the "convenience of internet shopping".
Christmas is coming. Will you buy your Christmas gifts from your local independent stores? or will you just buy them from WalMart, Costco etc etc or sit in your chair and send your "gift" as an emailed Gift Card from Amazon???
May I suggest that you all get out your chairs and support your local store. You may find you actually enjoy the experience of meeting and talking with people and may be even enjoy the exercise.
Here endeth the lesson.
Kindest regards,
(preacher) Brechinite
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re: Death of the Hobby
When I shop online, I am able to almost instantly compare multiple sources to get the best price. To do that by brick and mortar stores would mean driving all over wasting gas, time, money and creating more pollution. I think shopping online is smart, not “stupid.”
And have you considered the size & scale of the USA and the distances between stores here in America? You could fit your entire country within my home state! Would you drive from Birmingham to London to comparison shop?
Your comment is extremely insulting. It is one thing to try to make a point, but implying that another member is lazy and stupid is incredibly rude behavior. Knock it off, pal.
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When I started collecting years ago, we were living in Brooklyn NY so visited mostly a stamp shop on 5th Avenue and Brooklyn Stamps (still advertise in Linn's). The stamp prices at 5th Avenue were based upon Harris catalog and all supplies were list. This was the days of Crystal Mounts!
Even then (over 40+ years) I started purchasing more mail order and shows to save money. In those days there were local dealers who were at shows too. Raymond Snitow was one I did a lot of early business.
Online is like mail order except the prices lists are online rather than published in Linn's so that aspect has not really changed. Of course Linn's circulation has dropped dramatically. You can see images for most everything and that was not done in the prior days.
In many areas in the southern US, there was not much "local" like it was in the more populated northeast and midwest. To go into town was a major event!
As an aside, there were stores that were like catalog showrooms (printed a catalog of stock) but all these disappeared but in reality they were what an amazon.com could be if there was such as store. With asles of display samples, you ordered them in store and they pulled from stock. Along with a Sears or JC Penney there was not many places to shop. This is how it was in many areas.
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re: Death of the Hobby
"Knock it off, pal" ??? Incredibly rude and uncalled for. Although maybe not put as eloquently as could be, Brechinite's point is well taken. This country (USA) was built by small businesses. The locally owned grocery stores, butchers, deli's, hardware stores, furniture stores etc..---- the key being locally owned and operated by your neighbors in your community or small city. I owned a community general store for 33 years. Could I compete price-wise with box stores or online stores? No. But I could offer something much more valuable- personal service and a place for pleasant conversation and to see your neighbors. Even now, still living in a smaller community, I keep my shopping as local as I can, trying to spend my money with our local businessmen as often as I can. I'd rather spend 10-20% more than I would pay at a box store or online knowing I have supported my community by supporting the businesses in my community. Point well taken Brechinite.
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re: Death of the Hobby
""Knock it off, pal" ???"
Acceptable and appropriate.
Those who scoff are the ones who refuse to accept that times are different.
Notice - I did not say BETTER, only different.
Common sense tells us to seek out the lowest price, which the vast majority of
the time will be on the internet - even with shipping cost.
Why? Lower overhead - NO STOREFRONT TO PAY FOR.
Purchasing strictly thru storefronts is not going to magically make the
internet go away.
And as far as the comment about "small businesses built this country", very true!
And they still continue to exist - with a very large presence ONLINE.
Ian's point is understood, if not 100% correct.
But there's no reason for the name calling. This is a discussion - feel free to have a difference of opinion...I can respect that.
But lay off the name calling.
'Nuff said.
(This seems to be veering away from the stamp collecting portion of the discussion)
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I find it ironic that anyone would log into a free online ecommerce forum, one that is kindly donated by Roy and generously staffed by volunteers, and be critical of ecommerce and online technologies.
Apparently it has escaped notice that every generation laments the 'good old days'. Were the good old days really that good?
Good if you didn't get lynched or get polio. Good if you were not a kid as young as 7 years old working a 12 hour shift in a mill or factory. Good if you were a woman who didn't want to vote. Good if you did not want a dishwasher or air conditioner. Good if you don't mind working to get a horse and carriage ready to make a trip into town. Good if you liked arranged marriages. Good if you disliked toilet paper and indoor plumbing. Good if you like famines and a short life expectancy.
But why is it that every generation feels that the ‘good old days’ were good when the facts clearly show the opposite? From Psychology Today
"Because your brain focuses on what you lack, and takes for granted what you have. If you feel you lack leisurely dinners with friends, and you imagine people having them in the past, then the past seems better regardless of the facts. When you feel you lack something, your brain rings the alarm that says your survival is threatened. Obviously, lacking friendly dinners is not life-threatening, but if it's the biggest lack on your mind, your brain processes it with equipment that evolved to confront survival challenges."
I have found that being kept alive by a machine and only being able to participate in our hobby online due to physical/travel limitations has helped me not to take things for granted.
I get up at 3AM so I can be at the dialysis center at 4AM. I stick myself with two #15 needles and hook up the lines to my machine. I sit there for 4 hours as all my blood is removed from my body and cycled through the machine a number of times. I pull my needles and hold my arm for 10 minutes until the blood stops squiring all over the chair and floor. Then I go home and try to recover for the next 12-15 hours knowing that in 36 hours later I have to go through the process again. On my non-dialysis days I typically go to labs, imaging, doctor appointments, and/or chemo. More needles, more invasive treatments, 200 medical appointments per year.
But even though this has been my life for the last 5-6 years, I have managed to hold down 2 jobs working from home via the computer, build an award winning website from scratch, and donate endless hours moderating the SCF forum.
So next time anyone thinks that ecommerce and online technologies suck, I invite them to live my life for a week and then tell me that I am lazy, have poor time management, or am stupid.
Don
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I agree with Ian statements for the sole reason that even idiots are entitled to their own opinion.
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11:05:42am
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re: Death of the Hobby
"It may be for the disabled and housebound"
That was my very first point. It is convenient for those people with health difficulties.
"This country (USA) was built by small businesses. The locally owned grocery stores, butchers, deli's, hardware stores, furniture stores etc..---- the key being locally owned and operated by your neighbors in your community or small city."
The USA was not the only country built on small businesses. Napoleon called the UK a nation of shopkeepers.
If your community loses its small businesses and you are only left with the likes of Amazon etc etc Then your community will suffer a decline. When shops are not supported by their local community and close less taxes are paid, people are unemployed, they cannot purchase anything thus the decline continues, house prices fall, people leave their community thus the decline spirals deeper in the end you end up with a ghost town.
All for convenience.
"I find it ironic that anyone would log into a free online ecommerce forum, one that is kindly donated by Roy and generously staffed by volunteers, and be critical of ecommerce and online technologies"
I was not being critical of ecommerce and on line technologies.
I was being critical of those that do not support their own community by buying on line.
In this country some of the big on line clothing companies are sick fed up of the number of returns they are getting by people ordering clothes, wearing them and then returning them saying they do not fit and demanding a refund. (In some cases the returns made to some companies is 10%+.) A few stupid people will spoil it for the many. Why? A new security tag has been developed, you can take it off an item but you can't put it back on and when the item is returned to the supplier no refund will be forthcoming. Even those with a genuine reason for returning the item will receive no refund if the tag has been taken off!!
I will say no more other than quote stokesville on behalf of your local shops and other local businesses:-
" I could offer something much more valuable- personal service and a place for pleasant conversation and to see your neighbors. Even now, still living in a smaller community, I keep my shopping as local as I can, trying to spend my money with our local businessmen as often as I can. I'd rather spend 10-20% more than I would pay at a box store or online knowing I have supported my community by supporting the businesses in my community."
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re: Death of the Hobby
Very nicely written. It is much more pleasant and conducive to encouraging others to see your point of view when name calling is omitted. I actually agree with some of the points that you make and am willing comment positively when presented in this way.
However, business is business. If a local business is still relevant and can provide needed services or goods at competitive prices, they will succeed. I support many of my local businesses for many of the reasons cited and will happily continue to do so as long as they do not have exorbitant prices and continue to provide good service. But I won’t support a poorly managed business just to be nice. After all they are not charities.
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12:03:00pm
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re: Death of the Hobby
I did not name call.
I only took the last phrase in your sentence, put it into quotation marks as a heading.
If you took it as a personal slight then I am sorry that you did so.
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04:27:53pm
re: Death of the Hobby
Brechinite is one of the good guys. He also has a robust sense of humor. I know he would never intentionally offend anyone on here. Go Jags!
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"I did not name call."
...really??
"It may be for the disabled and housebound but for everyday folks it is either laziness or poor time management or dare I say it stupidity."
I think we are all smart enough to know better.
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"I think we are all smart enough to know better" Well I guess I'm not that smart then. I choose to take the high road and believe that many times things are said and words are chosen out of frustration or with emotion in the moment and doesn't truly reflect the personality or beliefs of the person speaking.
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Oh for Heaven’s sake, are we picking teams for a Dodgeball game now? I felt affronted and he apologized for any unintended hurt. That resolved the matter in my eyes. Let it go already.
And hey, there aren’t that many of us so we should treat each of our fellow philatelists as rare treasures and support each other. We need to stick together and not squabble.
And a friendly tip to avoid future problems. Don’t quote someone and then launch into a long, negative speech. It makes it appear that all your vitriol is aimed at the person you quoted. Rant against the issue or concept, NOT the person expressing an opposing opinion. Also, please remember that we can’t see your face or hear the intonations in your voice or see your body language as clues to understanding your intent.
The title of this thread is THE DEATH OF THE HOBBY. What a big fat downer! Let’s quit bemoaning the downturn here already and start looking at the rest of the world where philately is thriving. Maybe we need to encourage some collectors from other countries to join us and infuse this place with some fresh enthusiasm. So enough of this, let’s try to have some freaking fun.
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"I was being critical of those that do not support their own community by buying on line."
If my local postal outlet did not carry recent Canadian commemorative stamps, I would definitely be buying those on line and using them on my mail to fellow collectors. I would have told the outlet that if they had those on their shelves, they would have my business.
Better kill a few local outlets than kill the hobby.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
24 Sep 2019
12:03:32pm
re: Death of the Hobby
" .... (This seems to be veering away from the stamp collecting portion of the discussion) ...."
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn there is "Veering"
going on here. Oh the humanity !
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Yes, Charlie -
we have VEERING going on....right under our noses!!
Harrumphh!!!
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re: Death of the Hobby
Sorry. This was way off topic.
(Modified by Moderator on 2019-09-25 09:42:38)
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re: Death of the Hobby
Well I veered so badly it got deleted!
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01:42:49am
re: Death of the Hobby
I will put my hand up to say for someone living along way from alot of people Stamp Collecting is fantastic. I'm hooked, just finding out about the history with the stamps. No matter what, I still say this site is the best site to get help with stamps, my husband shows Bantams, me I got hooked just by joining this site.
There is one thing that is slowly dying HAND MILKING A COW but there will still be people milking but not like it was. To me there will still be stamps and this site.
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re: Death of the Hobby
If only one of them a day becomes a Stamp Collector we'll be fine and that's just England !
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re: Death of the Hobby
It should be easier to get 50+ year olds collecting than those under 30 years old.
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re: Death of the Hobby
"Yes, Charlie -
we have VEERING going on....right under our noses!!
Harrumphh!!!"
"Hey, I didn't get a harrumph from that guy!"
OK, so back to the topic at hand. I think there were a lot of good points made and some passions aroused, but I thought the latest thread was about brick and mortar v. in person stamp show v. online transactions FOR PHILATELY. Bemoaning the demise of local businesses in general is a worthy topic, but I would think a SEPARATE topic. As to philately, the conversation shouldn't be about bringing back a business model that is no longer relevant (except in rather limited circumstances), but discussing how different approaches may work in the 21st century economy.
JMHO
Lars
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07:20:09am
Auctions - Approvals
re: Death of the Hobby
Like all markets Philately can be divided into various segments.
Each business will know their segment and will work in their own way to maintain their business. If necessary they will alter, amend and change their business model to suit themselves as they see it.
Collectors will collect in a method to suit themselves and buy from businesses that meet their needs.
To find an example of this you need go no further than stamporama. We have two systems to buy from, namely auctions and approvals. Some members who buy from the approval system never by from the auctions and vice versa.
No philatelic business will ever meet the demands of all collectors. Therefore collectors must accept that they may have to buy from various sources to meet their needs.
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re: Death of the Hobby
Ian,
Guess what!?
I concur!!!
-----------------------
Lars,
Just for you -
'HARRUMPHH!!!'
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