Volume 41#18

December 27 – January 9, 2017

Saskatoon Stamp Club President Ernie Wlock at the 54th Annual Saskatoon Coin and Stamp Show and Sale, held Oct. 29-30 in Saskatoon, Sask. (Photo by Kathy Hartley)

Saskatoon Stamp Club president talks ups and downs of the hobby

Ernie Wlock, the long-time president of the Saskatoon Stamp Club (SSC), recently announced his plans to retire from his role as president by the end of the year. Wlock, who’s also a director-at-large with The Royal Philatelic Society of Canada (RPSC), is known around the country for his philatelic philosophies. Since joining the SSC as a member in 1991, he has encouraged its members to actively participate in the hobby as well as the club’s activities; and since becoming club president in 2004, he has made it his duty to promote the club and the hobby to non-members, too. “I’ve done what I wanted to do with the club,” said Wlock, whose two stints as SSC president ran from December 2004-November 2008 and December 2010 until next month, when he will step down. Continue reading →

Features

New York a boon for Canada Post’s busy and ‘very, very strong year’

Page 1

Canada Post records $60 million loss in third quarter

Page 9

First World War taxing on Canadian stamps

Page 11

Regulars

Are you buying or selling?

Page 19

Check out the shows in your area

Page 23

Editorial

Stamp auction results pushing strong market

While it has become somewhat fashionable to talk about how stamp collecting is a dying hobby, the actual market has a very different indication. Logic would tell us that since the number of stamps isn’t going down, a smaller collector base would mean less competition for stamps, and a weak market with prices dropping like a rock. That’s not what I have seen. Recent stamp auctions, such as Eastern Auctions’ sale a few months ago, and Daniel F. Kelleher Auction’s recent New York sale, show us that demand is strong for high quality stamps, with great prices being seen on both sides of the border. It would be easy to dismiss this as investors just getting excited, but investors usually don’t get excited about such obscure fields as postal history and Maritime bisects. They want the flashy stamps with high rarity and predictable demand along with some liquidity. When a collector buys high end stamps, he may be hoping for a payback when he sells, but that is secondary to his collecting goals.

Continue reading →

By Bret Evans