After more than half a century in the stamp business, veteran Canadian dealer and auctioneer Vance Carmichael says one change in collecting habits stands out: the growing popularity of covers and postal history.
Carmichael, of Smithville, Ont.-based Vance Auctions, says demand has expanded across a broad range of postal-history material, from 19th-century covers to airmail, advertising, censored and transportation covers. Postmarks, Zeppelin mail and first-day covers are also among the areas attracting collector interest.
“In over 50 years as a dealer the most noticeable change that I have seen in collecting interests is the upsurge in the popularity of covers and postal history,” Carmichael wrote in a recent update to collectors.
The trend has prompted Vance Auctions to increase the amount of postal-history material offered in its sales.
While stamp collecting remains at the heart of philately, covers can offer collectors something different by preserving evidence of how the postal system actually operated. Postage rates, routes, destinations, cancellations and postal markings can all add another dimension to a cover. Military and censored mail can provide evidence of wartime communications, while advertising covers can offer a glimpse into Canadian businesses and communities that have long since disappeared.
Transportation mail provides another collecting field, encompassing material carried by railways, ships and aircraft. In many cases, the markings left on the mail help tell the story of how it travelled from sender to recipient. That historical connection is one of the characteristics that has long attracted postal historians, but Carmichael’s observations suggest the field is reaching a wider collecting audience.
There are also encouraging signs that new collectors continue to enter the hobby.
Vance described this past summer as one of the busiest periods he can remember at the auction house. Its June and August sales were both successful, he said, with regular customers joined by a noticeable number of first-time bidders who had recently become active in the hobby.
That comes as Vance Auctions marks its 54th anniversary. The business has since grown to six auctions annually, offering thousands of lots from Canada and around the world.
Collectors will have an opportunity to meet the Vance Auctions team this weekend at the National Postage Stamp & Coin Show in Mississauga. The firm will be among the dealers participating in the Sept. 12-13 show at the Hilton Mississauga/Meadowvale, where it will offer both stamps and postal-history material.
Vance Auctions will then hold its next auction, Sale 382, on Sept. 30.