Monthly Archives: December 2016

“The goal of a stamp show is to meet the needs of a diverse constituency.” That quote served as the basis for discussion at the recent “Summit on the Future of Philately” spearheaded by the American Philatelic Society (APS). In reviewing the report that came out of the summit, I’m happy to discover the participants deservingly gave a lot of attention to the topic: The future of stamp shows and dealers – How are we doing planning shows? The discussion certainly reveals America’s leading philatelists are not giving up on local and national stamp shows, even though some in the hobby feel the events are being crushed by online auctions and consumer-to-consumer e-commerce sites such as eBay and Amazon. They identified the need to “rebrand shows to something that may attract new collectors.” Continue reading →

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 →