So let me tell you a story. Way back when I was about 7, this is more than 50 years ago, I started collecting U.S. stamps. It wasn’t really a conscious choice, more one of availability. I lived where there were tons of U.S. stamps, so I collected what was readily available. Most people start that way.
This last weekend, I finally got tired of looking at a lot of holes so I did something about it. Mostly, I am now complete from about 1916 to 1993 where I stopped. It kind of feels good, to be honest.
This has come up before, but recently, a new thread showed up on a stamp forum, I’ll link to it below if you want to read it, wondering why stamp catalog values are so far off what the actual sale prices are. There are a lot of arguments on both sides, including from me, but there just isn’t room in a place like that to really dig into it, so I’m going to do it here.
The new one arrived, not long after my replacement copy of the last one, since my puppy decided to shred it and the APS was nice enough to send me a replacement for free. Thanks to Scott English for getting it done. Great guy.
Just got the new issue and there were two letters that I wanted to comment on, one more than the other. The first, that I’m mostly going to mention in passing, was by Scott Zimmer, who said that “Many collectors view stamp investing as taboo”, which is true and, IMO, should be. It’s not taboo to invest in anything that you want, but you leave the realm of collecting and enter the realm of investing if you do that.
There was an article in the latest issue of American Philatelist, called “The Faux Philatelist” which I agree with almost entirely. In it, Barry White says that he is a stamp collector, not a philatelist.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I really try to like some of the stamp-related channels on YouTube, but most of them are just… pointless, at least from my perspective. They aren’t doing what I want to see. Therefore, I figured I’d explain it in a short post and point out the two examples that actually are doing it right, at least in my opinion.
I doubt that anyone really cares, but I have been trying to watch a bunch of YouTube stamp collector videos of late and most of them, for one reason or another, I just don’t care for.
This has been rolling around in my head for a very long time and now and then, it pops up. I suppose I’ve covered some of it in my discussions on stamp NFTs, but two recent things happened and I wanted to talk about it in more detail.
Now I’m not trying to say that the people over at Stamp Show Here Today are wrong, but… yeah, I think they’re wrong. They had an episode a week or so ago (just heard it over the weekend) on bad stamp collecting advice.