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.

Sorry, I think a lot of bad advice is coming from the podcast.

First off, here’s the link to the podcast episode in question, by all means give it a shot, as well as all of the episodes because they are generally very good.

Secondly, I understand why some of this advice is being given because the people on the podcast, they all work for PSE, a professional stamp grading service. It’s how they make a living. That, plus the fact that Caj, the main host, has a degree in economics, makes it very obvious why they spend so much time talking about investments. I get it.

It’s just that investments have nothing at all to do with stamp collecting.

If they had said “here’s how to invest in stamps”, I wouldn’t have had a problem. I’m not against that, it’s just an entirely different animal than collecting is. Collecting is done for the pure enjoyment of it with no interest in making a profit off of your collection. There are parts in the podcast where they state that and immediately get back to “here’s how you invest!” As I said, I get it, this is how they make a living, it’s understandable that they react that way, but that’s not collecting, that is investing and that’s something different.

I don’t care what I collect is worth. I mean, I know, for insurance purposes, but I will never sell any of my various and sundry collections, even the ones I no longer collect. I didn’t buy it to make money from. I bought it because I enjoyed doing it. Every once in a while, I might look on eBay and see that things I’ve collected in the past, things that are just living in a box in the garage, it’s worth multiple thousands of dollars.

Okay… so what? I don’t care. Could I sell it right now? Yes. Am I going to? No. Collections, and I’m speaking generally, are about what you do for fun with your spare time and your spare money. I’m not looking at my various collections as something to retire on. I’ve already got that covered. I’m doing just fine. I don’t need the money. If I did, I’d have invested it in something else, and I have plenty of investments as well. This is a hobby. It’s not there for later sale.

It’s clear that, at least on some level, Caj understands this. He’ll talk about buying as many U.S. #1s as he can find at a good price as a hedge against inflation, that’s an investment, but he’ll also talk about things that he buys for personal enjoyment that he’ll never get any money out of. That’s a hobby. You can do both, just be clear about what you’re doing and why. Because the title of the episode was specifically about stamp collecting and not stamp investing, a lot of this is really, really bad advice. It just doesn’t apply.