This has come up in discussions a couple of times of late and I thought that I would put my thoughts down in one place, once and for all, because I’d rather have somewhere to point people to if they’re curious, rather than having to go over the same ground time and time again.
I’m really dissatisfied with modern social media when it comes to the things that I do. Here’s why and here’s what I’d like to see instead. If anyone has any ideas where I can go for these things, I’m all ears.
There’s a sub over on Reddit called r/askastampcollector and the only thing it ever gets used for, virtually always in fact, is people just show up with stamps that they found or inherited or they were given, looking for a big paycheck.
It doesn’t work that way and a lot of them get positively upset when they receive the news that what they have is worthless, but honestly, can we just stop worrying about value when it comes to collectibles? You people are going about it all wrong!
Okay, maybe complain isn’t the right word, but there’s one thing that I’ve noticed in poking around there, the overwhelming majority of videos made about stamp collecting over on YouTube, they all tend to be aimed at, shall we say, the beginners?
So let’s talk about that, please.
I’ve been kind of bored lately and I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos on stamps. A lot of them have been about kiloware, people getting big bags of used worldwide stamps and going through them and while I typically don’t collect like that, the overwhelming majority of my collections are mint, I figured heck, I haven’t done that for years so I went and bought a couple of packets online and I’m going to go through them, breaking it down as I go.
Relatively recently, I’ve come back to my first collecting love, stamps and I’ve noticed that every single time I’ve come back to it, and I do this every couple of years, I go looking for the nostalgia of a stamp newspaper of some sort.
Yet there’s really no way to go home again.
Now that I’m back to collecting stamps, and having a great time doing it, naturally, I looked over on YouTube for some channels that might be entertaining to watch. While I did find some, and I know there won’t be a ton, I noticed one thing about the overwhelming majority of them.
They all seem to be aimed at the uninitiated stamp collector.
Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this before but it seems like the vast majority of YouTube woodworking channels have entirely stopped doing woodworking. At least, that’s true of all of the ones that I watched. Now, it’s on to home improvement projects, metalworking and the like and I’m just sitting here wondering what the hell happened?
So would someone please explain?
So, a while back now, I decided I was done with Funko. I’ve made my dissatisfaction with all things Pop known and you can go back and look at those posts if you want, I just realized that I wasn’t having any fun at all chasing exclusives and if you’re not enjoying your hobbies, why engage in them at all?
Therefore, I have one more Pop out there on pre-order, but after I receive it, it’s all getting packed away and I’m moving on. I doubt I’ll sell it, although it does take up a lot of space and I have a lot of money invested, but I don’t tend to sell collectibles that I no longer collect. It’s just not who I am.
So, I went back to doing something that I’ve done since I was a child and you know something? It’s a lot of fun!
I know this will make some people mad, but I am really not impressed with the modern Lego aesthetic. Yes, you can make a lot of really cool stuff out of it, but it’s become a consumer product, not a creative one. Lego has become little more than a modular plastic model kit and I think that it’s lost a lot of what made basic creative toys of the past special.
So let’s talk about it.
Recently, 3-Minute Boardgames did a video on the impact of the global pandemic on game prices and all of the increases in costs and shipping delays associated with it. He begged people to be patient and understanding and while I agree, that’s good advice, I think it’s also a wake-up call to the entire board game industry.
Maybe you’re doing just about everything wrong.
