Part 2: 50 Years in Philately

Here's to the next 50 years.

Note: This post has been edited to show the correct years of the Scott Catalogue downward revision of all stamp values, as well as the change to VF valuations.

(Disclaimer: As I do not have any newspapers or catalogues from the years of which I’ll speak, everything I say must be read with an implied, “As far as I can recall . . .”)

When I began collecting, in 1974, Linn’s Stamp News was my only lifeline to the hobby. As mentioned in my last post, the guy who was my direct inspiration for starting never became a close enough friend that I could even seek guidance from him. I was not aware of any stamp clubs near me. And, as I would be reminded time and again over the years, stamp shop owners were not the most gregarious types. Not one ever engaged with me to inquire into what I collected or was interested in, not even so much as an, “Is there something I can help you find?” So, I usually just contented myself with sitting at the counter, examining the stock sheets of stamps on the flip racks.

That contrasts starkly with my experiences during my forays into baseball cards and comic books. Those store owners shared the enthusiasm of their customers and were easy to “talk shop” with. With stamps, it was just me and my Linn’s Stamp News.

As you might imagine, the weekly paper had many more pages than it does today, though I don’t have access to any copies from that period to give more precise details. I recall that page 2 was perpetually occupied by an ad from Marlin Stamp Co. who offered a standing order new issue service for not only every country but for quite a number of topical areas, including timely topics of the day. Is it an Olympics year? You could subscribe to receive each and every Olympics issue as they were released. A new pope? They got you covered.

The back page, also, was permanently occupied (or so it seemed anyway – they are the only dealer I can recall) by Pacific Stamps. After looking over the front page stories, my next destination was the letters page. I always enjoyed hearing from the stamp community at large.

As its name implies, the paper’s focus was on the latest news in the stamp hobby. There were relatively few articles of a general philatelic nature. For that, you would have had to subscribe to their companion publication, “Scott Monthly Journal.” However, my meager Air Force pay could stretch only so far, and I made do with just the weekly offering.

The real draw for me, though, were the tons of dealer ads. Except for display ads for expensive items like Columbians and Zeppelins, you didn’t get images of the stamps for sale. You were at the mercy of the integrity of any dealer to provide you with quality items. In those early days of my collecting journey, I did not own a stamp catalogue, and I did not order individual singles or sets from the ads. Instead, I took advantage of a then-popular method of obtaining stamps called approvals. There were tons of approval ads in the Linn’s classifieds section.

With approvals, you told the dealer what general areas you were interested in receiving stamps from – e.g. Western Europe, British Commonwealth, or simply worldwide – the dealer would send you, with no up-front cost, a selection of stamps in glassines from which you could select the ones you wanted to keep, and send back payment and the unwanted stamps in the included stamped return envelope. You would also be enticed with a further discount if you purchased the entire selection.

It was through approvals that I really got my education in the wide wide world of stamps. It was through approvals that I first learned of St. Pierre and Miquelon. It was through approvals that I found out that British Honduras had changed their name to Belize.

I’d like to find a 1974 issue of Linn’s, just to experience that blast from the past of my earliest days in the hobby. A search of ebay turned up no issues before the 1990s. The Internet Archive has pdf’s of Linn’s starting from 1928, but going up only to 1961.

I didn’t buy my first Scott Catalogues until 1977, when the 1978 volumes were released. I can’t recall what, if anything, I used in its stead. (It wasn’t until years later that I discovered they could be found at the public library.) Back then, of course, the catalogue was much smaller, comprising just 4 volumes. British Commonwealth nations were all grouped together in volume 1 along with the US and UN listings. The minimum catalogue value listed for any stamp was 5c. Later (I don’t recall which year), Scott removed the British Commonwealth nations from volume 1 and, for that matter, broke up the BC grouping, placing all the individual nations in there respective alphabetical places among the other volumes.

Starting in the 1989 edition (it took 2 years for the change to reflect in all the country listings), Scott made a radical overhaul of the stamp values; they dramatically lowered all the values across the board. The reason for this was that, over the years, catalogue values had become quite disconnected with real-world market prices. Most dealers offered their stamps at 50% to 80% below Scott values. To bring catalogue prices more in line with market prices, practically all stamp valuations were revised downward (I wish I had comparisons of 1988 and 1990 valuations to give you).

As might be expected, the blowback from stamp dealers was tremendous (via the letters columns in Linn’s). After all, a major enticement of many dealers, to attract sales, was their large discount from Scott values. Now, those large discounts had evaporated, and their prices did not look so attractive. Many dealers wrote to say they were boycotting future Scott Catalogues. And for years afterward, in their ads, dealers compared their prices to the higher 1988 catalogue values.

For the 1997 edition of the catalogue, another significant change was made. Before that, the catalogue values given were for stamps in the grade of F-VF (Fine to Very Fine). A stamp with F-VF centering has uneven margin widths and the stamp designs are significantly off-balance. Because the Scott editors determined that collectors were, by and large, looking for stamps with VF (Very Fine) centering, which means the margins are much closer to being equal and the design is not jarringly off-center, they changed their policy to have values apply to stamps graded VF.

As it happens, the early 80s also marked the peak of the stamp market, in terms of market prices. Stamp prices began a descent which, less than 2 decades later, would be exacerbated by the advent of internet sales (read: ebay). The result is that, once again, the Scott Catalogue is once again disconnected from real-world market prices. The vast majority of stamps can be purchased for just 20% or less of catalogue value. And while collectors like to scoff at the Scott Catalogue as being useless for determining their stamps’ values, Scott is not even so bad compared to the Michel and Stanley Gibbons catalogues, both of which often quote values that are double those found in Scott. I know the argument might be made that those catalogues reflect the markets in their home countries (Germany and the UK, respectively), but a look at prices on ebay.co.uk and ebay.de will prove that argument wrong.,

Along with stamp values, participation in the hobby has also declined over the past several decades, with some doom-and-gloomers predicting the hobby’s imminent demise. The fact is, though, nobody can say with any degree of certainty how quickly or by what magnitude the hobby is shrinking, or if it even is. Nobody can put a finger on a reliable number of stamp collectors in this country (whatever “this country” is for you) much less estimate a worldwide figure. All they can point to are meaningless metrics like declining membership in major philatelic organizations, such as the American Philatelic Society, and shrinking circulation numbers for Linn’s Stamp News. But both of those metrics are meaningless in this new digital world where philatelic news, such as found in Linn’s, is readily available on the internet without having to pay for it, and where online stamp forums, blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, and any number of personal websites, renders most paid membership organizations superfluous.

Personally (as you might glean from the above), I don’t believe the hobby is dying. Just as a virus (remember ebola?) cannot “wipe out” a population, the viral factors affecting the hobby today – falling values/investment potential, declining use of snail mail, etc – will not drive collectors away to the point of extinction. Almost 200 years’ worth of philatelic material exists which will still exist after the last postage stamp is printed, and there will always be people interested in collecting and learning about these cultural artifacts. Maybe there will be far fewer stamp collectors 50 years from now, but one’s personal enjoyment of the hobby does not depend on there being a certain critical mass or number of participants. I only wish I had another 50 years to enjoy collecting stamps. I would like to be able to write a post at that time, saying, “I told you so.”

Cheers, everybody, and happy stamping.