Monthly Archives: January 2019

Most collectors collect what they like for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the popularity of the area or the potential for financial growth in what they collect. Others collect whatever is the "hot" area hoping to ride the train of popularity to make their collecting not only fun but profitable. Both are fine ways to go about your hobby. But many want to collect an area that is fun, challenging and currently inexpensive and that has the potential for price growth greater than the hobby as a whole.

When people ask me to recommend an area like this the country of Pakistan usually comes to mind. First the demographics. Pakistan is sixth most populous country in the world with over 160 million people. It has a developing economy and and an increasingly educated population. And most importantly for the growth of its philately, the Pakistani diaspora contains a highly educated and successful group

Robberies of stamp collections used to be a real problem. In the 1970's a large ring of stamp thieves were caught. They had an APS membership directory with them that they were using to figure out who to knock off next. When I was on the Board of Directors of the APS in the early 1980s, my home was burglarized, as were the homes of several other board members. But, stamp thefts have decreased in recent years and usually when philatelic materials are stolen it is part of a general burglary and not stamp specific. Insurance rates for stamps have dropped dramatically in real terms over the last thirty years. The reasons for the decrease in stamp theft are three. First, stamp prices have declined relative to the value of most other things. A mint US #C18 sold for $200 in 1980. It sells for $40 today and at the price levels for most stamp collections the risk of stealing them is not worth the reward. (Crooks are among the most rational economists around). Second, stamps are hard to fence. The

Hobbies are successful when they allow a diverse group of participants to engage in an activity where they can find enjoyment. Over the last 150 years, philately has been one of the world's most successful hobbies, having millions of devotees. To be successful a hobby has to offer many things. It must have differing levels of appreciation- novices must find it immediately appealing on a visceral (or in the case of philately, visual) level and it must offer increasing pleasures and rewards to participants as they become more involved. If the hobby never gets more serious or involved more intelligent people soon tire of it. Philately is wonderful on this count. From the preliterate child sorting stamps by design to the postal historian's archival wanderings, our hobby has interest to people of all academic and intellectual  levels.

A successful hobby mustn't be too expensive or too cheap. No one can collect O

John Nicklin was one of the most prominent philatelists of his time. He edited the American Airmail catalog, was an editor of the Scott catalog and was president of the Society of Philatelic Americans a group that rivaled the American Philatelic Society in influence but was badly mismanaged in the 1970s and is now out of business. His biography shows us how much we have changed as a hobby and a culture in the last eighty years.

Nicklin was an active philatelic writer in the 1930s. He tells us that his favorite way of spending his vacation was as follows: He would research the older banks and bankrupt trading houses in a geographic area and then use library phonebooks to find possible relatives of the people who ran these companies. He would spend his holiday motoring around, stopping at these people's homes and asking if they had any old correspondence or knew where any was. In one instance, that he himself

There are many types of guarantees in philately and there are many types of opinions. It is important that collectors distinguish between the two and understand what protections each provides. The major expertization services-the APS, the Philatelic Foundation, Professional Stamp Expertizing service, Sergio Sismondo-indeed all of them, offer an opinion, based on current knowledge, of the genuineness and quality of the philatelic item presented to them. This is reassuring to collectors and of value as there are many stamps where the forgeries outnumber the genuine and hidden faults exist on many stamps. But it is important to note that despite the expense involved in having stamps expertized (which is often 5% of the catalog value-with a $25 minimum- and since many stamps are bought at 25% of catalog this can work out to as much as you paid for the stamp itself), it's important to realize that what you are paying for when you expertize a stamp is an opinion only. Traditional certification

Electronic communication has little variable cost. Once the lines are laid, or the satellite launched, electrons fly for free. Not so postal communications where distance travelled matters. Sending a letter from Philadelphia to one of its suburbs costs far less than mail from Philly to Nome, Alaska. World wide postal services began eliminating distance surcharges in 1840 with Rowland Hill's revolution in cheap postage. Before that, letter charges were based on how far the envelope had to go. In the United States, the distance price increased at over 300 miles in the early period and the reason that the United States issued two postage stamps simultaneously-the 5c and 10c 1847- was to pay the distance surcharge.

The reason behind the elimination of distance pricing was that the efficiencies of accounting, rating and collecting the different rates and the increased use of postal service would make up for