Aspects of Philately's varied markets and hobbyists

[imagedlr]

It's true that we don't see many children in the stamp hobby nowadays. The stamp collector demographic tends to be middle aged and senior males. But we've noticed an increase in the number of women at various stages of life, attending auctions and conventions.

Some women are also entering the stamp dealer/ auction business. And one very significant change of course, has been the switch from stamp shops to on-line and live auctions.

Some very large stamp dealers now use Bidstart for high end stamp auctions, as well as do many hundreds of pocket dealers and some surprisingly large home office operations. Bidstart's very large, high resolution graphics give us all an edge over the great Leviathan of penny stamps, ebay, which seems to consider solid graphics as frills

These folks have avoided the very expensive, and often incomplete stamp auction software available, and the inevitable maintenance for sales tax changes, currency conversions and properly merging the on-line bids with the dwindling live auction bids. One dealer in the Gastown area of Vancouver BC, Canada, where our stamp company, Image Control, is also located has resolved the issue of merging on-line bids and live bids by selectively removing some bids from his auctions without merging them. We've never seen this practice anywhere else.

The other huge change in the stamp business in the past few years has been in the stamp dealer market. It now has an on-line dealer network. With the improvements in graphic scans Bidstart is also well positioned to assist dealers, who generally want larger lots with some duplication. The lower fees here and the solid on-line store system means more attractive prices, and today Imagdlr's store will pass 2000 lots listed -- about 35,000 stamps in all

John Connolly ~ imagedlr

http://www.bidstart.com/stores/imagedlr

[EclecticCollector]

The increased number of women may be a perception issue. One of my mentors growing up was female, over the years have I met many women into stamp collecting, albeit still a minority.

My job takes me into a couple of thousand homes a year, I rarely miss a chance to mention stamp collecting, maybe the reason I have run into more female collectors than average

[RJSStamps]

My great aunt was collecting stamps back in the 30's, she had a huge collection of FDC's as well. She never married and her spare time when not working was doing nothing but collecting stamps and going to baseball games. At 70 she played a backyard baseball game with us "kids". She only collected US but she had some amazing things. Don't have a clue what happened with her collection though after she passed on.

[imagedlr]

Hello RJS, God bless your great aunt for indroducing you to stamp collecting. The odds would be better than 50/50 that her collection could have had some gems, especially if she had acquired some parts of it from her older relatives who lived during the ninetennth century.

Far better to have an unpicked, never appraised, collection than one which came to your through various dealers and auctions. If I see an old Strand or Scott Intl. album, I can tell in 5 minutes whether I wnat to bid on it, and how much

There was a find in England about 30 years ago, which included a few dozen old covers, most is sad shape. Until a regional auction dealer took a look through through the collection. One letter he purchased on the spot for 2 shillings - about 50c, which was more than CV. It had a penny QV stamp, and was addressed to her at Windsor Castle. At a lower corner in a crabby scrawl was the notation "i don't have time to read this.'

No one had ever thought to have the envelope appraised in 80 years, but he did, Not for the common stamp but to see if hand writing wxperts would authenticate the writing as that of the monarch who had an age named after her. It was.

[RJSStamps]

Actually my Uncle got me started, he too started in the 30's. Not sure how he got started. She started before he did though. I inherited his collection after his passing and got a few very nice gems in it including 2 US #64's Used, 358 MH, and a good number of other US as well as GB 239a VF MNH, 249 MNH VF, 249a MNH VF, 250 MNH VF, and 251 MNH XF, NZ O84 MNH XF, O86 MNH XF, AR96 MNH XF, AR97 MNH XF. There are a lot more but thats a quick list, not too mention FDC's and covers as well as BOB items like wine stamps, documentery and stock tranfers and so on, some of which are harder to find items. I'll be selling most of these to get more of what I collect, mostly military and ships. I found it interesting to see what he paid for many of these stamps in the 40's. In 1940 he paid $4 for the above GB! He has a bunch of S Africa still in the envelopes that he purchased them in back in the 40's thru early 1960's. Knowing him as I did I was suprised to see a large number of military related stamps, those are being transferred to my collection as I go through them though.
My Aunt BTW was, for many years part of a stamp club in Colorado and California.

RJS

[RJSStamps]

It's true that we don't see many children in the stamp hobby nowadays.
John Connolly ~ imagedlr

http://www.bidstart.com/stores/imagedlr

Well we can add 2 more kids to the list of collectors! I was trying to get one of my friends daughters to get involved in collecting and got her hooked a week ago. She is 12. The best part though is her 10 year old sister also decided to start too. They both have different interests in stamps too. The older one likes anything with horses, and the younger one likes anything old. So as I go through things I pull out items for them. Finally getting them into something they found they like! Now to find more horses... I have plenty of "old" lol.

RJS

[michael78651]

The APS Web site has a section for children. I printed out a story about Elmo (from Sesame Street) and his stamp collection. I am going to read it to my grandchildren next time they come for a visit. They are 2 and 4 years old. I am going to find an old stock book and start giving the 4 year old stamps to put in the book. Maybe he will catch the "bug". I'll let the 2 year old "play" with damaged stamps.

[richd4549]

For my 2 year old grand son I have started a collection of Presidential dollars and stamps on events that during their terms in office. I plan on giving it to him when he is five.That way he will be able to decide if wants to collect stamps or coins.

[revcollector]

It's true that we don't see many children in the stamp hobby nowadays. The stamp collector demographic tends to be middle aged and senior males. But we've noticed an increase in the number of women at various stages of life, attending auctions and conventions.

Some women are also entering the stamp dealer/ auction business. And one very significant change of course, has been the switch from stamp shops to on-line and live auctions.

Some very large stamp dealers now use Bidstart for high end stamp auctions, as well as do many hundreds of pocket dealers and some surprisingly large home office operations. Bidstart's very large, high resolution graphics give us all an edge over the great Leviathan of penny stamps, ebay, which seems to consider solid graphics as frills

These folks have avoided the very expensive, and often incomplete stamp auction software available, and the inevitable maintenance for sales tax changes, currency conversions and properly merging the on-line bids with the dwindling live auction bids. One dealer in the Gastown area of Vancouver BC, Canada, where our stamp company, Image Control, is also located has resolved the issue of merging on-line bids and live bids by selectively removing some bids from his auctions without merging them. We've never seen this practice anywhere else.

The other huge change in the stamp business in the past few years has been in the stamp dealer market. It now has an on-line dealer network. With the improvements in graphic scans Bidstart is also well positioned to assist dealers, who generally want larger lots with some duplication. The lower fees here and the solid on-line store system means more attractive prices, and today Imagdlr's store will pass 2000 lots listed -- about 35,000 stamps in all

John Connolly ~ imagedlr

http://www.bidstart.com/stores/imagedlr

A friend and I volunteer once a month at a stamp club for kids; we usually have between 7-10 kids between the ages of 10-15. They all seem to enjoy it, and one or two of them have the real collecting bug.