Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve D
Stamp collecting got really big in the 1930s and 1940s, due to the fact that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a stamp collector himself. Into the 1980s, stamp and first day cover collecting was still fairly large; I feel it was even bigger than coin collecting.
By the 1990s-2000s, stamp collecting started dying out because people could not keep up with the massive number of different stamps the USPS was issuing. Then with the advent of the internet, and electronic payments severely reducing the amount of bills people needed to pay by mail, stamp collecting fell even further.
Steve
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The baseball first day covers have some value mostly driven by sports collectors.
Steve D - Pretty much. Add in people buying loads of full sheets as "investments" then being disappointed when trying to sell only to find that dealers already had all they needed and would pay maybe 50% of the face value as "discount postage"
The catalog prices with an early 80s debacle and a general misunderstanding of what they represent didn't help.
Scott inflated catalog values until sometime in the late 70's or early 80's so people could see steady gains that were way out of line with reality. Then reduced them to real world levels suddenly. (Pretty much everyone would sell at half catalog or lower. )
The catalog value is supposed to represent a retail price for an example in a very nice condition. Most are not that nice. The catalog price for cheap stuff represents the price a dealer would charge if you wanted one of that exact stamp, and mostly represents the cost of labor sorting it and putting it in a priced holder. So that stamp bought new for 50cents with a catalog value of $1 isn't really worth $1. Trust me, I've tried....
Stuff in bulk rarely brings anywhere near catalog value. I have a box of 1890's stamps put up in bundles of 100. 54,000 stamps the cheapest version has a $1 catalog value. So CV=$54,000. And of course, if the one I opened is typical about 25% of them are as much as $5
I paid $50 along with a bunch of other stuff. I would be insanely happy to get half catalog of the cheapest ones. Or even 1/8.....
Yesterday, 08:09 AM
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