What killed stamp collecting as a hobby?10 May 2021 11:01
Stamp collecting (philately) started pretty much as soon as the first stamps were issued, in the 1840’s. However, most people would agree that the heyday of stamp collecting was in the 1950’s and 60’s. These were years of optimism and excitement. The economy was booming, WWII was a waning memory, and open boarders within Europe, and affordable international flights allowed millions to travel and “see the world”. Tourists were mailing back postcards, children were finding international pen-pals, and all these came with stamps. Lots and lots of stamps. They were cheap, colorful, exotic, and easy to collect. Kids would get stamp albums as presents, and then spend the following years meticulously filling them up with every kind of stamp they could get their hands on. When they had all the common stamps, they would trade up to rarer and more expensive stamps. Soon stamp markets emerges, with large catalogs and expos dedicated to the hobby (see photo below).
As the stamp market heated up, speculators stepped in, investing in the ever rising prices of certain rare stamps with high demand. Like the classic Tulip mania (or bitcoin craze), many people were convinced that the price of rare stamps could only go up, and would spend obscene sums on specimens that you could buy with pocket change at the post office, just a few decades earlier. It didn’t take long for people to try to manipulate the markets. Some merchants would horde thousands of sheets of specific stamps in an effort to drive up the price. And increasingly the postal services themselves tried cashing in too, by issuing expensive commemorative stamp sets aimed specifically for collectors, and by flooding the market with a vast array of stamps, so that it was hard to keep up. And as always happens, the boom came to an end. The speculators vanished and the general population gradually lost interest. By the 1980’s, the baby-boomers who grew up during the stamp boom, were adults with jobs and families, and very little free time for collecting.
Today, many children barely know what a stamp is, let alone find it a “cool” collectable. The people left doing it, for the most part, are aging pensioner, with lots of free time and a nostalgia for life as it was a half century ago. As they pass away, their families are left with a collection that encompasses a lifetime of dedication. Some get sold for pennies on the dollar, while many other just get thrown away. It’s a sad ending to the once-thriving hobby.
https://www.quora.com/What-killed-stamp-collecting-as-a-hobby?share=1
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