The madman's guide to stamp collecting | Hacker News Reader

The madman's guide to stamp collecting

wsj.com

16 pointscentrosphere5 comments

Stamp collecting in particular is a very good hobby. Where "good" is defined as "time consuming, pleasurable and cheap".

Well cheap to most of us. You can spend a lot if you want to, but you don't need to. But finding, and importantly organizing, makes for many restful hours.

My father was an avid collector and spent many hours cataloging his collection.

I will say though that as a whole, a collection (and indeed any collection, not just stamps) has almost zero net value. The cost of selling the collection dwarfs the collection value.

My advice to collectors is to have as much fun -selling- the bits in the collection (-especially- the valuable bits) before you pass. Do Not expect your heirs to sell it; they'll basically take pennies for it just to make it go away.

My father sold (or separated out) everything of value so we could dispose of the rest (basically donated to a dealer) with a clear conscience.

It's a hobby which has had a sharp decline. I know a guy who sells old postcards and various stuff, he told me people try to sell him stamp collections they've inherited, and he won't take them - even for free - simply because he can't find buyers for them. Unlike the postcards.

Of course that's great for everyone who collects them without expectation of profit.

As someone who inherited a large, country-spanning stamp/cover collection: +1 to this. As someone with collecting tendencies myself, I don't look down on my relatives for doing the collecting (unlike some of my family), and knowing how much work and thought went into it, I don't want to just toss it in the trash (again, unlike some of my family)... But I also have no idea what to do with it, and I have neither the knowledge nor the time to even attempt to go through it, nevermind actually selling any parts of it. So there it sits, taking up quite a bit of room in my house. I keep hoping someday I'll stumble upon an enthusiast who'll want to take the entire thing (for a low bulk price), but there don't seem to be that many collectors around nowadays, and as you (and others here) have mentioned, a lot of the personal value comes from having done the collecting, so most collectors probably wouldn't be interested anyways.

So I encourage collectors to take this advice! Set aside anything you'd want your family to try to get value for, separate from what you're okay with them letting go.

(Possibly as a consequence of this, my collecting tendencies tend towards things with intrinsic value such as tools -- I tell myself that at least selling e.g. a hammer at a yard sale should be easier if you don't need to find someone looking for a one-of-a-kind mis-forged XYZ brand from October 1965... Definitely not expecting anything to be a store of actual value, though, and I'm sure my heirs will feel burdened no matter what they end up having to deal with in my estate)

It's very cheap if you're Bill Oddie. He collected things he'd stamped on.

I participated in USPO’s 1800STAMPFUN as a kid and I loved it. The collectable cards and the unique stamps (looney tunes, monster movies, US Revolutionary and US Civil War heroes), all secured in my USPO stamp collecting binder. I still have it and look at it once every 5 years.

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