Stamp Collecting as an Investment - The Basics

This guest post was made for Colnect by Vincenzo Desroches. If you want to contribute your collecting-related article to Colnect, please contact us.


While you may not be able to use your forex broker’s charts to track the philatelic market when collecting stamps, this long-favored hobby for people of all ages generally involves an element of investment. Nevertheless, much like in other fields of investing, a large percentage of stamp collectors do not buy the type of stamps that might appreciate over time.

This means having a good foundation in how the stamp market operates and values stamps can make a big difference to your success in investing in stamps.

Looking at Stamps as Investments

Many people still think of collecting stamps as child’s play, but certain stamps command high prices and are treated like a collector’s classic automobile might be. While most stamps carry and keep their notional values, such high-value collector’s stamps can be worth over $1,000,000 at auction prices and it is this sort of stamp which typically comprises a high-end stamp collector’s investment portfolio. Stamp indices have even been added to Bloomberg which show recent annual increases of over 7%.

In addition, most stamp collectors will attempt to identify any trends they see occurring in the stamp market. They will then usually consider buying stamps as an investment when they think it likely that the stamp will rise in value. This process is similar to how an investor might pick a stock. Nevertheless, stamp collectors generally must wait for a considerable period in order for their stamp investment to show a profit, if it ever does.

Stamp Collecting Equipment

Several simple and inexpensive items you may want to invest in for stamp collecting consist of:

• A stamp album or stock book – protective sleeves for individual stamps are preferred by serious collectors that do not use stamp hinges.

• Stamp tongs – these are special tongs with rounded tips to prevent damage to stamps from handling them manually.

• A set of “stamp hinges” – these small pieces of transparent, lightly gummed paper are used to attach stamps to the stamp album. (See section below.)

• A magnifying glass – get one strong enough to see details in the stamp’s paper.

Avoid Using Stamp Hinges With Especially Valuable Stamps

While stamp hinges continue to be a popular way to affix stamps to an album, be aware that many serious investment collectors now shun the practice. This is reflected in the market for “unhinged” stamps being greater than that for stamps that were previously hinged.

In fact, since the middle of the last century, the price differential in favor of unhinged stamps has grown to 2 to 1, largely due to the remnants of hinge marks that show up when the stamp is held to the light.

This condition of hinged stamps involves the adhering of the original gum on the stamp to the gum on the hinge, which can strip off a layer of paper, creating what philatelists call “hinge or stamp thin.” For this reason, unhinged stamps have come to be preferred by most collectors, and so collectors should consider this when valuing and storing stamps.

Stamp Valuation

A stamp’s value is determined by such factors that include its:

• Condition – stamps in mint condition sell for higher prices than damaged stamps, which often sell at only a small fraction of mint value.

• Availability – assess the number of stamps of this particular kind that are currently for sale on the stamp market.

• Demand – how many collectors are interested in buying this stamp in both the stamp’s country of origin and elsewhere.

• Origin of the Sale – prices for stamps often differ between countries.

• Future Value – an assessment of what collectors anticipate will be the stamp’s future value.

Conclusion

In general, stamp collecting can provide people with a popular combination of a satisfying hobby, and can even be a potential investment, when a collectible stamp appreciates in value. Not only can this pursuit give a considerable degree of satisfaction by obtaining small - but potentially very valuable - works of art, but it can also provide a constructive way for a person to distract themselves from life’s other pressures.

Nevertheless, future stamp investors need to be aware that stamp collecting does not enjoy the same degree of liquidity that other investment markets like the coin, forex or stock market does. Therefore, stamp collectors need to understand that their stamps may take years to show substantial gains in value, and even to cover the relatively high price spread between a stamp dealer’s buying and selling prices.

Nevertheless, stamp collectors who pursue their passion with the benefits of patience and knowledge about the philatelic market can often find lucrative investment opportunities in their pastime. Naturally, you might make considerably more money faster with other investments, but collectors often enjoy just looking through their beautiful stamp collection at home.

Hotel Key Cards Catalog Presents Over 5,000 Cards

Collecting hotel key cards? Collectors from around the world have created and maintain a unique catalog of hotel key cards. The catalog now has over 5,000 hotel key cards, after over 800 cards have been added during the last month.
Colnect's hotel key cards catalog is created in a wiki-fashion by collectors. Their efforts are coordinated by Ignacio F López Vico [iflvico] from Spain. He is one of Colnect's most important team members, being also responsible for Colnect's phone cards category.

Collectors from around the world can now use this catalog (as well as other Colnect catalogs available for other categories) to manage their own person collection. New categories will soon be added to Colnect so stay tuned.

Collectors Joining Colnect on March - a New Record

March has shown record growth to Colnect's collectors base. Many collectors still use Colnect without registering and enjoy the free catalogs offered on the site. Over 60,000 people have visited Colnect on March. However, to manage their personal collection with Colnect, collectors have to register Colnect. This March, as Colnect passed the 10,000 members milestone, a record growth of 11% (1,033 new collectors) was achieved.

We extend our warm welcome to all new members of Colnect. Colnect is built by our members and the more collectors join, the better our catalogs will get.

10,000 Collectors Collect and Connect on Colnect

Colnect has achieved probably its most prestigious milestone to date, as we now have 10,000 registered collectors from all over the world! This accomplishment was greatly accelerated by a record number of new collector sign-ups over the past couple of months, a trend that surely indicates Colnect is on the verge of becoming one of the world's most popular collecting sites. Perhaps even more impressively, 109 countries spanning every continent are now represented by at least one active Colnect collector. As our international reach expands, we can only except even more collectors to discover the benefits of using Colnect to collect and connect with fellow collectors from all around the globe.




While all this is obviously great news for the site, individual collectors (like YOU) stand to benefit most from Colnect's rapid development. More collectors means more possible swap partners as well as a greater number of potential contributors to Colnect. This is a crucial point, since Colnect's catalogs are created and managed entirely in a wiki-like fashion, meaning the catalogs can only be as complete as the resources of our collectors. In addition, having an incredibly diverse membership on Colnect will open up many more opportunities for new collectible categories, with several of these already in the planning or development phase. As always, feel free to contact us if you would like to assist Colnect with language translations, adding new items to the catalogs, or editing the current catalog data.

Thousands of Indian Students Yearn to Join Colnect Family

In response to the partnership we reached with Freshersworld.com, India's most popular students web-site, thousands of young Indians submitted applications to become Campus Ambassadors for that site and are now eligible to fill three exclusive Colnect internship places! We are overjoyed to see the dedication from some of the sharpest minds on campuses across India. As of March 9, 139 applicants from around the country have been chosen to represent their schools as Campus Ambassadors for Freshersworld. This reflects the enormous talent pool on display at Indian universities and the potential of its students to achieve greatness in their endeavours. From these, the top three finishers in the final phase will win the grand prize of an internship and will have the opportunity to work on various projects at Colnect.



Given our ambitious plans to continue building Colnect into the best collectors web site, the addition of three sharp, committed young minds to assist us with many technological and managerial projects will be most welcome. For our collectors, this means that we should be more responsive to your questions and concerns, while also having more resources at our disposal to make long-term improvements that should enhance everyone's collection experience. However, the key to Colnect's future greatness is having dedicated contributors who provide their unique expertise of a particular collectible or language to benefit everyone! If you would like to help with catalog additions, modifications, or language translations, please feel free to Contact Us.

Facebook: Celebrate Your Birthday Every Day

Since Facebook's inception and rapid ascent to global prominence, many users have doubtlessly experimented with ways to play practical jokes on their friends or to get a certain message across, depending on their reasons for using the social networking site. One simple yet highly amusing method has been for a user to change their birthday periodically in order to repeatedly generate the massive flood of greetings left on their walls from well-meaning "friends". All that is required to pull this off is a simple profile modification and a sufficient number of gullable and/or forgetful friends. Due to Facebook automatically displaying birthday notifications on every friend's homepage, this can also be a highly effective way to generate clicks on your profile and attract attention, even if some people don't write on your wall or actually see through your little ruse.

To test out this practice, founder of Colnect conducted a small experiment whereby he and an associate entered a fake "Facebook birthday" into their profiles on two separate occasions within a 4-5 week period. One interesting stat he wished to uncover was how many "friends" would obliviously send him birthday greetings on both days. As he observed, his Facebook friends list is a particularly fascinating test group, since it consists of people he has fairly close personal relationships with and those who are entirely virtual connections made to promote his collectors web-site. In the end, he found the results of his skullduggery both humourous and befuddling.



On his original fake birthday, he received a total of 63 birthday wishes on his Facebook Wall and Inbox, while his associate's profile accepted 47 such misplaced greetings only a couple of days following his non-existent celebrations. Perhaps most interesting is that he also received three "Happy Birthday" phone calls from real world friends who believed the information on Facebook, despite having attended his real birthday celebrations only six months earlier. "I didn't realize how forgettable my party was," the chairman of the collectibles web-site quipped. In addition, his 2nd fraudulent Facebook birthday generated 62 well wishes, including 26 repeat offenders from the first day barely one month prior, while the second time around his associate's profile received 57 greetings and 17 duplicate wishers from before.

Although the direct ramifications of this may be trivial, it does perhaps illustrate a tendency of users to automatically accept information displayed on Facebook as absolute fact, even when contrary evidence is readily available (in the cases of those who wished the same person "Happy Birthday" twice within a matter of weeks and his real world birthday party attendees). Savvy Facebook users and spammers could easily utilize this fact to manipulate others for far more cynical purposes. It also brings up the question as to why Facebook lets its members change their birthday an infinite number of times, given that by definition it's a static piece of information. While it's understandable that someone could lie or mistakenly enter an incorrect birthday when they first registered and wish to correct this, allowing users to alter their birthday on multiple occasions seems to be opening the door to such blatant shenanigans.

So what's your opinion on this? Should FaceBook limit the ability to modify one's birthday?

Colnect's PhoneCards Catalogs Exceeds 222,222

Colnect's phonecards catalog, which already was the largest in the world, has continued to grow and now features over 222,222 cards from 229 countries. This means that over 22,222 phonecards have been added to the site in roughly the last 3 months (since our last milestone), a reflection of the dedicated efforts made by our many volunteer contributors. We would especially like to thank the co-ordinator of the phonecards catalog, Ignacio F López Vico [iflvico], for helping to organize all these additions and ensuring that Colnect's phonecards catalog continues to be as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible.



Brazil continues to lead the way in phone cards added to the catalog, with over 60,000 having been uploaded for Colnect collectors to mark in their "Collection", "Swap" and "Wish" lists. Germany and the United States also have notably significant quantites of phone cards on Colnect at more than 10,000 each. With such a dedicated team of volunteers continually supporting us, the sky is the limit for the future of Colnect's phonecards catalog and the site as a whole. If you would like to contribute in any way to Colnect, please don't hesitate to Contact Us.