Post by Cephus on Feb 11, 2022 18:57:16 GMT -5
So here's a relatively long story. I just got a co-worker interested in collecting stamps by telling him the Latvia stamp origin story and he's decided that he wants to collect pre-Soviet Latvia, mint singles, 1919-1940. No, it's not a really good place to start a beginner collection but that's what he's settled on. The mint stamps are not expensive, in fact, they are typically cheaper than postally used and they should be widely available, even for stamps a century old.
The problem is, they're not. I can't find a single dealer anywhere that has more than a handful. HipStamp doesn't, Delcampe doesn't, eBay doesn't, independent dealers that I can find, they don't either. This is harder than it ought to be in the modern Internet-enabled world-wide marketplace.
So I ask on a stamp forum. Anyone have any ideas where I can look so this guy can get his collection started? Simple question, you either do or you don't. Every single response is unhelpful, suggestions for $600 auctions of stamps he doesn't want to collect, links to sellers who only sell used or covers or whatever, etc. Lots of the responses are rude. "Go here! This is simple! Didn't you even try?" Yeah, except you aren't paying the slightest bit of attention to the question. Thanks for the suggestion and all, but it's not helpful.
Others report having the same problem. Stamps that ought to be easily available, they're not. My wife, who collects Japan, is looking for modern mint issues. You can't get them anywhere, at least not in any cohesive fashion. She'd love to just buy year sets but there aren't any, except for the last year or two from Japan Post. What about the past 30 years? No clue. Again, lots of rude commentary, lots of links to the first 5 things you get when you search Google, none of which actually do a thing. I'm grateful that you're helping but you're not helping because you're not paying attention, nor caring at all.
This is where I start to wonder what we have to offer as a community to new collectors when we don't even care enough to take the time to try. How we can actually care about the future of the hobby if we're going to just yell at people for asking challenging questions. "Google it" doesn't help. If you don't know, say you don't know. That's fine. Being rude, that doesn't help anyone and, had I been a new collector, I might have said screw this and walked away. Everyone acts like this is simple once you get beyond the absurdly simple-to-collect countries. Someone even suggested that my wife bid on a $10k auction for some modern stamps. That's just stupid.
How are we, as a collecting community, actually being welcoming to newcomers? How is it that in the modern world, this stuff that shouldn't be hard to find, it's so hard to find? We're hemorrhaging dealers, we're hemorrhaging shows, we're losing everything. As much as I love doing this and I've been doing it for 40+ years, I can certainly see where newcomers are going to be frustrated, both by the difficulty in finding materials and in the general rudeness that I've seen of late. I'm certainly not blaming everyone, none of this even happened on this forum, but how are we supposed to convince new, excited collectors to stick around if this is the kind of reception that they receive?
I don't know. Just ranting, I guess. Back to work trying to get this guy the stamps he needs.
Stamps - the bear necessities of life.
