any stamp collectors here?

[wellington1869]

from what i hear, its a dying hobby.

if you collect, do you collect for fun or profit?

if you used to collect, why did you stop?

or have you never even considered it?

I'm not a collector btw. I inherited my dad's collection of 10 crates filled with stamps. I'd like to throw them off the top of the empire state building cuz they're taking up a lot of room. However they're probably worth something and I should sell them. One stamp at a time. So in 30 years I'll have $500 or so. Ugh.

[keyboardlover]

Lol...when I was a kid I liked a Canadian movie called Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller.

[pex]

That and baseball cards, excitement used to come in waves and I hear the cards are in a real valley these days - I always see tons of cards on craigslist and in antique/junk shops.

You Phellatlists are really dying out.

[quadibloc]

I used to collect stamps when I was a child. It is an educational hobby. I can tell Georgian from Armenian and from Thai, Tibetan, or Burmese.

[wellington1869]

i've been going thru these 10 crates. I googled a few old/interesting ones to check on value. Not worth much at all. As rippy said very few above face value. I'll be lucky to average $1/stamp, though the sheer volume of stamps here probably makes it worth selling.

I did find a handful around $20/stamp, but very few.

More than monetary value, though, as quadibloc said, it does have some genuine educational value. I wound up wiki-ing a bunch of historical names and events from different countries that i hadnt heard of before, that had been commemorated on stamps. Learned something.

Also some of them are truly historically fascinating. Dad had a huge collection of stamps from colonial india, some of them around 1820, 1840 etc. Thats fairly old, real antiques, full of history, and is a great way to learn about that era.

Sadly even those arent worth much on the open market, as far as I can tell. But very historically fascinating.

[ricercar]

Been there. Done that. Taught me a world of geography, looking up all the countries in a $10 mixmash bag of 500 stamps.

[NewbieOneKenobi]

I have an album with a couple of relatively exotic stamps but I primarily used to collect coins. I had some 600 pieces, half of which came from exotic countries and the other half was mostly European currencies that were replaced by euro. I don't collect actively any more (such as going to flea markets and buying off current or freshly retired exotic pieces that no one in his right mind would forge, as opposed to historic finds) but one day I might again, and I certainly am going to keep the collection for better days.

As with stamp collectors, it taught me some geography and maybe a bit about cultures or history. They were also simply nice to look at.

By the way, if anybody who lives in Asia, Africa or the Americas would be willing to send me some some coins from his country for a reimbursement, I'd be obliged. As far as the US and Canada go, I have a full basic set from both countries but I would be interested any coins that are different in some way from standard issue (e.g. to commemorate some anniversary, honour some person, or they're simply old designs that are still current as a means of payment; or silver quarters and halves or any full dollar coins from the US, or retired old coins--should you be willing to part with such). Naturally, I wouldn't mind reimbursing the fatigue as well, or getting you something you wanted from here in return.

Myself I could gladly send some current Polish post stamps to anyone interested.