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 Replies: 8 / Views: 1,486 |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
1118 Posts |
As a collector of coins I often see coin and stamp sets, coin and stamp shows, and book on various coins and stamps. I have met several collectors who collect both coins and stamps.
I find it is similar to how when I listen to old country radio and the talk about NASCAR, their seems to be an overlap of "If you love one, you must love the other" in the collecting world.
As someone who finds stamps so boring I was wondering if their is a reason for this overlap? Is it the love for history? National pride? holding history in your hands or an investment?
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
3692 Posts |
Government instruments with a face value...?
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Moderator
 United States
187702 Posts |
I used to collect stamps back in the early 80's. It seemed a logical fit, where I lived at the time the LCS was also the LSS. I eventually gave up on them, but I still have my Harris album and stock book. I think about looking into them again, if only for the classics (to fill vacancies in my album). The new stuff does not interest me.
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Pillar of the Community
1325 Posts |
Because they are both "cheap" and something evryone can get their hands on unlike the Bugatti Veryon. Also since coins and bills often go together, people used to get bills stamped at the post office, like in 1976. Either way, the few stamps I see today are not something worth keeping. I don't buy a stamp to never use, but a coin can always be spent later. So my stamps that have interesting designs are all cancelled ones that have been used before. Though the designs of yesteryear are no more and everything is digital junk now for the most part, and a sticker. Quote:
Government instruments with a face value...? Stamps are not government issued, nor are they usable for anything other than at the USPS, unless some place will take them in lieu of money because they still use stamps. Stamps are pretty much just gift certificates for the USPS services. Like the FRB, the USPS is a privately ran business, just has tighter regulations from the gov't than any other business doing the same thing for all the government endorsements it gets... like ALL the mail sent is via USPS, not FedEx, UPS, etc. |
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
World coins and world stamps are both cheap, and many places never issued coins but still issued stamps. I always save stamps from international mail just for fun.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
It is just that they are both hobbies. At many coin shows I go to there are also, stamps, knives and usually and mostly a lot of sporting cards. At some so called sport card shows there are also coins, stamps, model planes, etc. Jewlery too is anther item found at such shows. If you go to gun shows you will usually find items such as blow guns, knives, Jewlery, archery and sometimes coins.
It is just that so many people realize that regardless of the type of show, they are basically all just hobby shows. Many hobby stores have items for collecting stamps, coins, planes, boats, cars and on and on. They are all just hobbies. There are many people that say collecting coins is just nuts. Why save something you could spend on a good pizza?
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Pillar of the Community
Thailand
1509 Posts |
I would suggest that stamp and coin collecting were the first two populist hobbies that developed alongside each other at the start of the twentieth century.
Stamps (as we know them) came in about 1840. Once it was counterstamped it was useless. I would think that some less well off people from that time on would be interested in hanging on to them as curiosities. Obviously richer people would collect them (unused) as curios, as richer Victorians were apt to do.
Now to coins. Again you have always had the affluent, stretching back to antiquity, who could afford to be collectors (usually silver and gold). Some coins would always be passed down generation to generation as keepsakes. However, after the Industrial Revolution, with the rise of the 'middle classes' we find people with a disposable income who could set aside "common " coins for their own pleasure and the education of their children.
My mother collected both stamps and coins (all countries but nothing spectacular) as curiosities. Stamps never interested me as the issues were far too many (even from one country). So as I'm an 'all or nothing' kind of guy, and thanks to the initial interest of my mother, I just stuck to numismatics.
Edited by thai-vic
08/19/2014 2:25 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5172 Posts |
Quote:
Stamps never interested me as the issues were far too many (even from one country).  I do understand they go together, but there are just too many. Even as much as there are ridiculously many different coins, it doesn't hold anything to how many different stamps there are. (It doesn't help that with stamps, there's no such thing as a type set - only very rarely there are stamps that differ in date and nothing else, and if there are they often end up being considered completely different types anyway.) There's been a weekly magazine over here lately dedicated to coin collecting - as in it had two cool coins in it every week. A few months back, its stamp counterpart also appeared; its issues had not two stamps, but well over twenty. That's how ridiculously many stamps there are to "collect"; and this ridiculousness makes me uneasy. I have a nearly full type set of Russian 1 kopek coins in my collection, missing only a few of the particularly rare types (IIRC, post-1725, I'm only missing the cloud and ring kopeks - both valued at over $100 each - and several really rare types that might as well be patterns because they probably never circulated anyway). I'm pretty sure that if I attempted the same for any stamp denomination, I would hardly have got even halfway there, and if I did it would've cost me a good deal more time and money. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1132 Posts |
I can't count the times I've been in a hobby store looking through coins supplies & the next thing I know I'm in the stamp section. It's kind of annoying.
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Replies: 8 / Views: 1,486 |
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Posted 08/18/2014 5:49 pm
