Does Anyone Here Collect Stamps?

if you look at the left menu, CCF has a sister forum for Stamps

http://www.stampcommunity.org/

I used to be a stamp collector.
But as a hobby if it isn't dead it's darn close.
If you can get 20% of catalog consider yourself lucky.

I don't collect stamps and never have. When I go to the Nashua, NH coin show, there is usually a stamp show held in another part of the hotel at the same time. I often just go in to get a feel for the atmosphere and sometimes to get some discount postage. The stamp show seems to be always less bustling than the coin show. Everyone looks to be at least 30-40 years older than I am. Whereas at the coin show, there are many more faces from my generation and the one before though still a minority.

Very much depends on what you have, whether it's US or world, cancelled or not, recent or old.

Considering the worst case scenario, even if these are the dreaded world (post-war) stamps that moxking mentioned, if there are a lot, someone should still buy them.

Unless they were stored in improper or damp conditions, of course.

Join the stamp forum. It is really almost gone like Kanga said, only certain stamps fetch some sort of money. Thats why you see way more coin stores than stamp stores, in fact, I can only think of one right now, being Kenmore

Forgot. There are a ton of online stamp stores. I have no idea whether or not the hobby is dying but I can tell you there are a lot of places to buy them.

Ok. Once I hit 250 posts, could I try trading my stamps for coins in the for trade section?

As for it being dead -

It may vary from country to country. There still are people who will buy (and search) bulk lots.

Myself, I collected Polish stamps from 1984 until 2001. The prices of the quarterly sets were constantly rising to uncomfortable levels. I collected them until I saw the catalog prices. "0.10" everywehere. That's in Polish zloty, divide by 4 for USD. And on top of that, as it has already been mentioned, the catalog prices for stamps are far from their real value. You divide them by 5, 10, etc. depending on the catalog to get an actual price. As it turned out to be a complete waste of money, I cancelled my subscription. Years later, I used whatever was still valid for postage and sent the rest to the first person who asked.

Today, the prices of quarterly sets are getting ridiculous. While we don't have $16 stamps, there has recently been a surge in issuing high value stamps, unnecessarily expensive sheetlets, and "limited" items. I'm glad I'm not buying those anymore.

Resale value? As long as they are still postally valid, they will keep their value. There is no "dicount postage" market here. But the earlier series are nearly worthless: you can get a whole year's worth of Polish stamps which are no longer valid for postage for $2 (mint) and as low as $1 (cancelled). That's how much they're worth. Hence, moxking's "99.8%" statement.

The local coin and stamp store does have stamps and stamp stockbooks. During one of my recent visits, I have actually asked about this fact. His response has been along the lines of 'the hobby isn't dead, every day we have someone who buys stamps and we constantly add new material to our stock'.

That said, during my recent visits there, I have seen other people buying/submitting wantlists/selling/trying to sell/looking at coins (and more rarely - banknotes) but I haven't noticed anyone even looking at stamps so far.
At the local monthly show which I attended once this year, I'd say there were around 3/5 stalls with coins only, 1/5 with mixed stuff (coins, medals, military memmorabilia, random stuff like spoons etc.), and about 1/5 with stamps. The difference between the coin and random stalls and the stamp one was: no buyers at the stamp stalls. Having asked about it at another coin shop, they explained "it's just dealers exchanging stock between themselves", and that's exactly what it looked like.

Perhaps nearly all stamp trade is now being done using the Internet.