For those of you who have visited either the Stampboards or Stamp Community forums in the last couple weeks, you may be aware that two of the most important names in the philatelic world, Stanley Gibbons and Amos Publishing (publisher of the Scott line of albums and catalogs in the USA) have both been having very trying periods.
In the case of Amos, it seems to be a massive technical failure that has completely eliminated their presence on the internet. Going to the main Amos Advantage website only results in an error message and a note saying that the company hopes to be back online soon. But for now, access to the products produced by Amos for the philatelic community via the publisher's own website is completely cut off. With the holiday season rapidly approaching, hopefully these technical issues will be resolved soon, since I am sure that Amos, like most retailers, depend on holiday sales for a significant portion of their business.
While Amos grapples with internet gremlins of the first order, a much more potentially serious problem is growing for the British philatelic institution Stanley Gibbons. A few years back new owners of the comany decided to take Gibbons into the world of Stocks, floating what had been a private company with what was, at the time, a fairly successful Initial Public Offer. The management at Gibbons then began aggressively marketing the Gibbons company as an opportunity for investors in rare philatelic collectibles, promoting the idea that philatelic items could be a good alternative investment in an age of low returns due to the very low interest rates available in the West, and the uncertainty caused by the rapid gyrations of stock markets since the start of the 2008 Global economic crisis.
The year 2015 will likely go down as Gibbons "annus horribilis" in terms of its decision to travel down the investment pathway. Investors have not invested to the degree imagined, and the auction market for the type of high-end UK and Commonwealth material that is the bedrock of Gibbons inventory has been flat at best and losing value in some areas. Gibbons stock, which started the year with a value of over UKP 3.00 per share, has now fallen to below UKP 0.90, a nearly 75% drop in value.
The fundamentals of the Gibbons company do not augur well for a recovery any time soon. It's internet presence via the Bidstart marketplace (which Gibbons purchases a couple years back hoping to increase its internet-based retail presence) is dire and going through yet another revamping. Profits have not met market expectations, and the result has been a steeping downward slide in the value of the stock. Parts of the Gibbons empire, such as the Catalog business, remain vibrant, but that branch alone can not support a company whose marketplace ambitions may simply have been too big for the resources at its disposal. Hopefully Gibbons will be able to turn things around, reorganize itself around its core philatelic business, and seriously rethink the idea of being a vehicle to promote stamps as an "investment opportunity" for those seeking a quick profit. Hopefully this can be achieved without Gibbons having to be "liquidated" in wake of further profit losses, but its unclear just how much lower Gibbons' stock price can go before the marketplace starts to consider that the most likely option.
For collectors in North America, there is a little solace in knowing that Amos Publishing is a privately-held company, so much less subject to the whims and pressures of a financial market that prioritizes short-term profit over long-term potential for growth. As disconcerting as the longer than expected resolution of Amos' technical issues is, these issues should be resolvable in the end, and hopefully the financial cost to Amos will not have been too egregious. If Amos was in Gibbons' position as a publicly-traded company, the potential for investor flight gravely damaging the economic health of the company due to this technical crisis would probably have been immense.
I am not anti-capitalist by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes keeping a company privately owned is a better option for the long-term health of the company instead of exposing the company to the whims of the global financial marketplace. I personally think the experience of Gibbons as a publicly-traded company illustrates the great risks that any company involved in collectibles faces. In the end, philately really should never be seen as an investment tool, but rather for what it is, an enjoyable hobby that, perhaps over the long term, can also be profitable to the collector with a bit of luck, patience and time.
Showing posts with label Stampboards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stampboards. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
Hinged vs Never Hinged...frankly my dear I don't give a.....
A couple months ago in a previous post I talked about the debate over whether it is better to collect mint stamps in hinged or never hinged condition, and the legacy that the never hinged fetish has created for the current generation of collectors.
As I said then, for me I tend to have a cutoff date of around 1960 for stamps in hinged or never hinged condition, which coincides with the first major hingeless stamp mount to gain wide popularity among American collectors, the (now infamous) Crystal Mounts from Harris. Pre-1960, I won't turn my nose up if offered a never hinged set if it is at a good price, but for me hinged is just as acceptable, provided there is no damage on the stamp from the legacy of being hinged at one point in its life. Since I collect using Lighthouse Vario pages, the stamps will not of course be re-hinged, so that while they are in my personal custody no potential further harm from hinges will result.
(This last point is relevant today because hinges produced in the past twenty years or so are no where near as good as the ones produced back in the late pre-war and early post-war era. Just ask any collector who has been collecting for several decades and they will get a wistful look in their eyes remembering how good the quality of hinges were "back in the day")
Anyways today in the mail I received an item I had ordered from well known Australian stamp dealer (and owner/operator of the Stampboards.com forum) Glen Stephens. I remember this set well as a kid, it was one of the first sets I ever helped my father mount onto album pages (with Crystal Mounts *shudder*) when I was a budding philatelist growing up in the St Lawrence Valley of New York State.
Mr. Stephens had offered this set on the Stampboards.com forum sales subforum (which is a great place to get stamps, and offer stamps for sale - definitely worth checking out!). Yes it was listed as hinged, but it looked beautiful and the price being asked, AU$60.00 or about US$50 at the time, was I thought a bargain for one of the iconic definitive issues of the 1950s British Commonwealth. I was away on vacation when he listed it, and feared that it would get snatched up by some wise collector before I returned home. But the fates were kind to me, and I claimed it within about an hour of returning to Columbus.
The scan probably does not do the stamps justice. They are gorgeous. The $5 coat of arms, in particular, is beautifully centered and very fresh, with just the lightest hint that at some point in its life it was hinged by a previous collector. A couple values have some light toning, but we are talking about stamps issued in a colony with a tropical climate. A little tan is not a bad thing in my opinion, though other collectors would probably vehemently disagree.
Of course many would argue that since it is a hinged set, it has lost a lot of its value. Both Gibbons and Scott value the set in Never Hinged condition only (Scott CV in 2012 for NH was US$150, Gibbons has it at £130 (approx US$200) in the 4th edition (2013) of the Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore catalog.) This is probably why no one jumped on the set immediately when it was listed. It had the "scarlet letter" of hinge marks. My gain, the set is a beauty, and in the end how many people collect stamps to show them gum-side out to show that they are in "virginal never hinged condition?"
I will never understand why the main catalog publishers do not provide guideline for hinged material in the period from the start of their "never hinged" pricing until around 1960. Yes most collectors these days will pay premiums for never hinged material, but there are a lot of gorgeous sets whose only "sin" is that they were hinged, but otherwise may be superior in centering or other measures of stamp condition. Even just a rough percent discount that would be appropriate for hinged material would be more helpful that complete silence, since there is a LOT of this material in the marketplace.
Personally, until such time as the catalog publishers finally realize that some guidance for hinged pricing for the early never-hinged price years is something that many collectors will find useful, I'll continue searching for these wonderful sets in hinged condition and snatch them up for a song. Because in the end I think dealers and collectors are heavily undervaluing them all for the name of some sense of "purity" of gum on the small supply of these issues that, at the time of their issuing, were not hinged by collectors as was the usual practice for mounting stamps in an album at that time.
As I said then, for me I tend to have a cutoff date of around 1960 for stamps in hinged or never hinged condition, which coincides with the first major hingeless stamp mount to gain wide popularity among American collectors, the (now infamous) Crystal Mounts from Harris. Pre-1960, I won't turn my nose up if offered a never hinged set if it is at a good price, but for me hinged is just as acceptable, provided there is no damage on the stamp from the legacy of being hinged at one point in its life. Since I collect using Lighthouse Vario pages, the stamps will not of course be re-hinged, so that while they are in my personal custody no potential further harm from hinges will result.
(This last point is relevant today because hinges produced in the past twenty years or so are no where near as good as the ones produced back in the late pre-war and early post-war era. Just ask any collector who has been collecting for several decades and they will get a wistful look in their eyes remembering how good the quality of hinges were "back in the day")
Anyways today in the mail I received an item I had ordered from well known Australian stamp dealer (and owner/operator of the Stampboards.com forum) Glen Stephens. I remember this set well as a kid, it was one of the first sets I ever helped my father mount onto album pages (with Crystal Mounts *shudder*) when I was a budding philatelist growing up in the St Lawrence Valley of New York State.
The iconic first Queen Elizabeth II definitive issue from Singapore, 1955. A piece of my childhood memories of collecting with my late father now brought back into my life, at a price that did not break my collecting budget.
Mr. Stephens had offered this set on the Stampboards.com forum sales subforum (which is a great place to get stamps, and offer stamps for sale - definitely worth checking out!). Yes it was listed as hinged, but it looked beautiful and the price being asked, AU$60.00 or about US$50 at the time, was I thought a bargain for one of the iconic definitive issues of the 1950s British Commonwealth. I was away on vacation when he listed it, and feared that it would get snatched up by some wise collector before I returned home. But the fates were kind to me, and I claimed it within about an hour of returning to Columbus.
The scan probably does not do the stamps justice. They are gorgeous. The $5 coat of arms, in particular, is beautifully centered and very fresh, with just the lightest hint that at some point in its life it was hinged by a previous collector. A couple values have some light toning, but we are talking about stamps issued in a colony with a tropical climate. A little tan is not a bad thing in my opinion, though other collectors would probably vehemently disagree.
Of course many would argue that since it is a hinged set, it has lost a lot of its value. Both Gibbons and Scott value the set in Never Hinged condition only (Scott CV in 2012 for NH was US$150, Gibbons has it at £130 (approx US$200) in the 4th edition (2013) of the Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore catalog.) This is probably why no one jumped on the set immediately when it was listed. It had the "scarlet letter" of hinge marks. My gain, the set is a beauty, and in the end how many people collect stamps to show them gum-side out to show that they are in "virginal never hinged condition?"
I will never understand why the main catalog publishers do not provide guideline for hinged material in the period from the start of their "never hinged" pricing until around 1960. Yes most collectors these days will pay premiums for never hinged material, but there are a lot of gorgeous sets whose only "sin" is that they were hinged, but otherwise may be superior in centering or other measures of stamp condition. Even just a rough percent discount that would be appropriate for hinged material would be more helpful that complete silence, since there is a LOT of this material in the marketplace.
Personally, until such time as the catalog publishers finally realize that some guidance for hinged pricing for the early never-hinged price years is something that many collectors will find useful, I'll continue searching for these wonderful sets in hinged condition and snatch them up for a song. Because in the end I think dealers and collectors are heavily undervaluing them all for the name of some sense of "purity" of gum on the small supply of these issues that, at the time of their issuing, were not hinged by collectors as was the usual practice for mounting stamps in an album at that time.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Organizing collections....my preferences.
On the wonderful Stampboards forum there is an interesting thread in the main discussion thread regarding how best to organize a worldwide collection. My personal preference is to organize based on contemporary nations, with colonial issues placed as part of the historical record. This can get a bit complicated for some nations due to name changes, colonial overship changes and the like. For me, the criteria for what gets put in which country is based on where the administrative center for the entity was located. In practice this means you can have two or more stamp issuing entities as part of the same collection, based on the history of that nation. So, for example :
Senegal was a French colony that issued its own stamps starting in 1886. In 1944, the French decided to simplify the postal administration of their West African holding by issuing stamps inscribed -Afrique Occidentale Francaise- (French West Africa) for all eight of their West African colonies, including Senegal. The center of administration for French West Africa was at Dakar in Senegal, so I include these issues in my Senegal collection. Then the "Winds of Change" blew across Africa and in 1960 Senegal and the French Sudan formed the short-lived independent Federation of Mali before splitting into the independent nations of Senegal and Mali. Though catalogs generally list the issues of the Federation of Mali as the first issues of Mali, I personally place the Federation issues of 1959-1960 in with Senegal since the adminstrative center was in Dakar. So my Senegal album contains in reality four different postal administrations :
Colonial Senegal (1886-1944)
French West Africa (1944-1958)
Federation of Mali (1959-1960)
Independent Senegal (since 1960)
Of course, my academic background as a historian probably explains why I choose this kind of organization!
Speaking of albums, how do I store my collections. In my first philatelic life before I sold my collection to fund a business venture, I used traditional pages and mounts (I hate hinges with a passion, and would mount hinged stamps in mounts, figuring the poor hinged stamps had suffered enough damage already and did not need any more during my stewardship of their possesion. I had a complete set of Scott Internationals, Brown Vintage Reproduction pages for up to 1940, and then all the volumes up to 2001.
When I returned to active collecting after 2009, one of the first things I looked at was if there was a better, more economic way to store my collection. Stamp mounts are expensive, and the time taken to cut and mount stamps with them would not be the best use of my limited free time. I eventually settles on using Lighthouse Vario Stockpages. They are flexible, come in an arrange of pocket sizes (though I mostly use the 5 and 6 pocket pages. They fit most single stamps nicely. More recent stamp issues, especially se-tenant blocks, generally fit well in 4S pages). And at least in the USA, Vario pages are CHEAP, with retailers on Amazon and ebay regularly selling packs of 25 pages (that is 50 sides, since the pages are 2-sided) for under US$15. And as Vario pages fit in standard 3-ring binders (though Lighthouse also makes very sturdy binders that come with slipcase to keep the dust out. Online retailers sell these reasonably as well, I can source packs of 3 of the 3" D-Ring binders and slipcases that will hold approximately 90 pages for US$75 and I am currently using these to hold my collections). So its Vario for me all the way now, and I LOVE it!
But, you may ask, what about organizing the stamps on pages? Stockpages don't have illustrations! That raises an important question - what catalog do I use. Should I stick to Scott, which has made leaps and bounds in listing variety material in its Classic Specialized Catalog which, while not cheap, is definitely worth the investment, and I have a copy of the 2015 edition. However, having the ability to read French (among several languages) and being rather OCD about being able to have a space for every stamp, including varieties, there are also specialized catalogs to consider. Personally I LOVE specialized catalogs. I may not own all the varieties of every stamp ever issued, but I can at least leave spaces for them, and maybe one day I will win the lottery! For the French Empire (and France) the choice I made is the Maury catalogs. They are VERY detailed in terms of listing varietes, including a LOT of items NOT listed in Scott, from the dozens of overprint variations on the 1904 Guadeloupe surcharge provisionals to the several hundred Parcel Post stamps issued released by the colonial Algerian postal administration (which Scott does not list, though it does list the mainland French ones - why not Algeria's Scott hmmmm???) The Maury catalog splits the French empire into 4 different volumes organized primarily by region. They are a gold mine of information and it is how I organize my collection.
But how does that tell me where to put a stamp once I get it. To solve that conundrum I simply created excel diagrams with the Maury number (or Scott for post-independence issues Maury does not cover) in each cell. Vario pages have rows 215 mm long (height depends on number of rows per page). You can fit 8 standard 25x22mm definitives on a row using Lighthouse pages, while bigger stamps like the French colonial pictorial can fit 4 to 7 depending on the orientation of the stamp. So its just a matter of creating a "map" and then using it as I get stamps. I print the pages out and highlight the numbers that I acquire, as shown below for Senegal :
Easy-peasy as Jamie Oliver would say. So that is how I have my collections organized, it works very well for me though some will probably find it a bit too OCD especially when using specialized catalogs. Each to his or her own, the one rule in stamp collecting is that you collect the way that gives you the most pleasure, and be willing to try new ideas as your colleciton grows over time.
Senegal was a French colony that issued its own stamps starting in 1886. In 1944, the French decided to simplify the postal administration of their West African holding by issuing stamps inscribed -Afrique Occidentale Francaise- (French West Africa) for all eight of their West African colonies, including Senegal. The center of administration for French West Africa was at Dakar in Senegal, so I include these issues in my Senegal collection. Then the "Winds of Change" blew across Africa and in 1960 Senegal and the French Sudan formed the short-lived independent Federation of Mali before splitting into the independent nations of Senegal and Mali. Though catalogs generally list the issues of the Federation of Mali as the first issues of Mali, I personally place the Federation issues of 1959-1960 in with Senegal since the adminstrative center was in Dakar. So my Senegal album contains in reality four different postal administrations :
Colonial Senegal (1886-1944)
French West Africa (1944-1958)
Federation of Mali (1959-1960)
Independent Senegal (since 1960)
Of course, my academic background as a historian probably explains why I choose this kind of organization!
Speaking of albums, how do I store my collections. In my first philatelic life before I sold my collection to fund a business venture, I used traditional pages and mounts (I hate hinges with a passion, and would mount hinged stamps in mounts, figuring the poor hinged stamps had suffered enough damage already and did not need any more during my stewardship of their possesion. I had a complete set of Scott Internationals, Brown Vintage Reproduction pages for up to 1940, and then all the volumes up to 2001.
When I returned to active collecting after 2009, one of the first things I looked at was if there was a better, more economic way to store my collection. Stamp mounts are expensive, and the time taken to cut and mount stamps with them would not be the best use of my limited free time. I eventually settles on using Lighthouse Vario Stockpages. They are flexible, come in an arrange of pocket sizes (though I mostly use the 5 and 6 pocket pages. They fit most single stamps nicely. More recent stamp issues, especially se-tenant blocks, generally fit well in 4S pages). And at least in the USA, Vario pages are CHEAP, with retailers on Amazon and ebay regularly selling packs of 25 pages (that is 50 sides, since the pages are 2-sided) for under US$15. And as Vario pages fit in standard 3-ring binders (though Lighthouse also makes very sturdy binders that come with slipcase to keep the dust out. Online retailers sell these reasonably as well, I can source packs of 3 of the 3" D-Ring binders and slipcases that will hold approximately 90 pages for US$75 and I am currently using these to hold my collections). So its Vario for me all the way now, and I LOVE it!
But, you may ask, what about organizing the stamps on pages? Stockpages don't have illustrations! That raises an important question - what catalog do I use. Should I stick to Scott, which has made leaps and bounds in listing variety material in its Classic Specialized Catalog which, while not cheap, is definitely worth the investment, and I have a copy of the 2015 edition. However, having the ability to read French (among several languages) and being rather OCD about being able to have a space for every stamp, including varieties, there are also specialized catalogs to consider. Personally I LOVE specialized catalogs. I may not own all the varieties of every stamp ever issued, but I can at least leave spaces for them, and maybe one day I will win the lottery! For the French Empire (and France) the choice I made is the Maury catalogs. They are VERY detailed in terms of listing varietes, including a LOT of items NOT listed in Scott, from the dozens of overprint variations on the 1904 Guadeloupe surcharge provisionals to the several hundred Parcel Post stamps issued released by the colonial Algerian postal administration (which Scott does not list, though it does list the mainland French ones - why not Algeria's Scott hmmmm???) The Maury catalog splits the French empire into 4 different volumes organized primarily by region. They are a gold mine of information and it is how I organize my collection.
But how does that tell me where to put a stamp once I get it. To solve that conundrum I simply created excel diagrams with the Maury number (or Scott for post-independence issues Maury does not cover) in each cell. Vario pages have rows 215 mm long (height depends on number of rows per page). You can fit 8 standard 25x22mm definitives on a row using Lighthouse pages, while bigger stamps like the French colonial pictorial can fit 4 to 7 depending on the orientation of the stamp. So its just a matter of creating a "map" and then using it as I get stamps. I print the pages out and highlight the numbers that I acquire, as shown below for Senegal :
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