I just spent a whooping 3,000€ to buy myself new laptop. I agree its serious sum to put into something that will be usable for just 3-5 years. For some reason I cannot imagine myself spending anything similar to stamps though they are pretty guaranteed to keep their value better than any kind of consumer electronics.
Published on April 1st 2011 | Read more.... | 19 Comments »
PostZegelBlog has an interesting article about how Dutch special catalog NVPH’s latest edition cut catalog values by third for virtually all Netherlands stamps issued between 1946 and early 1990s 
This got me thinking how the stamp collecting world would react if commonly used catalogs – Michel, Scott or Stanley Gibbons -did something similar in larger scope
Published on September 14th 2010 | Read more.... | 9 Comments »
Most stamp catalogs do a somewhat decent job in displaying the various quality levels of cancelled stamps. However, IMO there are surprisingly large international variations to what is desirable / non-desirable.
Published on February 2nd 2010 | Read more.... | 31 Comments »
Not all stamps are born equal. There can be lots of minor quality flux that fits into printers guidelines of acceptable variation and printing conditions. In addition there are all sorts of errors, freaks and oddities (like printers waste) that ends up one way or to another to stamp collectors albums.
Published on January 29th 2010 | Read more.... | 4 Comments »
Keeping on eye for the quality is something I think many collectors do. Personally I admit that I’m in constant process of enhancing the quality of items in my collection. For the next couple of posts I’ll be writing up some notes about quality in general as well as diving more in-depth into world of measuring quality (grading). Though stamps and collectors have been around for 160 years, this topic continues to be still under heavy debate (to my amazement).
Published on January 27th 2010 | Read more.... | No Comments »
Like many stamp collectors, I don’t collect stamps as investment. For me they are fascinating small pieces of paper that I love sorting and placing in my stock books and other stamp album pages. But I also acknowledge that stamps do have a financial side. On a lower end, it is very easy to finance part of the hobby expenses by selling unwanted (duplicate etc) issues. And on the higher end, stamps are investment items comparable to gold, jewelry and fine art.
Published on November 2nd 2009 | Read more.... | 10 Comments »
As a worldwide collector I have few practical guidelines that keep me on my (somewhat limited and small) annual budget.
Published on September 10th 2009 | Read more.... | 9 Comments »
I know I’ve written in the past a long post about the value of stamp collection. But since the topic is amongst most read (and also amongst most requested in private comments) it is IMHO worth a revisit. This piece tries to provide a very simple, fast and somewhat accurate way for non-philatelist to get a rough value estimate for average quality collection containing used worlwide stamps.
Published on September 1st 2009 | Read more.... | 13 Comments »
Scott Stamp Catalogue has hit the nail with their current ad campaign running (at least) in Linns. IMO the simple question “Which of these stamps went up in value?” summarises a whole lot of the driving forces in stamp catalogue business.
Published on August 18th 2009 | Read more.... | 2 Comments »
During the weekend I bumped into a couple of very interesting conversations (and articles) about stamp market values and collection estimates. I know most collectors are interested about stamp values at some level, me included. So what’s latest story with a very simple question: how much is a stamp collection worth? Below are few very different views on the topic.
Published on April 28th 2009 | Read more.... | 61 Comments »
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