Commentary: Top 5 online resources for stamp collectors

The digital revolution of the 1990s introduced an array of challenges to stamp collecting that the hobby is still grappling with today. In particular, email's displacement of snail mail is universally regarded as the original sin from which all subsequent evils flowed. As snail mail, once the primary gateway into the hobby of stamp collecting, slipped further and further into obsolescence in inverse correlation to email's rise, a generation was born into a reality where the very notion of what a stamp is was already fading into obscurity.

In the larger context of collecting generally, snail mail's decline was but one early symptom of the shift undergone in our emotional attachment patterns from physical property to digital property. Whereas prior to the digital revolution memories were preserved in physical form and it was fundamentally the physical form that was valued, the new paradigm sees less and less value in the accumulation of physical mementos when their digital equivalents can be stored and shared just as easily if not more so. Letters, pictures, books, and games are examples of experiences that were once manifested physically and are in various stages of transitioning to digital format and losing their original physical, tangible essence.

Experiences that fail in navigating this transition are destined to struggle against competing experiences that navigated it successfully or that never had to since they were digital to begin with. Has stamp collecting adapted to the digital age? Can it? Stamp collecting faces obstacles on two fronts. First, stamps by their nature only have value as physical property. A stamp's objective value is determined by one or a combination of two factors, namely face value and scarcity value, and both these factors are meaningless in a digital context. Meanwhile, a stamp only has subjective value when the person in possession of it owns it in its original, physical form. Second, traditional postage stamps are in all practical respects useless since postal authorities have innovated more convenient methods of accomplishing what stamps were originally intended for, i.e. paying to have an item delivered via the postal service.

The simple answer to the questions above, then, is no -- at least not in the same sense that "adapt" applies to the other cases mentioned. With the exception of Austria's crypto-stamp, a first-of-its-kind digital postage stamp issued earlier this year that will either revolutionize philately or be forgotten as little more than a marketing gimmick, stamps have not transitioned and cannot transition to the digital age. Ultimately, unless humankind's fondness for sending greeting cards and photos via snail mail is rekindled, stamps and stamp collecting will never flourish as they did prior to email's arrival on the scene. Recognizing that this is the reality, a different question needs to be formulated: How can stamp collecting survive in the digital age? This question has a more reassuring answer: by harnessing the power of the internet, which is to say by piggybacking on the same technology that has been stamp collecting's mortal enemy and converting it, at least partially, into a platform that enhances the stamp collecting experience.

What follows are five examples of projects that successfully merge rich and engaging philatelic content with the dynamic interface of the internet.

1. Colnect

Colnect ("Collect and Connect") is a comprehensive online database that doubles as a social network with a public forum and the ability to explore other members' collections. As an online database, the site allows users to browse an inventory of hundreds of thousands of stamps from every country and territory in the world, add those stamps to one's virtual collection, or mark them as targets for future acquisition. As a social network, if Strava is the Facebook of outdoor sports, Colnect is the Facebook of collecting. The site makes finding and engaging with other collectors both in one's own country and in other parts of the world easy: a dropdown "Collectors" menu offers multiple options for defining search parameters, and the bottom of each stamp page features a list of users who own or wish to own the stamp being viewed.

Although stamps constitute the largest category of collectibles on Colnect, they are by no means the only category. Basically, if enough people in the world collect X and X is catalogable, then X will have a category on Colnect. That there are categories for coins, comic books and baseball cards will come as no surprise; but when considering that fruit stickers, admission tickets and sugar packets are equally valid categories, the scope of the word "collector" is expanded to such an extent as to encompass literally every civilized inhabitant on the planet. With new categories being added periodically and existing ones being updated and refined daily, Colnect's potential is limitless. The attention stamp collecting stands to gain from Colnect's growing popularity bodes well for the hobby's future. Meanwhile, in the present, every collector who holds a stamp in his fingertips has at those same fingertips access to a resource and a community that are unprecedentedly vast.

Facebook: Colnect (page)

2. Virtual Stamp Club

When Lloyd A. de Vries was awarded the 2010 Kehr "Future of Philately" award, his "role in founding the Virtual Stamp Club" was cited for "making him a pioneer in promoting philately through a medium that directly points to the future of philately."¹ According to information on his website, de Vries founded the Virtual Stamp Club in 1996 as an outgrowth of an older online philatelic discussion board from which he felt compelled to move on in pursuit of more ambitious goals. "I always saw the Internet as a great boon to distribution of philatelic news and information," he explained in 2014.²

The Virtual Stamp Club is a treasure trove of information for collectors of all levels -- beginner and veteran, amateur and pro, casual and dedicated. However, the range and depth of content on the site is arguably too much for its own good. With a menu structure that is rudimentary at best, a search box that's tucked away in a corner, and a table of contents that's only partially functional, finding one's way around the Virtual Stamp Club can be a challenge. Most of the valuable content is found not on the main page but in the "Article Archives" section and in the news blog -- the latter of which has its own separate search feature. It is in these two sections that such insightful articles as "Becoming A Specialist — And Trying Exhibiting" by John M. Hotchner and "Making Time For Philately" by John L. Leszak can be found.

Facebook: Virtual Stamp Club (page) | Virtual Stamp Club (group)

3. Philatelic Pursuits

Like the Virtual Stamp Club, Philatelic Pursuits is a one-man project. The man is Mark Joseph Jochim and the project is a guide to many of the world's new and upcoming stamp issues. Jochim describes himself as "an American currently living and teaching English in Phuket, Thailand"³ who has been collecting stamps "on-and-off" since "Sometime around my tenth birthday."⁴ Philatelic Pursuits was launched in 2015 as an offshoot of a personal blog about Jochim's life in Southeast Asia that he felt was getting sidetracked too frequently by stamp-related content, and it is one of three different philatelic blogs he maintains.

Sooner or later every stamp collector, unless he specializes exclusively in vintage stamps, wishes there were a single news source that aggregated the most important philatelic updates from all the world's postal authorities. Depending on one's method of counting, around 230 such authorities issued stamps in 2019, and for a single collector to try and keep up with that many websites would be a tall task, to say the least. Philatelic Pursuits doesn't encompass 230 stamp issuing entities, but it comes the closest of any other website out there. An exceedingly handy feature of Philatelic Pursuits is its use of Google Calendar, which allows visitors to view an interactive breakdown of future stamp issues by month and import the data to their own calendars with a single mouse click.

Facebook: A Stamp A Day (page) | The Stamps of 2020 (group)

4. StampWorld

Stamp catalogs serve two purposes. They facilitate the process of identifying stamps by assigning each stamp a unique alphanumeric string according to issuing entity and year, and they suggest a monetary value for the stamp depending on its condition. The key word in the preceding sentence's second half is "suggest," since the price a stamp commands on the market is a product of supply and demand rather than what a catalog publisher determined it to be. Of what use is a catalog price if a stamp's value is subject to context-specific transactions? Stamp dealers use catalog prices as authoritative reference points when selling to clients, under the assumption that if the client is ordering from them his other options are limited; and collectors use catalog prices as standards of comparison when trading stamps of varying currencies and inflation periods among each other. StampWorld invites visitors to register a free online account for full access to its site under the assertion that it is "The most complete stamp catalogue in the world."

Facebook: StampWorld (page) | StampWorld Members Forum (group)

5. Freestampmagazine

Freestampmagazine functions as the content branch of Freestampcatalogue, which is the online catalog of PostBeeld, a stamp and coin retailer based in the Netherlands. The articles at Freestampmagazine, which go back as far as 2013, are in-depth explorations of stamps that typically revolve around themes like prominent design features and geography. New articles generally appear at a rate of once every week or two, and their enthusiastic and unbiased tone suggests that a genuine love of stamp collecting is their impetus and not self-promotion.

Facebook: Freestampmagazine (page)

🏆 Honorable mentions

Although more limited in their scope and application, these are internet initiatives and resources that nonetheless go a long way toward enhancing the stamp collecting experience:

• Exploring Stamps
  
  "My name's Graham, and if you aren't familiar with the show, let me tell you how it works. You see, I have this box filled with used and unused stamps from all over the world. In each episode I take out one stamp at random -- well, mostly random -- and I explore the fascinating histories, cultures, people, and moments that the stamp has captured. So why not join me on this journey?"⁵


• Going Postal
  
  "Going Postal is a monthly program about stamp collecting and postal history hosted by Henry Lukas. Henry is the director of the Spellman Museum on the campus of Regis College in Weston, MA."


• Stamp Show Here Today
  
  "Stamp Show Here Today is a podcast dedicated to stamps and stamp collecting. Brought to you by Scott Murphy, Caj Brejtfus, Tom Schilling, and Dawn Niesley-Goss. Features weekly episodes that include current stamp news, stamp guides, expertization techniques, professional opinions, beginner's advice, and more. Stamp Show Here Today is meant for stamp collectors of all ages and levels of experience."⁶


• eBay, Delcampe, WOPA+, Facebook

eBay -- because it's the leading market for peer-to-peer e-commerce. Delcampe -- for the same reason, except it's more like Amazon for collectibles. WOPA+ -- like Delcampe, except it specializes in recent philatelic and numismatic issues and orders directly from the postal administrations and national mints whose products it sells. Facebook -- because many postal authorities and local philatelic societies have a Facebook presence, and following their pages is an easy way to stay up to date.

In an ideal world, when a local collector returns from a competitive international stamp exhibition with a medal, the stamp collecting community in his country would be able to view his philatelic exhibit online or at least read about it in detail. In the real world, a search for local stamp champs who have been featured in print media rarely leads to a blog, Facebook page, Instagram account, or other online presence where one can learn more about these individuals and their achievements. This is one example of the catching-up philately still has to do vis-a-vis the internet. It will fall to the next generation of philatelists, for whom the internet and social media are second nature, to continue the work begun by the pioneers listed above and develop still more innovative methods of integrating emerging technologies into the traditional philatelic experience.