Thoughts on collecting stamps nowadays .:. EN/RU

I am being flooded with the steam of incoming lots I obtained, and spend a lot of time sorting out my new acquisitions, giving them proper place in my stamps album, watching the previous ones. Hours and hours of time pleasurably spent. The thing is its a non-stop movement on the road with no end. There is no goal to achieve and stop at. Human desires cannot be fully satisfied - it's like a horizon: achieving some goals, where you find yourself you begin to see others, that is, in this particular case: to want the same stamps in better quality, or to want other stamps, expanding the theme of collecting or time frames...

I really not figured out yet how exactly I should shape my stamps posts. Should I just display a photo of each new stamp acquired? I'm afraid it's not very interesting and does not attract much me personally...

With this letter (it combined 20 different lots from a seller) I received dozen Sverige stamps (from 1911 to 1925), dozen stamps of the first Palestine issues (1921, 1927)

...and a few others - like Austrian porto stamps from 1908 series, Nederlands stamp from 1923 dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Queen Willhelmina's reign, to name a few.

NB - speaking of Holland, I should note: I am a big fan of Dutch design. The Dutch have design in their blood, thats for sure! And its not some Millenium era achievement, we can see it much, much earlier.

Anyway, now I want to share with you a small and funny story that happened to me this week. First of all, I must admit that I play video games. Yes! And I am connected with a dozen friends on the Steam gaming platform. This week, one of my friends in Steam chat greeted me and asked what I was doing now (of course, he hinted that if I was not busy with anything, then he was ready to invite me to play one of the shooters together).

My answer surprised him quite a bit! I told him that I was currently working on my stamps, putting them in an album.

The man was surprised and asked me again what I meant.

Then I sent him a photo of what the album (stamp folder) looked like, and how it contained stamps, and how tempting beautiful old stamps looked. Vintage is attractive!

And here we switched places - my friend surprised me: he said, he initially misunderstood my words about sorting out stamps, like it was a video game, another reality simulator. Lol!

And here I come to the philosophical part of my post. Modern generations are consumers. They do not collect old things, they are used to throwing them away and buying new ones - instant and disposable. And manufacturers of things help them with this, they do not produce anything pleasant and long-lasting, long-lived, that can be passed on to your children and grandchildren. Few of them even held these stamps in their hands and understand what I am talking about!

And when their grandfather, who collected stamps all his life, dies, his album (or albums), preserving valuable historical memory, is sent to a second-hand store, and sometimes even to the trash. The most cunning sell the inherited collections on specialized sites or on eBay, stupidly monetizing it, turning the collections into money. Recently I came across a note in a local newspaper that one person working at a waste paper recycling plant, among the incoming paper waste found a full! album! with stamps! which some idiot "thriftily" sent for recycling, instead of throwing in the trash. Can you imagine such a thing?.. the case is unique on the one hand, and quite typical on the other...

So, do you think that in this case - the demand for stamps is falling? Old generations are dying out, new ones are not interested in stamps? Not quite so. On the one hand, stamps are still attractive as a means of investment. (Remember, we live in a world of inflation, and it only moves in one direction!) Some particularly gifted smart guys start speculating in stamps, and yes, it is indeed a profitable business... as is speculating in works of art.

On the other hand... my personal experience of participating in online auctions shows that not a single lot with really interesting, vintage, beautiful stamps that have value goes unnoticed. When the starting price is low, every time during the process there are many people willing to participate in the fight for the stamps. Very often the final sale price soars into space. Therefore, it is impossible to say that "nobody needs stamps today" - on the contrary. Only boring, trivial, widely distributed stamps of the 20th century are not really needed by anyone... but even for them there is demand.

Below is the version for my Russian readers.

Во всяком случае, сейчас я хочу поделиться с вами маленькой и смешной историей, которая случилась со мной на этой неделе. Во первых, я должен признаться, что я играю в видеоигры. Да! И я соединен с дюжиной друзей на игровой платформе Steam. На этой неделе один из друзей в Стим-чате поприветствовал меня и спросил что я сейчас делаю (конечно, он намекал что если я ничем не занят, то он готов пригласить меня поиграть вместе в один из шутеров).

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