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Still the same ol' song and dance
By Bret Evans
Time and time again, I am told that stamp collecting is a greying hobby that will inevitably die out in the not-too-distant future.
And time and time again, I repeat that I don't buy that for a second.
This time around, I decided to take a few minutes out and go through some back issues; Canadian Stamp News, Volume 1, to be precise.
The first few issues were all about CAPEX, and the new magazine, but after that, I went through about 12 months of Canadian stamp collecting and came to two conclusions.
First off, Don Thomas, the founding publisher, liked getting his picture in his own paper.
Second, most things really haven't changed much.
I felt like I was reading my own work. The pages were the usual mix of good and bad news, content and discontent. There were issues: Canada Post's philatelic service never seemed to satisfy all the collectors, catalogue values were way too high, dealers had too much influence in price guides, not enough was being done to promote the hobby, and more young blood was needed.
Gee, sounds like half the conversations I have at a typical stamp show.
That's my point. CSN was launched more than 30 years ago, and things haven't changed much.
Sure, you saw a few young faces, just like today, but for the most part, the photographs in CSN portrayed stamp collectors as a group of older men. The "Young Turks" back then were in their late 30s to early 40s.
Some universal truths never change.
While youngsters may have fun collecting stamps, organized philately is not a young man's game.
It makes sense. Sir Rowland Hill himself, father of the modern post, didn't even get interested in the postal service until he was 40, and William Mulready was 54 when his sheets were introduced.
That doesn't mean we should be complacent. Many current collectors started out at a young age, because of cheap store promotions, foreign stamps in the family mail, or because another family member was already involved. Of course, cheap is a relative term. My first stamp album cost only 98 cents, but back then my allowance was about a dollar a week. When you add up the costs of an album, stamps, and hinges, the whole enterprise probably required an initial cash outlay of several weeks' allowance.
Today, there are few stores promoting inexpensive anything, and there isn't a wide variety of stamps in regular use. So we do need to promote the hobby in any way we can.
But I really think that 30 years from now, stamp collectors will be talking about the good ol' days, back around the turn of the century.
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Switching topics, I recently received an item through Canada News Wire, a pay for distribution service, that warned me Canada Post had a secret agenda.
Sent by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the item warned that plans included closing post offices, suspending rural delivery, deregulation, and maybe even abandoning the universal service obligation: the concept that every Canadian is entitled to access to mail and postal services.
I'm not going to take sides on this one, because I never supported the idea of turning our postal service into a Crown corporation in the first place.
However, it does point out a related and undeniable truth.
The way in which we use mail is changing, as it always has. In our youth, the "Post Office" was a branch of the federal government. For many of us now, it is a friendly face at our neighbourhood drug store.
So some change, for better or worse, is inevitable.
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