"Jud" wrote in message
...
There once was a time when stamps were very collectible, but the US
government came out with too many issues in a year (hear that US
Mint?), values and interest in the hobby went down. If I had shown any
interest in stamps I could have come into 2 large collections from my
grandparents. Both my mother's father, and my father's mother were
presidents of a local coin club at different times. My father
collected First Day Covers. After he died my stepmother went to sell
the collection and wasn't even offered face value! These FDC's went
back to the 1920's. My grandparent's stamp collections were sold for
quite a bit less than they paid for them over a 50 year period. Stamp
collecting is on life support, prognosis not good. Coin collecting is
in the ambulance headed to the hospital.

Agreed. Trying to sell the coins in the albums and envelopes your
grandparents might have saved fifty years ago would likely be frustrating
today unless professionally they were graded and slabbed (not your
grandparents). The ridiculous growing assortment of grade categories for
each annual Mint-issued "for collectors" item is confounding many of those
who had been building sets. I feel sorry for someone on a limited budget
who has been collecting annual proof Eagles since their beginning. Now, if
they plan to continue, they will have a hard time ignoring the special
reverse proofs. And they surely will be excited over prospects of possibly
having one or more annual "special" proofs in the future.

I'd be surprised if this doesn't encourage more people to retreat into the
past and concentrate more on historic coinage rather than on everything the
Mint comes up with each year. That may be one good consequence.