I buy a lot of coins online, so I get a lot of packages in the mail. And I don't know if other people have noticed, but it seems like a lot of coin sellers mail their packages with interesting, older stamps. I'm not a stamp collector, though I went through a brief stamp phase when I was about 8 years old, but I've started saving any envelopes I get with old looking stamps on them. I guess they must not be worth anything or else people wouldn't use them, but there's more to collecting than just the monetary value. I've also been buying coins from overseas recently and I've gotten some neat stamps from there. Has anyone else noticed this connection between coins and stamps? Here's a few I got in the mail today. Two from Greece, one Ireland and one Australia.
One big reason is that at almost every coin and Stamp Show I have attended, has stacks of unused postage stamps, 3,4,5 through 10 cents for sale at a discount of as much as 20% or more. It is rumored among stamp collectors that certain old stamps have a very low ratio of the machine rejecting underposted mail, something to do with the type of fluorescent coding, but I wouldn't cheat the PO. Why doi they sell under face? Because it isn't worth a worker's time manually putting them on with online postage and meters these days. Maybe someday, you will get a discount for using plastic so they don't have to count coins~~ Oh wait, some charge cards do that already
Still keeping a large album full of stamps from 1980s and earlier, collected them as a kid for about 3 years, then totally lost interest. Couldn't care less about stamps now, but I keep the stamps I get on envelopes nowadays, not sure why. Got a hefty bag full of them, but nothing special, just regular issues from 2009-2012, as far as I noticed... Maybe I should got through them, look more carefully. There got to be stamps from at least 12-15 countries.
I have a couple of stamp albums and a box full of loose stamps. Same as with coins, I like the older ones and am turned off by all the modern ones made just for the collector. We also have a forum for stamp collectors which is populated by some of the regulars from CoinTalk who enjoy stamps too.
I think the reason that you see this is that coin dealers buy tons of old stamps at below face value and their customers like to get packages with old stamps on them. For them it is a no brainer to save on postage and make their customers happy.
I've even had one or two people include an envelope full of old stamps with my coin order. Either they want to get rid of them or else they are hoping to pique my interest and get me to buy stamps from them.
I still keep my stamps in albums, boxes and whatever packaging they were issued in. They were all from when I was a kid. Interesting enough a few months ago an international seller stuck a bunch of old world stamps on a envelope. It looked really cool with all the cancellation marks.
