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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Small Size, post: 2690358, member: 77924&quot;]At the end of the 19th Century, collecting telegraph cards used to prepay for service was a huge, international hobby. Then phone calls became cheaper and cheaper, and people stopped using telegraph cards. After most people hadn&#039;t used or even seen one for many years, the value of collectible telegraph cards collapsed, the market collapsed, and the hobby largely disappeared.</p><p>In Europe in the 1990&#039;s, collecting telephone cards to be used for payphone service was a huge, international hobby. Then cell phones made payphones obsolete, and people stopped using telephone cards. After most people hadn&#039;t used or even seen one for many years, the value of collectible telephone cards collapsed, the market collapsed, and the hobby largely disappeared.</p><p>I am currently liquidating my stamp collection, forty-odd years in the making. That&#039;s because most people don&#039;t use or even see stamps much these days, the average stamp collector is in his sixties, and so I reckon stamp collecting will soon follow in the footsteps of telegraph and telephone card collecting. If I manage to live long enough, I will probably be able to buy my stamps back for a tiny fraction of what I can sell them for today.</p><p>Coin collecting is a more august hobby, the first coin collectors probably becoming active a couple decades after the first coins were issued, in Lydia around 600 BC. That will likely make the hobby endure far beyond the time people stop using coins, as opposed to the above mentioned hobbies, that are focused on items none of which existed prior to the 1840&#039;s.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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