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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lrbguy, post: 3584220, member: 88829&quot;]I hear this a lot from people who have a rather stilted view of what that hobby is all about at its core.&nbsp; Did you ever progress from being a &quot;stamp collector&quot; to becoming a &quot;philatelist.&quot;&nbsp; Night and day.&nbsp; If your idea of stamp collecting revolved around going to the post office and buying new issues at face, or ordering packets of cheap stamps as advertised by dealers, then mounting them onto pages you wanted to &quot;fill up,&quot; then you never grew to the point where you really <i>got it</i>.&nbsp; You and a good 90% of people who once tried it.&nbsp; I have no illusion about trying to change that, but I do want to put it into perspective.&nbsp;&nbsp; I put these out for all who read this and feel justified in trashing philately.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Of the money you spent on that hobby, what portion was spent with nationally known and respected auction houses?&nbsp; How often did you prepare an exhibit for any kind of competition, be it local, national, or international?&nbsp; How many publications did you read or write for?&nbsp; Were you a supporter of any of the national organizations/clubs, or even a local one?&nbsp; Did you develop special expertise in any aspect of stamp creation or the history of their use?&nbsp; Did you do anything to build a personal philatelic library?&nbsp; However you answered those questions, compare those answers to how you would respond to similar questions about collecting ancient coins.&nbsp; One you know, the other you don&#039;t. One didn&#039;t connect for you; one did.&nbsp; Let&#039;s leave it at that.</p><p><br /></p><p>But for me, a large part of the intrigue in both these collecting hobbies is that they lead to bigger and more diverse things.&nbsp; It was my pursuit of stamps that led me to photography, which I use for coins too.&nbsp; Stamp collecting challenged me to a deeper understanding of paper and how it becomes what it is.&nbsp; Adjunct to that is the study of patent proposals which resulted in a plethora of experimental essays.&nbsp; Mindbending stuff, that.&nbsp; Ancient coins have led me into the chemistry of metals, not only for coin creation, but also preservation.&nbsp; That put me in good stead as a volunteer staffer at the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago.&nbsp; Which in turn led me to the pursuit of antiquities for both understanding and acquiring them (for a while). All of this and more sprang from a seed that was sown when I was a Cub Scout seeking an arrow point for &quot;collecting things.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>How you&#039;re going to see all that depends entirely upon the depth of your experience.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I would agree that most stamp collectors did not get into philately deeply enough to &quot;get it.&quot;&nbsp; But the characterization of it as a profit driven fad based on self promotional hype fails to look at the historical realities of its origination and subsequent development.&nbsp; You stayed at the surface. Who made the more lasting impact, John Walter Scott, or John N. Luff?&nbsp; Henry Ellis Harris, or Stanley Ashbrook?&nbsp; Washington Press or Amos Press?&nbsp; It depends on what you are looking at, and what you are looking for.</p><p><br /></p><p>Philately is returning to a niche it held at the beginning of the 20th century - that of a manic pursuit of trivia loved by a few and ignored by the masses.&nbsp; It is also morphing into yet higher levels of historical research now that searchable databases are becoming easier to access.&nbsp; But philately in the US and Europe today does not claim the mass appeal that is shown among countries of the third world where the crowds sometimes outpace the venues.&nbsp; That change is good for some things and not so good for others.&nbsp; How you look at it depends upon what you want.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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