Fifty years ago, philately took an annual summer vacation that began about Memorial Day and lasted until September. Before pervasive air conditioning, it was unpleasant to work on stamps during the summer heat. High humidity and temperature make stamps stick to your fingers when you handled them. And gum becomes tacky in the heat and humidity and easy to mar and damage with handling. Collectors usually put away their stamps for the summer months. Our company, in an attempt to maintain some summer business, use to offer a summer discount of 20%, but even so sales fell off quite dramatically.
Freon was invented in 1928 and commercial air conditioning (to maintain cooler temperatures in the summer) began in earnest in the 1930s. Most people’s first experience with air conditioning was at the movies as large movie theaters were among the first businesses to offer air conditioning to their customers to keep from having to close during the hot summer months. Hospitals were among early users of AC too, as cooler temperatures promoted better outcomes with patients. But AC in ordinary homes came slowly. Upscale new homes built as late as 1970 were often not air conditioned and AC wasn’t nationally pervasive until about 1980. The real change was the Northern retirement migration to the South and Southwest which depended on making southern temperatures more comfortable to Northern retirees. Once air conditioning became common in new homes it was only a matter of time before people refitted older homes with air conditioning for comfort and as a selling tool.
Today air conditioning is nearly as common as heat. The effect on philately has been dramatic. The only fall off in collecting during the summer is related to people being away from home for vacations or outdoors more because of later sunset times. But handling stamps in an air conditioned environment has made our hobby a year round one.