One of the difficulties that philately has at the top levels is a lack of material. For most collectors this presents no problem. US collectors, for instance, mostly buy the same stamps to a several hundred dollars (or sometimes several thousand dollars) price point per stamp. When it gets more costly than that they begin to collect a different area or put collecting on the shelf. For those collectors, stamps that they need are usually available, especially in the Internet period when pretty much every dealer stock is always available to pretty much every collector.
But there are areas of philately where it is not money that limits the interest of collectors but the fact that that there is so little material, and that material is tied up long term in collections, thus unavailable for newer collectors. This point is well illustrated by the philatelic specialty of Pennsylvania stampless covers. The great collection of this area was sold at auction in the early 1970s and by far the largest buyer was a young collector from Philadelphia who, though he has added some significant pieces over the years, bought the core of his collection at this auction forty years ago. Numerous items in this collection are unique or by far the finest known. The collector is in his seventies and still going strong and it is doubtful that the collection will be sold soon. Here is a major state collecting area that has been closed off to new collectors at the most serious level for a lifetime. When the collection comes up for sale (and I wish the collector a long life-he has already had a prosperous one) many collectors will see items that they never knew existed. And then-if you don’t buy them then-they will be locked away in collections for another generation.