Thematics

For years, thematic philately has been a poorly regarded step sister to traditional philately. Serious collectors collected by country, emphasizing classics and postal history. Less serious collectors collected cats or dogs on stamps. Somewhere in the middle having semi highbrow status was the so called classic thematics- Olympics, Boy Scouts, UPU and Red Cross.These were themes that had stamps issued to them early (in the case of Olympics the first issue was Greece in 1896) and so attained a high standing among serious philatelists. For years many professionals had expected to see a shift away from the traditional topical collecting to thematic collecting that was more germane to today’s collectors. And we are starting to see that shift with our current generation of collectors who are beginning to collect stamps with themes that are part of their life. Now, serious collectors want bicycling and golf and tennis stamps. They are sometimes their main collection, but, more often, an entertaining sideline in their overall stamp collecting. My sense of a good investment play would be to find and purchase the early worldwide sets that are associated with the baby boomers professional and leisure activities. This is what these collectors will gravitate towards in the years ahead. To the ones I’ve mentioned above add chess, science fiction and mystery writers, and film and film makers. Collectors often collect things that they enjoy in real life and identifying what the boomers are going to want could be lucrative fun.