What do the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood, the Queen and tennis player Maria Sharapova have in common? Along with an increasing number of British investors, they collect stamps.
With uncertainty hanging over the stock market and with the Olympics, for which the Royal Mail has released a special set of collectable stamps, drawing near, the stamp-collecting market is a hive of activity.
This week a profits prediction from Stanley Gibbons, the stamp dealer, showed that, in these turbulent times, more and more Britons are opting for alternative means of investment. It reckons its profits will swell to £5 m this year.
“We have had people calling up from all over the world saying they want to put £1 m into stamps, asking us to advise them,” said Michael Hall, the chief executive .
~Novel Serialisation: Heavens Fire~
Stamps can be big money-spinners. Last year, the most valuable stamp collection in the world was put up for auction. The collection, owned by former Velcro chairman Sir Humphrey Cripps, has yet to be completely sold, but the total value is expected to exceed £20m. Included in the collection were two Post Office Mauritius “penny blue” stamps, which sold for £1m. Sir Humphrey had bought the stamps for £29,000 in 1972.
Sir Humphrey’s collection may have been the most valuable, but his “penny blues” are far from the rarest stamps around.
The world’s most expensive stamp puts even famous artworks in the shade. Printed in Sweden in 1855, the tiny Treskilling Yellow is thought to be the most valuable thing in existence by weight and volume. Weighing just 0.03 grams, the three-shilling stamp is now worth £5 m. It is so prized because it was printed in yellow by mistake, and should in fact have been green.
Stamp collecting is dwindling in popularity among young collectors – Kidstamp, the national organisation for junior stamp collectors, now has only 1,000 members, compared with as many as 100,000 who were signed up to a similar organisation in the early Nineties – but its reputation as a viable alternative investment is growing.
You can now buy a single portfolio of stamps, much as you would buy a single investment fund holding a collection of stamps.
Stanley Gibbons offers various “capital protected” investment plans. Customers need to deposit at least £10,000 for between five and 10 years. This buys a portfolio of between five and seven rare stamps which can be kept at home or stored and insured at Gibbons’s Guernsey office at no charge. At the end of the term, if the stamps have not risen in value when compared with the prices listed in its own catalogue, the company will refund investors’ money. But as with other “alternative assets”, this is an unregulated area, so customers’ money is not covered by any ombudsman or compensation scheme, and nor is the company’s marketing literature regulated.
For stamp collectors who wish to take the more traditional route, ukphilately.org.uk, the website sponsored by the National Philatelic Society, suggests starting to collect “thematically”. Unless you are lucky enough to find a very rare and valuable single stamp, collections of stamps are likely to have greater value.
Examples of thematic collections include royalty, where stamps mark births, marriages and deaths of members of a royal family, a certain period in time, or personal interests such as sports, animals or aeroplanes.
The society recommends aspiring stamp collectors trawl local stamp fairs and philatelic exhibitions such as Stampex and Philatex, which are held every spring and autumn in London.
“Make friends with the dealers – more are specialising in thematic items and are keen to help you find the more elusive material,” the website advises.
“Don’t be afraid to ask other collectors for help and advice. Stamp magazines are a useful resource, and try to build up your own philatelic and thematic library for future reference.”
Individual stamps to look out for include the Penny Black – which, although renowned, is not actually rare. Sixty-eight million were printed and, even in excellent condition, they can cost as little as £10.
Characteristics to prize include stamps without a perforated edge. Perforations did not appear until 1854, before which stamps were cut from their sheet with scissors.
As with all collectables, quality and condition are all. Stamps are “graded” to describe condition and value. Grades run from “superb”, where the stamp is considered perfect in all respects and the finest quality, to “poor”, where the design is off centre, perforations cut into the design and the stamp itself may be torn or damaged.
“Superb”, “very fine” and “fine/very fine” are worth collecting, but “fine” and “poor” are not.
One practical advantage to stamp collecting is storage. While valuable items should be kept under lock and key and named on your insurance policy, even the Treskilling Yellow could be kept in an A4 stamp album.
