Dedicated philatelists pored over boxes and binders filled with stamps during the show on Saturday and Sunday, looking for the perfect ones to add to their collections.
Don Dillon, 80, said he has been collecting stamps off and on for about 60 years.
“I guess I have around 7,000 stamps,” he said. “That's really rather a modest collection.”
He said he prefers to focus on stamps that are no longer produced.
“They keep putting out so many new issues that it's almost impossible to keep up with them,” he said. “I focus on the pre-cancels. They don't really make new ones so it's easier to keep up.”
Some collectors look for particular countries or images, while others look for stamps within a theme.
Karl and Rosemarie Leasure searched for stamps related to World War II or having a military theme.
Karl, 69, has been collecting stamps since he was an 8-year-old boy in Germany.
“I buy the historic stamps and sell them at the gun show,” he said. “People go nuts for the World War II stamps. I always tell my customers I will turn them into stamp collectors yet.”
Another collector, Ernie Julian, 58, said “A collection is never finished.”
He said he has been collecting stamps since his grandmother started him in the hobby at age 9.
“I come to this show every year,” he said. “I never miss it.”
Julian owns two large U.S. collections and a six-volume citation foreign collection. But the pride of his collection is the U.S. portion of his worldwide zeppelin stamp collection.
“The money you put into it, you never lose,” he said of stamp collecting. “It's like putting money in the bank.”
While the stamps may not lose value, some of the vendors at the event indicated they probably wouldn't increase a lot, either.
“The market has been pretty flat since the 1980s,” said John Findling, a partner with Collector's Stamps Ltd. in Louisville since 1979.
“The hobby is changing,” he said. “The Internet is changing the way people collect. And fewer and fewer people are getting into the hobby.”
Ed Davidson, owner of Davidson's Stamp Service in Indianapolis, agreed.
“A lot fewer kids are getting into the hobby, which is a shame,” he said. “Kids get introduced to it and it's all fun and games, but they actually learn something along the way.”
He said he finds the hobby to be a great stress reliever, saying, “At some point along the way to adulthood, you find out there's an awful lot of stress out there.”
When he began looking for a way to relax, he remembered his childhood stamp collection and asked his mother to ship it to him.
“It became a passion,” he said.
Source: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20110109/NEWS02/301100018/Stamp+collectors+search+for+treasures+at+Clarksville+show
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