Stamp Coins

Stamp Coins

Minting a New Collection

From rodeo stars to Buffalo Nickels, the latest trends in stamps and coins.

Considering collecting coins? Want to start a stamp collection? If you are in it for the money, think again. “We never encourage it because it’s such a risky business,” says stamp expert Kathleen Wunderly of the American Philatelic Society. “If you want to make money, invest in real estate.”

Of course, that hasn’t stopped America’s four million philatelists, and similar warnings from numismatic mavens haven’t slowed America’s two million coin collectors, either. Both groups are drawn to the beauty and historic value of what are essentially high-grade government documents. Moreover, stamps and coins are often issued in the form of commemoratives with the sole and honest intention of enticing collectors.

No matter what your motivation is, though, bragging rights depend on knowing what’s hot. To fill you in, we’ve put together this primer of the latest trends.

Stamps: Celebrities stamps are doing boffo box office as philatelists snap up the $7 Schwarzenegger from Mali, the $1 Madonna from St. Vincent, Tanzania, and, of course, the United States.

Coins and stamps. Minted Coins. Photo: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

A new hit: Marilyn Monroe, Tanzania was first in 1991, with an oversized $7 stamp. Then came Gambia in 1993, which was soon followed by the tiny island nation of St. Vincent and, a little while later, Mali.

Cash-strapped governments like to issue commemoratives of this sort because they are rarely used for postage, which makes them a painless way of raising revenue. So far, these governments – with the help of private, multinational stamp distributors – have predicted well what philatelists will desire. All of the Marily stamps have been sold and are now available only through dealers and other collectors.

Not wanting to miss out on a good thing, the U.S. Postal Service in 1995 introduced its own Marilyn stamp, and sold the entire 400 million run within a year.

The Postal Service generated another popular stamp somewhat less intentionally when it decided to commemorate rodeo star Bill “The Bulldogger” Pickett in 1994.

Pickett, one of America’s first black rodeo stars, got his nickname in the 1930s because he could stun an enraged steer by pinching a lip nerve with a well-placed chomp. Sadly, that sort of precision was nowhere evident when the Postal Service decided to include Pickett in its “Heroes of the American West” series. Instead of portraying Pickett’s famous teeth (as well as the rest of his face) the Postal Service mistakenly based its portrait on a photo of Pickett’s brother and manager Ben.

In all of its existence, the Postal Service had not once put the wrong face on a stamp. This was the sort of rarity that stamp collectors could really sink their teeth into, especially since a mortified Postal Service had stopped the presses and recalled the 5.2 million panes that already had been released. A meager 183 panes were leaked out to a lucky few collectors.

Corrected versions of the panes were released within months, but no one cared about them. The new stamps were plentiful, accurate and easy to obtain. The remaining Ben Pickett stamps, on the other hand, were under lock and key in a warehouse in Kansas City. Collectors wanted them, the Pickett family wanted them destroyed, and the Postal Service, saying that collectors deserved access to the stamps and that Postal Service regulations forbade it from intentionally creating rarities.

The dealers lost the suit, but with permission of Pockett’s relatives the Postal Service decided to sell 150,000 of the panes by lottery for a mere $14.50 (face value plus “postage and handling”).

Stamp experts estimated at the time that a single pane would fetch over $100 in the private market because, like any good performer, Pickett had left his audience wanting more.

Coins

Numismatists trying to nickel-and-dime their way into a new collection should forget the dimes and double-check their nickels. Today’s Jefferson nickel hasn’t been through a design change since 1938, so it is possible to collect almost every mint since then just by checking out your pocket change.

The precursor to the Jefferson nickel was the Indian head buffalo nickel, which was minted from 1913 to 1938. “They’re a beautiful coin, and they’ve seen some gains recently,” says Kari Stone, Managing Editor of COINage magazine. She attributes their popularity to their relatively Low prices, especially since excitement from a big investment peak year of 1989 is now past and the market is now setting into the lower end of the business cycle. Although some U.S. coins run into five and six figures, a good buffalo nickel (i.e., one in “extremely fine condition”) will cost you about $100.

Lincoln cents also are popular. A 1909-s VDB – that is, a penny designed by Victor D. Brenner and minted in San Francisco in 1909 – would be worth $700 today if it were in mint condition.

Commemoratives, on the other hand, are not doing so well. The U.S. Treasury stopped issuing them in the 1950s because the constant creation of new commemoratives as a source of painless funds glutted the market and alienated collectors. They gave it another shot in 1982, and many commemoratives since then have been popular. But Stone warns that so many coins are now being minted that collectors will again lose interest, citing the 1994 World Cu commemorative – a coin that collectors ignored in droves.

Fact File: Coin Collectors, Phone Home: Colorful, prepaid telephone cards are catching on as a subset of the field of numismatics. A trend in Europe since Italy released the first debit card in 1976, COINage magazine reports that collectors here are snapping up the cards, which are printed in about 150 countries. The U.S. alone creates 25 million cards a year, and some now are worth up to $1,000. A card depicting a Big Mac that was given free with McDonald’s purchases in 1993, for instance, is now worth $125.

Fact File: Some stamps cost 32c, others a little more: The highest price paid at auction for a U.S. stamp collection was $8,2 million in 1993, and despite the price tag, the Japanese seller didn’t come close to recovering his initial investment. The highest price paid at auction for a single stamp was $1.35 million in 1990 for a rare Swedish stamp, the first to break the $1 million mark. The Swiss industrialist who bought it had coveted the stamp ever since he saw it at an exhibition as a child.

Face value: Who’s Who on a $100 Bill

$1 – Front: George Washington, Back: U.S. Seal, circulation in August 1994 $5,772,813,662

$2 – Front: Thomas Jefferson, Back: Signers of Declaration, circulation: $976,023,972

$5 – Front: Abraham Lincoln, Back: Lincoln Memorial, circulation: $6,022,128,480

$10 – Front: Alexander Hamilton, Back: U.S. treasury, circulation: $13,066,968,420

$20 – Front: Andrew Jackson, Back: White House, circulation: $76,376,592,100

$50 – Front: Ulysses Grant, Back: U.S. Capitol, circulation: $42,022,616,050

$100 – Front: Benjamin Franklin, Back Independence Hall, circulation: $219,236,790,200

$500 – Front: William McKinley, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $145,832,000

$1,000 – Front: Grover Cleveland, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $169,062,000

$5,000 – Front: James Madison, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $1,775,000

$10,000 – Front: Salmon Chase, Back: Ornate Denomination, circulation: $3,450,000.

Where to Go to Get Started

Associations, catalogs and magazines for stamp and coin collectors

Stamps: American Philatelic society – Oldest and largest, services include insurance and certification

The Scott Catalog: Scott Publishing Co., Annual – Six volumes of definitive numbers and prices

Linn`s Stamp News: All the stamp news that`s fit to print.

Coins: American Numismatic Association. Like APS, it is the oldest, the largest, and the best

The Standard Catalog of World Coins. Krause Publications annual. Definitive prices for coins minted from 1801 to the present

Coin World: Lives up to its motto: “Enriching coin collecting through knowledge.”

The End, painting by Elena.