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Full title: This tiny scrap of magenta paper is the rarest postage stamp in the world. Originally printed in 1856 during emergency paper shortage, it is so valuable that by weight it is worth more than diamonds or platinum.
So not quite up there with movie popcorn yet uh
People on the spectrum have so many more options now. Back in the day your choices were stamps, coins, or bugs.
Or trains. Or tanks. Or ships.
Your post is mechanical erasure!!
I can see you are a Victorian latecomer. Although the Royal Navy thrived on nerdery.
I always wonder how long it will be before the bottom falls out on the stamp collectors market.
Like where are the stamp collectors of tomorrow coming from?
https://www.antiquesage.com/long-slow-death-stamp-collecting/ I found another article from 2024 that was more optimistic because there's rising interest in the hobby in China, but it does seem like the hobby is in a very slow decline. I don't know that it will go away so long as stamps exist, but it will probably become more and more niche. It's an increasingly great time if you love collecting stamps for itself, though, as prices get less expensive.
They're all doing crypto.
We've lost two whole generations of collecting-useless-things people, to plastic bobbleheads, fake-scarce TTRPG cards, and random in-game bullshit.
This stamp was useful?
Yes... but certainly not by the time it was being collected. Stamp collectors are part of the "collecting-useless-things" people, the ones we lost two generations of.
It was admittedly a tongue-in-cheek statement. Stamp collecting barely holds any "meaning" outside of the hobbyist's circle, but it's innocent enough and does preserve a bit of scarce historical ephemera. Even that is lost though when you're not collecting, but rather playing the ARG a plastic factory or pixel factory has dopamine-looped you into strictly for profit.
Most importantly though how many people who could have been scientists, obsessively documenting the minutia of their chosen focus, have we lost to these companies?