Is stamp collecting a scam?

Lao Wu, a classmate from junior high school, started a WeChat group and started talking nonsense. Maybe he was out of words, so he talked about the many stamps Lao Li bought when he was in junior high school. Lao Wu said it should be worth a lot of money now.

Lao Li said that those stamps had been piled in a box in the basement as scrap and had not been turned over for almost twenty years. Collecting stamps was a childhood shame and an intellectual stain.

Lao Wu said, no. . .

Lao Li said, really, Lao Wu, you are a big businessman, how can you believe in such stupid things as collecting stamps? You're ignoring cost of goods sold.

The following is the point of view of Lao Li and his nonsense, mainly three points, Lao Li sorted it out:

When he was in junior high school, Lao Li collected stamps like crazy and bought dozens of them. At that time, Lao Li had a lot of change. Li's mother ran a shop, so she had no idea how many dollars he took from her drawer. Later, Li's mother saw that Lao Li was not doing anything bad, he was just buying comics and stamps, so she didn't care. Moreover, Li Ma heard that the price of stamps would increase, and she even supported it.

When he reached high school, Lao Li, who was prone to being in love with the new and disliked the old, suddenly started to like buying CDs instead of collecting stamps.

Buying CDs costs a lot of money, and a set of American DG red cards costs several hundred. So Lao Li wanted to sell the stamps to get money to buy CDs.

Lao Li went directly to the stamp sales department of the post office and took the 1988 album to sell. The price offered by the salesperson was 80 per copy for recycling.

Lao Li was stunned when he heard it. Not only did the price not increase, but it was only half the price when he bought it?

So Lao Li thought, he might as well keep it and send letters instead of selling it.

Lao Li also suddenly understood a truth: it is easy to buy things, but difficult to sell things.

If a stamp album costs 100 yuan, then at least the sales terminal must make 50 yuan. After deducting a large amount of management expenses and sales promotion, the net profit may not be 30 yuan.

For the postal headquarters, there is almost no cost, just printing. It's up to you to sell the following employees. You can sell them for as much as you want, and you'll get benefits as employees.

As consumers, it is extremely difficult to sell stamps bought for 100 for 100. You have to set up a stall on the roadside and those who are willing will take the bait. If you want to ship quickly, you need a low price.

Issuing stamps is a bit like raising funds, it is a disguised form of public fundraising. However, the most similar thing to stamps is corporate bonds, which are contractual relationships.

Corporate bonds are what you buy, and the company will repay the principal and interest when they mature. As for stamps, the postal service will charge you a deposit in full now, and it will provide services to you later.

The postal service issues stamps. If you buy them, the postal service will not give you interest. The postal service only promises that the stamps are in a contractual relationship with you. If you buy the stamps now, you can stick them on envelopes and use them for mailing in the future. Trust, it can replace the RMB of the same value.

It only collects money but does not give interest. If the stamp is lost, wouldn’t it be in vain? How can anything be so cheap in the world?

In fact, this cannot be said to be that the Postal Service is very insidious, it only knows how to collect money. In the early years, the postal system was a different situation. In the past, the postal service did not have as many branches as banks do now, and there were not as many couriers as there are now. You can just make a call and come to your door. In the past, if we wanted to spread it across the country, there were not that many people in the post office, so we would set up a mailbox on the street, which is equivalent to a storefront. Buying stamps directly saves the salesperson's fees, so it can be fully rolled out quickly and at low cost. Issuing stamps is a stroke of genius.

But later, for unknown reasons, some people collected stamps, and the prices of a small number of stamps skyrocketed. Stamps have another strange collection function, which has changed. Many people also think that stamps are collectibles.

The postal system issues a certain amount of stamps to the public every year. There are about millions of sets of annual albums, and the amount is hundreds of millions of yuan. Companies only issue shares through IPOs once, but the postal service can issue them every year. . Those hundreds of millions should be for their own main business, but everyone keeps them.

The postal service was originally supposed to be a transportation service industry similar to express delivery. As a result, it gradually became like a cultural department, an industry specializing in issuing collectibles.

Is there a company on earth that specializes in issuing collectibles?

There is no other country, only China has it, and that is China Post.

You ask, isn’t it available abroad? Foreign countries also issue stamps.

Yes, foreign countries also issue stamps, but foreign post offices can be privately run. Differently, they cannot issue stamps all year round. That is money trapping and are strictly controlled.

Our national postal service is state-owned, and we can continue to issue new mail without supervision.

Besides, in foreign countries, even the most expensive stamps are only a fraction of the real collectibles. Oil paintings cost tens of millions of dollars. So don’t talk about foreign countries.

Many people who buy a house (live by themselves) will look at a house here and there and spend a lot of time in meetings and discussions with the whole family. They even studied political news and learned about local and regional developments, and spent several months before choosing a home.

Many people go to Taobao to buy a plastic toy for their children. They may spend an hour selecting it very carefully.

Many people go online to buy a stock, maybe after just looking at the 5-minute K-line or hearing about it.

And 99% of people who buy stamps buy stamps almost without thinking, without thinking for a second, just because the postal service has a new issue.

The result is this. People who spend the most time buying a house generally don’t hear of them losing money.

It takes the least time, mechanical collection, without even thinking about it. Still want to make money?

In the end, Lao Li said: Don’t talk nonsense, just go online and check the sales and selling prices of stamps on your mobile phone immediately. Whether stamps are worth buying or not can be understood by looking at the price. /pro-439.html

Lao Wu turned on his phone and looked at it for a while: Damn, it’s true. Rubbish.

The price of stamps from more than 20 years ago is at most double what it was back then.