What Stamp Collectors Know

I collect stamps. I don’t have many, but the ones I have I like. I didn’t really understand the deep appeal stamp collecting held for me until one day when I was visiting the stamp supply store and met a friend in the “helping” professions, an expert in human relations, who also collects stamps. My insight: while people are always in motion, stamps just stay there on the album page where you put them. You could potentially acquire all the stamps for a whole year. Or even an entire country! Collecting stamps provides a welcome – and maybe even necessary -- counterbalance to dealing with people in community, where things are constantly in question, always in flux, never settled, never complete.

But there’s something even more important stamp collectors know, and it relates to the President’s scheme for channeling additional retirement funds into the stock market. A few years back, when individual retirement accounts were permitted to invest in stamps, coins, etc., the ensuing demand for investment-grade stamps drove prices through the roof. That made collectors who already had those stamps very happy, and it made anyone who was looking to collect them distressed. But what goes up can come down. When rules changed and investors had to dump stamps, values plummeted.

Here’s where the stock market comes in. In the President’s proposal for personal social security accounts, money intended for supplemental pensions will have to be invested in the stock market. Those investments will quite naturally seek the safety of high-grade stocks and bonds. There are only so many of those, so as wage earners participate in this bonanza for the market, prices for select stocks and bonds will rise dramatically.

The question I have is, will the President tell us which top quality stocks and bonds he owns, and will he let us all know in time before he sells them and walks away with a fortune?

My thanks to fellow collector JK for insights relating to this topic.