We’ve no doubt said this before on these pages but it doesn’t make it any less true to repeat: The media industry is a fascinating place, and at Fox Associates, we’re very fortunate to be able to observe it at close range in all its beautiful niches. Hobbies, businesses, associations, large and small for-profit media operators, we see a lot. And not only do we observe these businesses and the markets they serve, but as an outsourced advertising sales partner, we get to help these organizations succeed.
Such is the case with the American Philatelic Society, the association for the world of stamp collecting. Stamp collecting, according to the APS’s website, is the accumulation of material related to the payment of postage. It’s a hobby for everyone, with few other hobbies matching the flexibility of stamp collecting, the APS notes.
“You can collect stamps all 12 months of the year regardless of the climate where you are located,” Stamps.org states. “It does not require any special skills or great wealth. Some individuals begin as young as age 4 and many collect until the day they die. Many people start collecting stamps that represent a topic they enjoy.
“Philatelists—the fancy word for stamp collectors—also collect covers, envelopes that carried mail, plus markings or labels applied to mail, including postage meters,” the site says. “Others will even collect Christmas Seals, revenue stamps and other ephemera.”
As with nearly every niche in the world—whether a business niche or enthusiast consumer—stamp collecting has both an association and a media brand to serve it. In the case of stamp collecting, it’s The American Philatelist, which is the oldest continuously published philatelic journal in the world, having first appeared in January 1887.
Susanna Mills.
We recently had a chance to speak to Susanna Mills, editor in chief of The American Philatelist, which is based in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and publishes monthly. Here’s a transcript of our conversation with Susanna.
Fox Tales: The American Philatelic Society, and before that, the American Philatelic Association, has been around for 139 years. How has the hobby changed over those many decades?
Susanna Mills: In some ways, stamp collecting has changed very little. We still care about the major things that collectors used to care about back in the 1880s, which is when collectors started to form societies around the world (including the American Philatelic Society in 1886). Those collectors cared about safety and trust in their buying and selling, about identifying whether their stamps were genuine or forgeries, and about being part of an organized community. These are still part of our organization’s mission.
But there is a lot that has changed. Organized collecting organizations were solely for men (and, it naturally follows, for white, well-educated and wealthy men). This is certainly not the case anymore! And as there’s been a move away from the typical collecting demographic, and a rise in collecting around the world (the largest growing areas are in India and China), we also see many more ways for people to enjoy collecting stamps and postal history.
Fox Tales: Zooming in on the last decade, what are the major trends? What do collectors like to focus on now?
Mills: Without getting into the nitty gritty of how stamp collecting has evolved, there have definitely been some shifts in the common perspectives. There used to be some snobbery towards people who collected “modern stamps” (think post 1920 and you have the right idea!), or first-day covers (stamps used on mail on the first day of the stamp’s issuance), or topicals (stamp collections organized around a topic or theme). Postal history has also had a huge boom in recent years, meaning collecting the actual letters and envelopes that have traveled through the mail stream, and studying the movement of the actual artifacts.
Finally, I’d have to point to stamp art as a great new trend. There are so many millions of stamps printed, and so few could be considered rare, that it hurts no one to use stamps for artistic pieces! I’ve seen collages, mail art, watercolors with stamps as the center, gigantic art pieces composed entirely of stamps, and even a toilet seat covered with stamps (not the most sanitary option!).
Fox Tales: Give us an example of a super valuable and rare stamp.
The famous inverted Jenny stamp.
Mills: So many great options to choose from! My favorite would have to be the Inverted Jenny, which is extra special because the American Philatelic Society actually owns one. Back in 1918, the U.S. inaugurated its airmail service, and issued the first airmail stamp for this purpose. Well, an enterprising stamp collector went to buy some on that first day of issue, and was absolutely lucky to be handed a 100-stamp sheet of errors—the Curtiss Jenny depicted on the stamp had been printed upside down! He immediately went out and sold the sheet, and it was sold again, and the new owner broke the sheet up and sold them individually, and as blocks.
So the 100 Inverted Jennys went out into the world. There were never any more invert errors discovered, and none of them were ever actually used on mail. Today, we have a pretty good idea of where all of the Inverted Jennys are (and keep track of the auction sales), with recent buyers paying anywhere from $250,000 to more than $1 million for well-centered examples.
There are some fun stories associated with the Inverted Jenny. For example, one was accidentally vacuumed up (and then had to be rescued). A block of four was stolen in the 1950s, and they’ve been recovered one-by-one in the following decades, with only one still missing. In fact, the copy owned by the APS is one of the four stolen Jennys!
Fox Tales: As editor of The American Philatelist, how do you approach each issue? What’s your content mix? Who creates it? From personal experience, I know how grueling monthly deadlines can be.
Mills: The American Philatelist publishes articles written by the members of our society, amounting to 100-plus pages every month. About 40-50% of our pages are devoted to member-written editorial, 20-30% to staff-written columns and society news, and 25-30% to advertising.
Our typical approach is to assign a theme to each month, in order to better curate our content and provide editorial insight into the topic. As you might imagine, there are as many collecting interests as there are collectors, so we have so many possible themes to choose from. An exciting result from this is that a well-executed theme issue gives readers insight into new collecting areas and support, if they decide to begin collecting that area.
There is another positive aspect of having themed issues: we know our editorial calendar half a year to a year in advance, which allows Fox Associates to specifically target potential advertisers, or stamp dealers who don’t typically advertise but might consider trying an ad out if they specialize in that themed area.
Fox Tales: Since [Fox Associates COO] Steve Schwanz mentioned you as a contact, how do you interact with your outsource sales partners? How does a firm like Fox Associates help you and everyone at APS fulfill the organization’s mission?
Mills: We really do rely on advertising to support the production of The American Philatelist (and our other publications). The American Philatelist is the most-beloved benefit of APS membership, and a good chunk of each person’s membership dues goes towards producing the magazine. Advertising makes up the rest. Fox’s successes help us keep membership dues low (in fact, we have not had to raise dues in years), and their support means that our editorial team can focus on making the magazine as strong as possible.