We have two new US members,
John Schmidt , airline issue collector from Louisville KY and DC-3, pre-1945
Airport collector Richard Citron, Longwood, FL. Regrettably we must also
announce the death of member and postcard dealer
Steve Benz.
To fire off the debate on
where the hobby is going I will pick up
on the views expressed in Issue 50. It
was clear that nostalgia plays a very big part in collectors motivations, so the
big question has to be “What happens when objects and events pass beyond
living memory ?”. Although I am sure that most
collectors were not driven by financial motives in building their collections,
most would not wish their items to be considered worthless. If they were to be,
then the act of collecting items together in a few places would actually
increase the risk of their future destruction, whereas they may have survived
scattered in ones and twos, especially as in these post Internet times many
collections have been assembled from worldwide. We will probably get some indication from what happens with railway
items but the nostalgiua effect still has some time to run in that market, which
like ours remains buoyant. So here are my
predictions, to start the ball rolling :-
1)
The “collector” card of current aircraft will disappear. Already it
can only be economically produced in some countries. Anybody can look up and
download a wide range of aircraft pictures from the Internet, even to the extent
of searching for an individual set of registration marks.
Older cards will be digitised and collected in this way.
2)
Airport cards are now virtually extinct. This may raise interest in those from the past as was the case with
railway stations. This MAY be helped by
some form of “golden age” effect – see below.
3)
Airline cards from the 30s / 40s will become part of a “golden age”
effect relating the pre mass travel and particularly pre 9/11 experience but the
size of this effect may not offset the fading of nostalgia
4)
Pre 1914 and distance pioneer cards will continue to be collected as part
of the social history of those times – as also will cards with people content
from all periods. Philatelic links will
remain important but diminished as that hobby also changes
5)
There will continue to be “cult” subjects which will break all the
rules. I nominate Airships, Lindbergh, Imperial Airways, Flying Boats and, the
most recent addition, Concorde.
6)
As WW2 passes from memory to history
there will be a revival of interest in original material.
7)
Wild card. If mainland Chinese
become as fanatical collectors as their colleagues in Hong Kong and Singapore
then anything of 20th Century Chinese aviation will be big time. (See
Cards are Out There)
Over
to you
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