A while back I picked up a few cheap pre-WW1 German coins -- fun to have a bit of history for not that much money. I haven't pursued coin collecting because I could imagine going down a rabbit hole of spending way too much money on it. But when I see, say, the US Mint releasing special commemorative coins specifically for collectors, my whole interest in the field dries up. It takes a hobby that, in my opinion, would be about discovery and the individual search for something and turns it into merely another consumer product to consume. Same with so many stamps nowadays, being designed and released specifically for collectors to gobble up. And then there's baseball cards and Magic cards and "colllector's editions" of video game boxes that are all designed as these mass-market products that satisfy the collecting urge in a cynical way.

If I did end up really getting into collecting, I'd think it would be more enjoyable to collect interesting rocks found during travel, or historical items like coins/stamps that were all made before the trend of marketing to collectors.

Been doing this for the last 15 years with no real change in pricing (which really means a loss every year).

Mostly 30-50 cent stamps (this is Canada). But ranging from 8c to $2.5

I use the smaller ones on regular envelopes. Usually I have some $1 or $2 stamps to make up any balance on packages (or just buy it from the post office).

It’s quite a bit of extra profit when I sell stuff.

Though my packages probably look a little... Unabombery.

I’m sure the receivers get a little laugh when their package arrives covered in stamps.

Another stamps-related early sign of disturbing startup inclinations was when, in early grade school, the class would occasionally be put to work, for a fund-raiser, trimming out stamps from boxes of envelopes. I suppose the trimmed parts were going to a company, to soak off, press, and sell. Well, I don't know how I'd even heard this was a thing, but I also trimmed out the addresses from the envelopes, then presented a pile of them to one of the mothers helping out in class, saying we could use them to assemble and sell a mailing list. I might only recall that because one of the mothers told my mom, probably in a "you'll never guess what your child said this time" way, and I guess it was a mix of funny and embarrassing to my mom.

(After that, there were several non-stamp-related, more-credible childhood "startups", until I lucked into a hardcore software engineering job. They used to say that stamp collecting was a great way to get children started learning history, but it got me started learning business.)

After finding them completely unsaleable I ended up giving my collection to a family friend who still just enjoys the cards.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Urban Outfitters started selling vintage stamp collections.

I looked on some auction sites, and it seems like you can buy the collections of the recently deceased at pretty cheap prices. I don't know if they're worth the money, but if you're just collecting for fun, and not for profit, it seems like a good way to beef up your collection.