What happened to Australia? What’s the new ‘hot’ trend?

I think Australia remains overall quite popular as a colletor focus,though these days might be wiser to say certain segments are hotter than others. Postal history seems to be really gaining interest, and Plate Flaws have strong collector bases.

USA remains quite vibrant though I think the focus on graded examples at the high end of the market is distorting things and depressing values of perfectly beautiful stamps simply because they only score an 85 rather that in the 90s, and I think I the future that is going to bite the USA market in the butt.

As for China, the economic instability over the last three years have cooled the market down, but one could say it had become rather overheated so perhaps a bit of a correction was due. But given the huge potential collector base and limited supply, China will remain popular for the decades to come.

Only region I would say has turned quite cold is Continental Western Europe. Long gone are the days where Switzerland's 1945 Pax set or West Germany's 1949 Post horns were considered philatelic bluechip items. With Europe's changing demographics, there really is now a glut of early post-war material, as the collectors who drove the growth in the1970s and 1980s are now with selling their collections or the are coming to market via estate sales.

In the end though, I think all countries have a following and these "hot" areas come and go. I think looking forward one should look at demography and where economic growth will be as a guide to where bubbles might come Take a look at values for India (both Raj and the Nehru era) compared to where they were 20 Years ago. Same for Southeast Asia.

I just collect the world though, so I just want everything.

I happily collect Australia. From the states to modern.

The only hurdle for me in acquiring new stamps is the backlog of collections waiting to be worked. If only there were a few more hours in a day, days in a weekend, weekends in a year.

Though as a whole world collector, it’s usually the stuff that isn’t hot that draws my attention. Hot usually costs more than I’m willing to spend.

Dale

My guess is that there is less stamped mail these days by common folk, and the little there is from non-philatelic folk might end up in the bin, being perhaps a less common hobby these days for the younger generations, what with the growth of social media etc, so getting your hands on post-2010 or so material isn't the easiest thing to do.

Do they still print stamps in the same numbers as they did back in the 1980s or even the 1990s, I wonder? Not sure, as I haven't looked up those statistics.

I don't know what the newest catalogue values look like - my hard copy of the Scott catalogue is dated 2016, and I only have Linn's updates up to 2019 (and they're tucked away on another disk right now).  But in snooping through my catalogue recently, I was surprised to find that the Scott editors really seem to dislike modern Australian stamps.  The recent self-adhesive commemoratives are all valued at the minimum catalogue value, 25 cents (the lick-and-stick stamps are priced higher, but it seems to me that those are so uncommon that they should maybe be higher yet).  If I just jump ahead a few pages, modern commemoratives at the domestic letter rate from Austria are valued at $1.75.

I can understand that USA modern commemoratives are sometimes seen listed at the catalogue minimum - they have a huge population, 12 times or so that of Australia, and it stands to reason that the print quantities and consumer usage of these stamps will also be higher.  Are Australian commemoratives really that unloved?  Send them to me if you hate them so much!  ha ha

Ryan

True, Australia Post issues a lot of random modern issues like Pokemon etc trying to keep up with the latest trends. Then there are the Impressions ranges that get more and more varied each and every year.

However, Rod Perry would have certainly made a case for modern decimal uses on cover – solo I should add – especially in this day of age when not everyone still uses stamps. Not necessarily EVERY stamp used solo on cover is going to be hot, but you know what I mean. 

Guess it's all about supply and demand. I've seen a few recent modern covers get AUD$100+ at Phoenix Auctions simply because they are a bit odd – COVID19 mail for instance, that was returned to the sender because AusPost weren't sending to that country at the time of postage, modern bisects e.t.c.

Sorry, yes good point, especially given the nature of the scammy internet these days!

The Rod Perry link was to an 'archive' of many of his Stamp News articles, copied onto a thread on another stamp forum. Thought it may be of interest, given the context of my comment about covers. The link to the modern decimal uses on cover was to that same website, which shows some examples of decimals used solo that might be of interest. Although many are pre-decimal, there are lots of decimal examples too.