Our analysis of Australian stamps covered some 2000 issues by Australia and its states between 1840 and 1950 which had achieved a value of $25 and higher. The analysis evaluated each stamp’s appreciation (mint or used) over the last 5 and 10 year time periods and compared this across various catalog systems. Spaced does not permit me to go into extensive detail here so I will featuring more extensive detail for each country on my web site www.StampFinder.com.
Since my focus is on the investment aspects of stamps, I hope collectors will not be offended by this singular focus. Stamps become an investment to the most ardent collectors once they get past the easy to get items and have to budget their funds among numerous items they would like, but cannot afford all. For example, all the +$25 items for Australia will cost you over $2 million. Even the 400 or so items priced from $25 to $100 will cost you $27,000 and all 1200 items below $1000 will cost $300,000. And this for a country that doesn’t even make the top 10 in collector interest. Investment buyers will be focused on which stamps have the best potential for appreciation, and every country has a few such. Who would have guessed the most valuable stamp comes from British Guiana!
Overall, Australia showed only a paltry 10.3% overall appreciation rate over the last 5 years, but the growth has been steady for at least 10 years and the data shows numerous candidates for substantial growth in the near future. Pricing was erratic in the early states’ issues due in part to the attempt to assign values to a multitude of different perforations and color shades, many of which can be attributed to the primitive state of the printing art in these early years. Most countries have these problems, but some country dealers and collectors carry this to an extreme. I have tended to ignore such sub varieties since the investment potential for such items is limited. Weakness was also noted in the postal use of fiscal stamps. They have shown little upside in the last 10 years and a few are showing large declines.
One part of our analysis is to compare price disparities between Scott and the Stanley Gibbons Catalog (G/S ratio). This is relevant since Australia is a Commonwealth country and therefore, it has many more collectors outside Australia and Gibbons will be the more popular catalog. Since Gibbons is both a dealer and a catalog company, its pricing tends to be on the high side. Hence, we publish the ratio of Gibbons to Scott on the theory that a ratio below 1 means the stamp is likely to be found cheaper in the UK or Australia than in the U.S. Likewise, when the ratio is well above 1, it is cheaper in the U.S. and it is likely to appreciate faster as the price differential closes. Note that recent strength in the dollar has made overseas purchases 21% more attractive against the Australian Dollar and 12% more attractive against the British Pound.
