Hmmm, Which Heading To Post This Under? Any Philatelists Out There?

[AndiFlatland]

Stamp collectors, if you like!
I've always collected stamps, but not for any notion of value. But I know that some of them can be, or can become very valuable.
In the last few years, if you go to the post office with a small packet to weigh for the postage charge, the counter staff often affix one of those supersized (2½" x 2¼") gold-coloured stamps, with the exact charge printed on it at the desk. The design is a standard profile of the Queen.
I was just wondering if those stamps are worth saving?

[EDDIE51]

No they are worthless just a printed label. You may as well collect the envelope.

[dzug2]

But people do collect envelopes

Victorian stamps on an addressed envelope for example are worth more than loose ones

having said that these particular labels won't be worth collecting for their value - but people do take an interest of the minutiae of them and the slightly different designs that exist

[EDDIE51]

they are not 'stamps' they are a form of 'franking'
If I am sending off an eBay item I weigh it and then buy the actual value in stamps and put them on. I think it is nicer for the buyer to get an item with real stamps especially if it is overseas.

[factor-fiction]

To answer the question in your title, there is a Hobbies & Interests section but it's hidden within Society & Culture
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Society-and-Culture/Hobbies-and-Interests/
But you might as well leave this one here as you are getting answers

[boxtops]

I've often wondered the same, andi, as I collect used stamps for charities which then sell them on to collectors. I always put the big gold ones in, someone will like them - particularly as they show different values as the postage rates change.

[AndiFlatland]

Eddie51: Yes, I expect they probably are thought by collectors to be worthless... today - but then so were the very earliest postage stamps back in the mid-19th century. It's only when things start to disappear and are superseded by new designs, different colours and values, or are withdrawn due to territorial changes, that people suddenly start to think 'Now where have they all gone?' If these big gold 'stamps' are updated by a colour change, or special limited commemorative issues with pictorial designs, which I'm sure Royal mail will sooner or later latch on to as a money earner, the ones we have now will start to acquire value as they vanish.
I'm in accord with your policy of using real stamps whenever you can. It's always nice to see a cluster of brightly coloured stamps on an envelope or package, especially if the item is from overseas.
When I was a boy scout, about 150 years ago, you could earn a badge for stamp collecting (...yes, that's what set me off!), and I was shown a very efficient way of removing the stamps from their envelopes: just drop them in a bowl of warm water, and then, after about half an hour, they would just slide off. You then put the wet stamps face down on a towel to dry off - which worked well enough until the cat jumped up and walked across them, or decided it was a good place to stop for a wash and a quiet nap!
But we are faced with a problem these days: with the proliferation of self-adhesive stamps, you can no longer do that. It's not easy to tell which are the self-adhesive ones, and which are the standard gummed ones. And if you drop a self-adhesive stamp in water, all you get is a rubbery, gluey mess like chewing gum, which is almost impossible to remove without damaging the stamp.
But worse than that is those stupid idiots who, when sealing a package with lashings of sellotape, put the tape across everything, including the stamps. It's utterly heartbreaking! Many's the time when I've sat at the desk with some lovely stamps welded to the packet with tape, and spent an hour or two laboriously attempting to find any point of least resistance, which will allow a few millimetres of tape to be peeled back, before it starts to look like it's going to lift the surface of the stamp off - so you start again in a different place, and if you're lucky, you end up with a circle of tape attached to the middle of the stamp which, with care will eventually peel off, if you pull it at a very shallow angle, i.e. almost flat against the stamp.
If you know of a better way, please do let me know!

Boxtops: I guess that's a good thing to do with them - as they're all self adhesive, I presume you just cut around them, rather than try to peel them off.

Factor-fiction: I had briefly considered the Society and Culture section, but it didn't occur to me that clicking on it would reveal several sub-headings. Maybe they should leave those headings permanently open, so that we can see them, instead of guessing that the one you want may be in this one, or that one... I thought that Arts and Literature came closest to the subject matter, and as you say, I've got several interesting answers, so it's not a problem.

Thanks everybody!

[saxy_jag]

Any stamp is worth saving because you never know. My grandfather, a keen stamp collector all his life, told me that when he was a kid (he was born in 1901) he and his mates used to collect penny black stamps by the score and thread them onto cotton. As he grew up he never kept a single one because he thought they were worthless. If only he'd known!

[jno]

my word, saxy jag, like throwing £50 notes on the fire!

[saxy_jag]

@jno - I think that's probably how he looked at it by the time he'd reached his 60s. PBs were still quite common among schoolboy collectors in the early 1900s and guess they thought they were so common as not to have any value. A bit like 1950s/1960s 'ordinary' stamps today, I should think.