If you were to ask me to name some of the hottest collecting categories in the trade right now, my list would include the following: trading cards, coins and currency, comic books, vintage toys, and video games. If you asked me to further expand that list I would add rare books, edged weapons, antique firearms, and investment grade art. Stamps would not be anywhere near my list of the hottest collecting categories. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find an expert in the trade that would consider stamps to be a popular collecting category in the year 2026. That said, stamp collectors and dealers still exist, but the market for stamp collecting isn’t the same as it once was, especially in the United States.
Postage stamps were introduced in the United States in July of 1847. Stamps from this era are often referred to as the first federal issue following congressional authorization of the post office department. By the early 1900s, stamps were quickly becoming just as popular as coins from a collectible standpoint. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt engaged actively in the stamp collecting hobby while serving in the White House, and he considered himself to be a knowledgeable philatelist. Throughout the Great Depression both stamp and coin collecting flourished in the United States. Both were seen as fairly cheap and affordable collecting hobbies of the era because coins could easily be found in pocket change and stamps cost just a few cents.
Coming out of the Great Depression, both coins and stamps were seen as two of the most popular collecting categories of the era, but only one would have a distinct advantage in the decades that followed. In the 1980s, antiques and collectibles caught fire. Wall Street was already actively viewing some of these markets as valid alternate asset classes with special interest being paid to high end investment grade art. Both extremely desirable stamps and coins were selling for high prices at auctions. By the mid-1980s, coins appeared to have the edge and the first third-party grading companies entered the coin marketplace offering an unbiased opinion on the condition and authenticity of some of the most sought after U.S. coins. Auction companies and dealers started to pay attention to this market, and along with renewed interest from collectors came the investors. This led to the now infamous graded coin bubble of the 1980s where coins that were not anywhere near rare could be seen selling for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. This caused a lot of auction houses to put vast resources behind numismatics. Stamps took a back seat to the tremendous growth of the rare coin marketplace.
Heritage Auctions got its start in 1976 as a joint venture between two rare coins dealers, Steve Ivy and Jim Halperin. This was well before the graded coin bubble. The company ventured into other collecting markets, including stamps. However, it was clear that stamps were not going to be the driving force of the company, and in 1993 Heritage Auctions sold their stamp division to Greg Manning Auctions. In my opinion, this was a great decision because it freed Heritage to explore other collecting categories and when third-party grading came to the comic book market in 2000 courtesy of CGC (Comics Guaranty Company), the company was poised to capture the growth of that market right from the start. It was decisions like these that made Heritage Auctions one of the most dominant forces in the entire collectibles trade. In 2025 alone the company did more than $2.1 billion in sales, and that number is projected to rise in 2026.
Today, I know of few younger collectors who have an interest in stamp collecting, but I do know a lot who are actively pursuing coins and paper money. The American Numismatic Association (also known as the ANA) has done an incredible job of bringing new and younger collectors into the coin collecting hobby. A lot of these young collectors are also fascinated with coins due to the fact that most collectible coins are composed of precious metals. Coins also have a much more interesting history (in my humble opinion) than that of most postage stamps. And as an active rare coin and currency collector, it is at this point in the article that I must admit my own bias. Even though I have been in the collectibles trade since the ripe old age of 12, I never found an interest in collecting something that could be licked. Therefore, stamps were never my thing, but I did learn a lot about them from one of my mentors who was active in that market. He did, however, also teach me the rare coin market, and that is what I was predominantly interested in ever since my grandfather gifted me a Carson City Morgan silver dollar.
I am sure that most readers will not find the decline in stamp collecting over the past few decades to be surprising. Aside from a few key high profile auction sales, stamps are not what I would consider to be a robust collecting category, at least in the United States. In other regions of the world, stamp collecting is still going fairly strong (shout out to my collector friends across the pond). In 2024, the 1868 one-cent Benjamin Franklin “Z Grill” stamp fetched more than $4.3 million at auction. So, there is still interest in this market at the high end, but as for investing in stamps? In all honesty, I’d say don’t attempt it. But the antiques and collectibles trade is full of surprises, and it is one reason why I state time and again that the only constant in these markets is change.
On Sept. 24, 2026, it was announced that Heritage Auctions was getting back into the stamp collecting market with the creation of its new stamp division! And believe it or not there are several third-party grading companies already operating in this space, most notably, Authenticated Stamp Guaranty (ASG), owned and operated by the same parent company who owns Numismatic Guaranty Company (NGC) and Paper Money Guaranty (PMG). This all begs the question: can Heritage Auctions reignite interest in this market, and more importantly, will younger collectors take an interest in a day and age where trading cards and video games are selling for six to seven figures? Time will tell. That said, it could also be that Heritage Auctions is just looking to expand in other collecting categories and wants to also be able to service the multitude of baby boomer estates that are bound to come their way in the coming years. Regardless of the reason, the news still took me by surprise. We shall see how this turns out. What an interesting time to be alive!

Shawn Surmick has been an avid collector since the age of 12. He currently resides in his hometown of Boyertown, Pa., and is a passionate collector of antiques and collectibles. His articles focus on various topics affecting the marketplace.