Grading Common Stamps - My Pet Peeve

OK, here's something that I think is really just plain stupid, short sighted, and destructive to the hobby of Stamp Collecting.  I know you are reading this and thinking, don't be so subtle, tell us how you really feel.  "Grading Common Stamps" and putting them for sale at ridiculous prices is something that is for me, akin to nails on a chalk board.

This one on the left is on Ebay they are asking for $140.oo  Come on, give me a break.  It's a common 5 cent stamp.

You can purchase a very well centered, Mint/Non Hinged copy, that is readily available for 99 cents with free postage.  I just don't get it.  I wish PSE would stop grading these stamps, but it is income for them.  I think this demeans the hobby of Presidents' and Kings'.  

MNH - 99 cents - free postage

When I mail stamps to a purchaser, I very often use stamps exactly like this one for postage. I receive old stamps from stamp dealers, just like these, being used as postage almost daily.  In fact many philatelists do not even accumulate or collect modern stamps, they are just too plentiful and lack any investment value or potential.  

In fact I collect these modern postal history covers, when I receive them in the mail.  They are much more interesting than a bunch of modern mint stamps in an album.  The problem with recent postage stamps is they are overprinted for the demand of collectors.  They never go up in value.  Look at the 8 cent block of four that came to me on an envelope last week.  It cost 32 cents in 1974, today it is worth 32 cents.  8 cents in 1974 is equal to 49 cents today.  But its' still worth just 8 cents in today's money.  That is a very poor investment.  Keep one for your stamp album and use the rest for postage.  Please do not send it out to be graded and then try and sell it for some astronomically inflated price.  It feels like stealing to me.  

Vintage stamps used for postage - Modern Postal History

Let me give you another example of just how great of an investment these stamps are.  You can purchase old stamps in sheets for 80 to 85 cents on the dollar of face value. Stamp dealers use these old stamps for postage.  Some of these stamps are approaching 50 years old, and they are worth far less in real money today, than when they were printed.

I'm asking you readers and stamp collectors, "Please do not buy graded common stamps.  They will not go up in value.  It is a very poor investment, and it is just a trick to seduce you to the Dark Side!"  So remember in the famous words of Obi Wan Kenobi . . . 

"These are not the stamps you are looking for. . . "