Stamp Profits

We’ve been covering stamps lately in the newsletters as we have some terrific contacts in this sector, at Stanley Gibbons etc. I keep being asked how to choose stamps for a money-making collection. Quite simply, I’d suggest you can buy just about anything from the Stanley Gibbons’ GB30 Rarities index of the top 30 rare British stamps recommended for investments. Have a look here:

The updated GB30 rarities index for 2010 shows that over the past 40 years there has been a 6,403 per cent increase in the value of the 30 rare stamps in the index. Over the same time, house prices have risen by 3,559 per cent. The value of the list increased in 2009-2010 by 7 per cent. These are steady-eddie investments that just keep on rising.

Product Autobiographies

People donating products to an Oxfam store in Manchester recently, were asked to record a short story into a microphone, relating to the product. Then in a collaboration with a company called Totem (Tales of things and electronic memory) the audio clips were then uploaded by some technical witchcraft I can’t even begin to explain so that store browsers could access them via their Smartphone’s or a bespoke RFID reader (No I don’t know what one is either!).

Anyway the bottom line, irrespective of the technology is that you can go into the store, look at a product and hear a story about it from the original owner.

I think this has great potential for anyone selling used or second-hand products. No real need for technicalities here. Imagine if each item had a written (You know, good old fashioned words on a bit of paper) story about the product. Wouldn’t that make it more desirable or saleable? I think that it would.