Key Benefits

As alternative investments receive more and more attention from learned investors, rare stamps and other collectibles, inevitably, have come to the forefront of investors' minds, with interest fuelled by the long-term stability of the market, the healthy returns, the solid worldwide collector base upon which it is founded and the fact that stamps offer a portability superior to any other tangible investment.

Completely contrary to the view that (with the advance of electronic media), ‘stamp collecting’ is a dying hobby, exciting times actually lie ahead for the stamp market. If you invest in quality items today you can hope to see excellent returns over the next ten years as classic stock becomes increasingly hard to find.

Uncorrelated with other mainstream, more volatile asset classes, the rare stamp market has been showing relentless, steady growth over decades. Even in the turmoil of the recent crash the stamp market remained healthy. In fact the GB30 Rarities Index, the Bloomberg-listed index of rare GB stamps, grew by 84% in the last 5 years and has shown a compound growth of just short of 11% for the last 40 years.

That's the sort of impressive investment performance unheard of in many other asset classes. The beauty of investing in a rare stamp portfolio is encapsulated in 3 key points:

1. Due to the (increasing) demand for investment grade stamps and the care and expertise Stanley Gibbons bring to bear when choosing your portfolio, your risk is diminished
2. You own a real, rare collectible that can be traded on the open market, an asset that is almost completely unaffected by normal market variances
3. Rare stamps are a proven hedge against inflation and in an independent academic study by Dimson & Spaenjers in 2009, they conclude that, "the systematic risk of stamps remains low…and average after-cost returns show that stamps may rival equities in terms of realised performance."
   

More and more investors are seeking financial security and healthy returns to protect their wealth against the continued volatility of stock markets and the inflation-eroding impact of the low interest rate environment.

The next “step change” in demand is beginning to manifest itself with new collectors and investors coming from South East Asia and the “Tiger” economies. Serious interest is growing for the idea of holding rare British Heritage ‘trophy’ assets and money is flowing and growing in Asia and the Indian sub-continent.

Add to that the fact that the average collector is aged 65 plus. That demographic is rising rapidly thanks to the baby boom after World War II and people living longer. What that means is that we have an expected increase in demand for many years to come.

The market is booming at home and abroad. You would be wise to capitalise on our premium alternative assets now.

Remember, you can invest in rare stamps, coins, medals and autographs with Stanley Gibbons. If you’d like to learn more about investing in rare coins, medals or autographs, please click the relevant link below:

The prices of rare stamps is fully trackable with the prices recorded in Stanley Gibbons official, annually-published catalogues, the first of which was published in 1865. They represent the selling price of Stanley Gibbons Limited at the time of publication and are an expert estimate of market value, taking into account prices realised at auctions all around the world.

This makes pricing and valuation completely transparent and means that you can see what the stamps in your portfolio were worth 10, 20 or even 100 years ago. Find out more about historical performance.