Talk:Philatelic investment
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I hope that readers find the Philatelic Investment article useful. As a Wiki newbie, I'm grateful for the format editing contributed by the more experienced Wikians. Should anyone have any questions regarding the topic, or suggestions on how to improve the article, please inquire or comment here. -Alex (ARog)
- This should be written in the third person - consider that after a year of changes, it's not going at all clear which editor the "I" is referring to. Another thing to consider is making it a little more "for the ages", not referring to today's situation. If you absolutely must make a statement that is only true today, use the link as of 2003, that way next year people can find this article in 2004 and decided whether the statement is still true. Still another thing that would be useful is to quote some authority. As an encyclopedia, one of our charters is to connect general readers to specialized literature where they can go into depth; that is also the basis for verification of statements, especially the potentially controversial ones. Stan 21:48 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- Change point form's hyphen into star (*), and then it'll really become point form in Wiki markup. Just leave no line between each star-point. --Menchi 03:08 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
[edit] Source
Is this from some pamphlet? ("Appendix") --Menchi 03:08 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)
- The tone of this article is terrible. It must have been written by Dwight Schrute. (seriously, dilettantes?) there's a slightly superior air to it, not helped by the first-person text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.101.178.198 (talk • contribs) 16:51, 14 May 2007
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- Nothing much has improved as of January 2008. The use of first-person text is glaringly annoying. I've tagged it for cleanup in the hope someone notices. —QuicksilverT @ 01:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
- As a professional stamp dealer I find this a very poor and misleading article. It strikes me that it does not explain philatelic investment to any great extent, also it is very USA-centric, no mention of Stanley Gibbons etc. Also I do not understand why this article has a large section on damaged stamps? These have nothing to do with stamp investment, I have yet to see any investment portfolio with sub-standard material, the rule of thumb is always to buy top quality when investing. It is too long and needs editing down. The discussion on pricing belongs in a separate article on stamp pricing if such an article needs writing.
- There is no mention of proof material, varieties, missing colours etc. All popular items in an investor's portfolio. I would have a serious re-think regarding this page and simplify the article to one that purely explains the phenomenom of stamps bought for investment, rather than enjoyment, rather than attempting to give advice on how to buy stamps for an investment - a very dangerous and costly business in my experience! Bigger.Simon (talk) 20:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Improvement plan
Stan- Thanks for your suggestions. I'm in the process of polishing this article.
A)I'm modifying the article to put the whole of it into the third person.
B) Re: making it more "timeless," this is somewhat more problematic, since many of the examples used to illustrate various points relate to recent or current aspects of the stamp market; perhaps I should eliminate the investment "tips" given in the appendices
C) Re: citing authorities- unfortunately, there aren't any. Stamp Investing is a "new frontier" as far as tangibles investing goes; while there is a vast amount of philatelic literature, there are very few books on stamp investing, and the few that exist are overly general and not very useful; perhaps I should include an expanded list of useful books and publications, however; perhaps I should also dig up some old stamp catalogues and quote the relevant comparative prices from them to give greater credibility to some of the past trends that I describe; this would take quite a bit of work, however
[edit] Sections
This article really needs to be broken up into sections so a TOC can be generated for it. It'll make the article much more accessible/useful. I'd do it, but I'm out of my element with this article. — Frecklefoot 18:07, 7 Aug 2003 (UTC)
What is a TOC? I'm a wiki-newbie.
- "Table of contents" (see TOC :-) ). A recent software update autogenerates them if you use the "== ==" syntax for at least four sections. You can see one in United States for example. Stan 19:28, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Stan- I don't think I'm sophisticated enough to add a linkable TOC.
