¶ At last, all perils were overcome and the crew piled into the ship, dumping every unnecessary article from the ’plane to lighten the load. The motors were started. With a surge the ship moved forward—it bumped—it swayed—it traveled 300 meters—then 400—and at last it tore itself from the ice and flew!
¶ That evening the adventurers were picked up by a cruising steamer and returned safely to their homeland—leaving another Arctic adventure behind them.
¶ And so we can see, in a never-ending panorama, the story of flight on air mail stamps. Twenty-eight hundred stamps have been issued, approximately, and one by one they add color and zest to this adventurous story.
¶ The round-the-world trampings of the “Graf” Zeppelin, the never-ending stream of long-distance flights, the break-neck air races at Cleveland, the wanderings of the DO-X, and the gigantic air armada of Balbo—all are chronicled on air mail stamps. And even while they portray the struggles of the past, they also prophesy still greater triumphs for the future.
¶ The thousands of air mail collectors, drawn from all walks of life including Emperors, Presidents, and leaders of industry, bear witness to the fascination of this hobby. Besides being an interesting avocation, however, the collecting of mint air mail stamps excels most gilt-edged securities when considered from a purely investment point of view.
¶ This might seem to be a rash statement, but the history of the past few years has irrefutably proven it to be true. While statistics are usually dry-as-dust things, let us examine a few. They will, in this case, prove as exciting to the collector as his air stamps themselves.
¶ First, consider the age-old economic law of supply and demand. In the case at hand, we find the demand for stamps so deep-seated and secure that it literally stretches from the cradle to the grave. From the business transacted by government agencies and the multitude of dealers in philatelic merchandise, authorities have estimated that five out of every hundred people, both here and abroad, are stamp collectors. Such a computation means, that in the United States alone, well over 5,000,000 people pursue this hobby.
¶ There are scores of philatelic publications, both weekly and monthly, which boast appreciable circulations paid for by popular subscription. By the “movie” newsreels publicizing new stamp issues, and metropolitan newspapers featuring a regular column on this subject, one can easily realize that this vast network for the dissemination of stamp information must reach a tremendous audience. And this Gargantuan following was not built in a day, a year, or a decade. No, for well over a half-century has gone into its making.
¶ This hobby was almost as firmly established before the dawn of the gas-lit nineties as it is today. Its vast army of adherents prove that stamp collecting is no fad, no fleeting joy-of-the-moment, but that it can be rightfully called the universal hobby.
¶ Placed squarely against the problem of demand is the question of supply. It is, of course, simple economics to understand that when the demand for something is greater than the supply, the value rises accordingly. And the wider the difference between these two poles, the greater will be the appreciation in value.