The Cambridge stamp club meets twice a month at the Allan Reuter Centre: the first Thursday and third Monday. Meetings start with passing around of "circuit books" between members, where stamps are available for trade. Clubs members from other cities are invited, because that means an influx of fresh stamps to the pool.

As collectors talk shop and catch up on gossip, many examine stamps using tweezers. They're only interrupted when someone comes around hawking draw tickets to win -- what else? -- batches of donated stamps.

Like Adkin, Tom Griffith is optimistic stamp collecting isn't going to die away any time soon.

Griffith is a member of the Grand Valley Philatelic Association and a former school teacher who lives near Smithville, southeast of Hamilton. Along with travelling to stamp clubs across the district, he helps set up stamp-related programs in public schools, like sending away for "first day of issue" stamps, where the images are related to classroom studies.

Griffith was also involved in a youth stamp club run at the Waterloo Region Children's Museum in Kitchener over Christmas.

Stamps don't tend to hold young people's attention when teenage hormones kick-in, Griffith said.

"When the kids reach puberty, you lose them, but when they hit their 40s, they come back," Griffith said.

Stamp collecting is huge in Europe, but it faces a tough fight here for the attention of young people in an age of video games, said John Kneitl of Guelph. While frustrated with the hurdles to attracting new blood, he doubts stamp collecting will disappear as a hobby.

The growth of email and decline in mailing letters may turn into a boon for stamp collectors, he said. A century ago, tens of millions of the same stamp were printed. Today, only a few million are printed -- and Kneitl is busy buying up whatever he can.

"I think the new stuff, if I look back in 15 years, will be even more rare than the old stuff."

Source: therecord.com