In 2019, I came across my childhood stamp collection from the 1970s, which had been packed away in a box since then. After reviewing my meager collection the philatelist bug hit me again and I took up the hobby again with a gusto. I found the definitive stamps most interesting and recently decided to concentrate my collection on used definitives and arranging the collection by year.
With my new found interest in definitives, I began researching the history of definitives and commemoratives and came across a Wikipedia article on the Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps.
The Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps (S.S.S.S.) was a short-lived and ill-fated attempt by philatelists before 1900 to suppress the issue of stamps designed mainly for sale to collectors. The society was formed on 6 May 1895 and lasted until about 1897 when it broke up due to the failure of dealers and collectors within its ranks to boycott speculative issues. The society was supported by the Royal Philatelic Society London and the American Philatelic Society. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_the_Suppression_of_Speculative_Stamps)
I also came across the following paragraph under “Commemorative stamp” in Wikipedia.
The appearance of commemorative postage stamps caused a backlash among some stamp collectors in the early years of stamp collecting, who balked at the prospect of laying out ever-larger sums to acquire the stamps of the world. This led to the formation of the Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps in 1895 to blacklist these excessive stamps. The organization broke up after unsuccessful attempts at getting collectors at large to comply with their wishes. Today early commemoratives are still prized by collectors. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commemorative_stamp)
This perspective on commemorative stamps resonated with me and I began looking into the history of definitives and commemoratives around the world. Definitive issues have been fairly consistent over the years with between a few stamps to a little over a thousand being issued each year worldwide. Commemorative’s on the other hand, is a different story. The world’s first commemorative stamps was a series of eight stamps issued by New South Wales in 1888, commemorating its centenary.
Over the next thirty years, between 1888 and 1918, a total of about 2,000 commemorative stamps were issued worldwide. Each year, more and more commemorative stamps were being issued around the world and by the late 20th century, over 10,000 commemorative stamps were being issued each year.
I became fascinated with the idea of resurrecting this organization to combat all the “speculative” stamps of our modern era. Many of these “commemorative” stamps being issued around the world are never used for postage and are generated solely for the purpose of selling them to philatelists. For example, the African country of Guyana has been issuing stamps from 1966 to the present. In that time, it has issued 905 definitive stamps, but over 9,000 commemorative stamps.
Evidently, there have been other times when there has been a call for the re-activation of the SSSS. A March 11, 1962 article in the New York Times stated the following.
THERE may well be a need to reactivate the Society for the Suppression of Speculative Stamps, dead since the turn of the century. The spate of speculative issues plaguing stamp collectors continues, the most recent being a four-sheet issue of Togo commemorating the exploits of Soviet and United States astronauts. (https://www.nytimes.com/1962/03/11/archives/news-of-the-stamp-world-flood-of-speculatives-plaguing-collectors-a.html)
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