Another First For Crypto — Collectible Stamps

Austria’s national postal service may be set to inaugurate a whole new group of people to the potential of crypto by introducing collectable crypto stamps.

In a potentially fad-setting move, Osterreichische Post is offering limited edition stamps that are still sendable for traditional mailings, yet empowers collectors with the ability to store a digital image of the stamp on the Ethereum blockchain.

This first of its kind collectable is available in Austria’s post offices as well as on their online shop, and after purchase, collectors will receive a physical stamp block as well as details for accessing their new wallet that contains the appropriate crypto stamp. Those that “gotta have ‘em all” can simply use their phone or webcam to scan a QR code included with the stamp block.

As the maiden project is estimated to bring in just over $1 million, it’s probably a good bet that this will be the first of many “limited edition” crypto stamp offerings we see. Especially if this one is successful. Additionally, seeing as there’s a total of five different collectibles available (with some apparently set for lower “print” runs which will inevitably result in rareness and collectability) and only 150,000 stamps total available, it’ll be interesting to see how fast these sell out.

However, there are two more aspects to this that I think will be rather interesting to watch play out. First of course is watching the initial price of what the stamps retail for, 6.90 Euro, and what time and subsequent crypto stamp releases will do for the value. As these are non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the owners could literally sell them for any price. Could these be the most valuable stamps in modern history? Could this possibly spur a whole new set of people to pick up the age-old hobby of stamp collecting?

Secondly, as this is the first use case of NFTs by a government agency, it’ll be interesting to see who else jumps on the bandwagon and what other innovations we may see in the near future. While this is an area I admittedly hadn’t sunk a toe into until now, this project has me intrigued. Of course I realize that this isn’t the first NFT project and there has already been a bit of excitement regarding the possibilities for the gaining and other industries, it’s just that this is the first one that has really caught my attention and gotten my wheels spinning.

I can foresee a lot of possibilities for NFTs but I think I will save that for another article. Stamp collecting may not be for everyone, not even a 21st century version, but I have the distinct feeling that we’re going to see some awesome things come out of this.