Selling Donated Stamps In A Charity Shop

Hi everyone. I work for a charity shop (in the UK, but I figure an international opinion is just as valuable) which receives a steady influx of stamps and stamp collections as part of the donated goods. We have a few people sorting these to sell, but there is disagreement over how they should be presented. Currently we sort them into a variety of categories, but these have been decided ad-hoc and there is no systematic approach -- for instance, does an off-paper Australian stamp with a Kiwi bird on it go in Australasia, Foreign Off-paper, or Birds?

As such, I was hoping some of you could suggest how you would most like to see stamps arranged and sold, what categories are conducive to selling -- would it be better to group by countries or continents; should we have a Commonwealth box; would thematic stamps have their own section or be put with their respective countries, and would this include or exclude events (coronations, Christmas, etc.)?

Another option is to sell unsorted bags -- what weight/price would seem acceptable to you for this, and what level of regular GB definitives in them would be too high (we do get a huge number of them and I wouldn't like to be selling poor bags -- we could pre-sort to ensure decent value for money). I'm totally clueless about stamp collecting, so any assistance or advice you could offer would be very much appreciated.

~Bob

Hi
Here are some suggestions/ideas
If you get old albums,with a fair number of stamps in them, rather than removing stamps, either sell them whole, or just take out the pages with the stamps still on them and sell them by the page. I've seen this done in an antiques shop. That way a buyer looking for a specific country can see all the stamps, and you are saved from removing them from the paper.

Loose stamps - some people collect the GB definitives showing the Queen's head - these are known as Machins, and some collectors will buy these in their 100's to look for different varieties. You could separate these out and sell these in bulk.

I know some charity shops have volunteer experts for pricing collectables such as china and books. Perhaps you could contact your nearest stamp club and see if a knowledgable person would volunteer to help you. (Also good advertising to local collectors!)

Have a look on ebay to get an idea of "kiloware" prices. Perhaps you might like to sell kiloware online. there's lots of charity kiloware on there, and depending on your customer base in the shop, it might sell quicker online.

Collectors vary so much, I think the best answer is to have a variety of packets available, so that there is something for everyone. Countries is probably a better category than continents, as more collectors will look for specific countries.

Finally, as you sell them in the shop, try to gain feedback from the customers, as I suspect you will develop a regular clientele amongst local collectors.

G'day Bob,
(Onya for your charity work, you guys are tops)
an aussie perspective,
Our red cross shop does the same,
all voluntary work, stamps are held in those
big ugly chinese stamp stockbooks.

Collectors are grown up, no need to sort into thematics
waste of time, sort via country, full books for GB ,australia,
france etc, other books go alphabetically.

Our mob generally charged 10c-15c per stamp for run
of the mill (and in good order) stamps
the higher values go up a bit.
we have collectors that assist with the sorting
but it's hard work no doubt about that.

Our bulk australian is sold at $15 AUD per kilo.

hope that helps
(and only my opinion, others may vary)

Very well put, stampgal.

Specialists and thematic collectors will say put their topic off to the side by itself to be easily found. But there are so many major topics.

I think by country is the easiest.

GB Queen's head Machins (small and large) go together as per stampgal.

That is a good idea for most countries also. Small definitives (Kings, Queens, flags, etc) go together and larger commemorative (pictorial) stamps go together.

Older (pre-decimal) with older, when you can tell what it is, and newer with newer.

If people are just looking for birds or fish or bridges or flags, etc, believe me, those stamps will jump out at them and be visible to their eyes. After sorting through masses of stamps over time looking for your special topic you get to know what a bird (or whatever your topic is) looks like upside down and from lots of angles and even a leg or a beak peeking out from the mass of other stamps. You just know.

But, as stampgal says, be aware of your customers and if enough of them (and not just one person that is louder than the rest) would like to see things arranged differently, then it's time to do that.

Not sure how you are presenting or displaying the stamps. In stockbooks like Rod suggested or loose on pages or in boxes? All my above statements assumed you were displaying them in a way that most stamps were easily seen and not handled too much as too much picking through and sorting amongst would damage the stamps.

Oh, if you have mint (or new) versus used (or cancelled, or even not cancelled) then collectors do usually collect one type. Some do collect everything though.

Indeed you do , also I have seen topical collectors
go about in bourses with their catalogues,
"collect penguins on stamps" say, and they go through each
country book ticking off the stamps that comply.

we also have shoeboxes of First day covers
covers in general, and a milk crate called "cinderellas"
where all sorts of junk is put that fits nowhere else.
(beer mats, beer labels, etiquettes" cut squares fro pre paid envelopes and the like)

Hi Bob and welcome,
Some larger UK charities e.g. Oxfam have specialist stamp centres but others just guess.
My wife helps in an Oxfam and they also have a specialist who comes in fairly often to assist with antiques etc.
You could approach a local stamp club for assistance and they also may contribute any unwanted items.
I have bought older albums in charity shops for <£5 and I would say this was a fair price as they contained mainly common items but it should be fairly easy to identify quality items.
Regarding packets, my locals usually have a variety of packs in the 50p-£2 range.

Hi to all

The charity shops that my wife visits here in Australia generally sorts the stamps into bank coin bags and charges 50 cents for 50 stamps. Sometimes they are all Australia, sometimes mixed, but mostly run of the mill. Most of the charity shops sell any collections to dealers so unfortunately where I live nothing good every comes in.
Regards,
Horamakhet

Thanks for all the great feedback! At the moment we don't have the time nor space to sort/display in stockbooks, we're selling packets of (approx) 25-100. Interestingly enough, we've been sorting into themes upstairs, but when I checked the shelves, we're only selling packets of country and continent, and one lonely 'sport' pack.