I Want To Sell A Worldwide Stamp Collection

Hello there, I have a pre 1950s worldwide stamp collection I bought earlier on a car boot. I have done a very long research and I believe there many stamps in there that are worth a pretty sum. I only bought it because it was so cheap, so I would like to sell it!
Any ideas ,please , where I can get the best deal for them?
Here are some of them( a very tiny bit of the whole lot)
Cheers :)

Dorati, to SCF the real exciting world of stamp collecting. I'm very interested hearing more about your research on these lovely stamps, please.

I saw ones that look exactly the same, somewhere even the stamp is very similar, and they were estimated at hundreds of pounds. I saw many in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue

Dorati - I think you should re-locate the person who offered hundreds of pounds, and sell immediately!

Welcome.

The general message for non-collectors is that the value of a collection is very often a lot lower than someone assumes. It is always tough to give this news to heirs who assume they are about to make big money off of an inherited stamp collection.

The person who assembled your collection didn't seem to have much in the way of organization beyond the basic separation into countries. From the pictures you've provided, there isn't much evidence of an attempt to keep in any chronological order, or to build sets.

A rough rule of thumb used by many collectors when buying old albums is two cents per stamp. An album with 2,000 stamps would be a $40 album in that scenario. (The album itself generally doesn't figure much into the equation.)

A dealer won't go anywhere near that high on a purchase, unless the dealer spots some significant stamps in there when doing a thirty-second flip through the album.

This is something I put in another post recently in reply to a similar question, and I'll paste it here, because I think it applies in your situation, too:



You could always keep them and start to build your own collection.

Why does EVERYONE think stamps are valuable and they are going to make a killing????????

I agree. Although interesting, I don't see anything of value in this collection. Sorry :(

When evaluating collections, I always ask "how many nickel stamps does it take to make 100 pounds [or dollars]". The schoolboy answer is 2,000 - but in fact the real answer is closer to 150,000. I lesson many of us have learned the hard way.

Dorati, the Stanley Gibbons catalogue is a great place to begin to research your stamps. However, there are a few problems with using the catalogue's values to estimate your collection's overall value. The first is that tiny differences between two stamps can make the difference between a low-value and a high-value, so just because some of your stamps look similar to some in the catalogue does not mean they have a similar value. Secondly, the values depend also on condition, so tiny imperfections can lower that value significantly. Thirdly, the values are based on what a perfect stamp would sell for in a dealer's, perhaps. They are not really a guide to what you might be able to sell for if you sold the collection as a whole. In fact most buyers would not expect to pay anything near the "catalogue" value for a stamp, and dealers definitely wouldn't.
I hope you have caught some of the stamp collecting bug as you have researched the collection. Why don't you keep it and learn some more? Who knows, you might prove us all wrong and find that hidden gem in the collection! Even those of us who profess not to be interested in the monetary value of our collections secretly hope that too - its part of the fun of collecting!) Good Luck! but don't get your hopes up

I know that as you get older you ger more cantankerous, and I acknowledge that is true for me, but why do people think they can turn up and think, "I like this place, what can I get out of it?"

Dorati, I don't want to discourage you but why don't you give before you take?

No value in the Indian stamps, I'm afraid.

Guessing as you picked it up pretty cheaply at a boot sale should give you some idea of the value.
I have paid as little as 50p for albums of this quality and maybe as much as £5 if there were items of interest.
I have never sold any though as I keep them as interesting items but looking at what you have shown so far I would put at the lower end.
Some nice stamps there just not valuable in the financial sense.

You could eventually verify the Irish stamps for inverted wmks (just in case)Beware, there are 2 issues: 1922 and 1940 (different watermarks)... But don`t have high expectations....
Anyway, maybe you`ll get `caught`, and even if you don`t get rich, you may become a collector...
Good luck.

Hmmm, posted in wrong forum, not 50 posts, not 2 weeks. Anything else done horribly wrong here?

Normally I would say 30 days in the cooler..but its Thanksgiving, its not easy for newcomers to navigate the different topic forums !

Well at least Dorati had the ambition to learn how to properly post images, so nice touch on that one! I think the aggressive replies to new members should be toned down a bit, or else a reputation could be formed similar to "he who shan't be named" from the other Australian board. We wouldn't want that to happen... would we?

I would like to see the album cover, maybe it is worth a thousand bucks! How about some scans of the British or China sections, could be some sleepers in there. Probably not, but you never know....

Have a good one, and have fun with your collection if you decide to keep it and research it Dorati.

Stamp collectiong is not only interesting, it is really relaxing and rewarding as well, with new things to learn each and every day. I can guarantee that one!

Have a Good One,

Skilo54