Hello Dorati, welcome!
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Any ideas ,please , where I can get the best deal for them?
Well, it depends, it always depends.
As stampgirl mentioned, the condition of a stamp makes a big difference in how it is perceived to be of value or not by stamp collectors. Condition is the centering of the design within the borders or the stamp, any paper rips, tears or creases. bent or flded over perforations around the edges. Mould (rust, toning) on the stamps (some of you Netherlands stamps have some, the orange brown colour around the edges, best to separate them from the rest before the mould spreads, which it does. Thins in the paper (look through the stamp back against a light). A nice and readable and light cancel for some.
Most want a stamp they buy to be free of the hinges and any hinge glue residue or remnants left on the back. Mint stamps (new, still with gum, without cancel) you should not tear the hinge off as that will damage the gum remaining, so just cut closely and leave a bit on the stamp.
Removal from album pages and also removing hinges cleanly is done by just soaking in clean water and rinsing and then drying and flattening. Do not soak mint stamps.
Use
www.askphil.com for a glossary of many stamp terms.
To get the best deal for your stamps you should get them out of that album and soak the used / cancelled ones and generally clean them all up a bit. Presentation is a big factor for any sale of anything.
Second, know more about what you are selling than the buyer does or at least the same. This is sometimes hard or impossible to do with some stamps as there are many specialized catalogues around the world for different countries that go into much more detail on errors and varieties than does the Stanley Gibbons general catalogues.
I have been at this for many years off and on and I feel I still know nothing compared to what there is to know. Being in London you are lucky perhaps in having a nice library or two to access for specialized knowledge.
When you sell a whole collection you generally get a very low price. When you break it up and sell by country lot or better still, by single stamp (then you must know your stuff) you will reap the best reward. You learn as you go.
www.ebay.com/b/260/" rel="nofollow">ebay perhaps for selling is a choice but there again you do better when you know how to display properly and make good titles and give pertinent and factual information.
Only rely on catalogues for numbers and info about perfs or paper or colours or such. Pricing is, especially in Gibbons I hear, slightly higher than in the real market. Just treat it as a guide and a relative comparison. Not everyone wants your stamp(s) so you have to know what it is to state what it is correctly and attract the peole who do want that stamp.
Perhaps , as an aid to you in identifying stamps and values, you could post some (one or two stamps per picture) that you feel are worth something and state why.
Then we, as a group, could help you by identifying it and if there is a chance it might be a 'good' stamp, of value, then you could ask why is it or isn't it such and such and we could tell you. The chances are that if you think something is valuable then others here have also at some time and have had to perhaps learn the differences and reasons why or why not.
For example, a stamp that looks teh same but is a shade of colour off, is sometimes worth a fortune, but lots of people have jumped to the conclusion that this colour must be that colour, only because they have had no experinece with a bunch of the same stamp with all the different shades and actually seen the difference and can recognize it.
Or perforations or perfs. measure the wiggly bits around the edges and see how many here are in 2cm. On top and on side so you get a measurement of 12 x 10-1/2 or something like that. Some stamps are valued differently just because of a different perforation machine was used and made a different measured perf on a few stamps.
Or watermarks in the paper of the stamp. Turn a stamp over and look at it on a dark surface (great Britain stamps are good ones for this, KGV or such like) and see the pattern that was pressed into the paper when the paper was made. Sometimes these are sideways or upside down and are worth more to some collectors who care about such things.
We are all different you see, and not everyone at all times will care about or want a certain rare stamp just because of a shade of colour or perf change or paper type or what have you.
You see how detailed it gets? Mind boggling really. And to enjoy stamp collecting people don't have to know all this stuff or do half of it. They just collect what they like to look at and that is good enough.
Some like to study things a bit more than others (like me and others on here) and do unfortunately make it seem there are fortunes to be made and you just have to try. But many (most) stamps were printed in the millions of copies, so just because they are 70 years old doesn't make them more in demand and thus more valuable.
In collectors of stamps there is a love of history more often than not, and perhaps also a love of detail work or collecting or just accumulating. I think we all have a bit of all of that in each of us.
Most of the stamps you have shown are common (millions printed). I would like to see the India KGV stamps in a closer scan please, or than older numeral Denmark stamp. I do not know (I just have a few catalogues myself) if any are super valuable but they are always nice to see and study and when we can see them better we can give you a better opinion.
Any questions? Any Canada stamps to show? I know Canada better myself.
Posted 11/24/2011 11:57 am
