Rare Stamp Lists?

There is one thing I can't seem to find anywhere but that is a compiled list of rare stamps. So does anyone know where to find one? Or do they change from year to year?

Different, try this for a start.


http://www.2-clicks-stamps.com/arti...-stamps.html

Thanks I looked at it. Im hoping to get a site that can tell me all the desired stamps worth maybe $20 or more. Maybe I just dont know how to use that site but it seems to be the 12? Most desired stamps in the world worth 100,000 +? Though there are a few I havent seen before, so it helped some.

Different, I'm afraid $20 doesn't qualify as 'rare'. To take an example: I collect the Indian States, and I track all items catalogued at £10 or more (a bit less than your $20, but near enough for present purposes) in Gibbons in Excel spreadsheets. For just one State, Cochin, I have around 100 items that make the spreadsheet; for two other States, Jaipur and Jammu & Kashmir, I have about 80. And that's just two of the 40-odd Indian States. The list might be a bit longer for larger countries, like the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, China etc.

Oh, well what is the lowest value that is considered rare? I understand your point. I was meaning rare as something other than commonly found and worthless. Anything will help really. Something I can go through a lot of stamps and recognize "wow what a find!" and I am easy to please, a $5 stamp in a $0.50 pile would make me happy. If you're willing to share your spread sheets those would be a nice place to start.

Different,
My Mint Hinged KGV ½d green with Inverted L/M water-mark may be considered scarce - definitely NOT rare imo, a similar mint hinged stamp was successfully Auctioned and invoiced for Three thousand, Seven hundred and Twenty Eight dollars ($3,728) in 2007.

Different, my point is that, unless you set the bar very high, you're going to have a quite unmanageably large number of stamps.

Where to set the bar? To keep the list practicable, it's probably going to be in the thousands of dollars. Of course, you can slim it down enormously by confining it to one country, and you can slim it further by confining it to one period, or set.

To demonstrate what I mean, setting the bar at £35 catalogue value in Gibbons' 2012 Commonwealth catalogue would include every one of the first Circular types of Jammu & Kashmir, from this SG 14



at £35 to this SG 5a



at £1100 and upwards. I doubt that you're going to find a genuine copy of one of these in a dealer's 5 cent box, though.

'Knowledge is power'. Rather than try to know every rare stamp in the world - one of these is catalogued at £3.50, the other at £3250





are you sure you could pick the right one in a dealer's 5 cent box? - concentrate your efforts on a specific time or area you can make yourself an expert in. Then you'll be able to spot the bargains. (And no, I didn't find the rare Barwani stamp above in a junk box. I had to pay a very full price for it ...)

And I should have added, you're most welcome to copies of my spreadsheets. I should warn you that they only cover the Indian States, and that they're numbered according to Gibbons. If you're still interested, you can email me at info at asiatechnicaltranslation dot com dot au.

As Tony said, knowledge is power. There are lots and lots of stamps that you can find that will have that something special about them or their cancel that others will have missed or ignored to concentrate on their own collecting interests.

Depending on what you are doing this for, just collecting or to sell again, a lot of other people are doing the same thing.

What you seem to be asking is how do I tell what a rare stamp is? Just by catalogue number is OK but you also have to be able to tell it apart from the other catalogue numbers for that similar stamp.

Colours, perfs, papers, cancels, etc, etc will make a difference at times and to know them all from all around the world is almost impossible without years and years (20-30) of study.

Colours fade or can be changed chemically or have toning (mold), papers can be pressed or punctured to fake a grill or perfin, perfs can be reperfed in different ways to fake a rare perforation, etc, etc.

Maybe just choose to learn about a rare (your price rane inserted here) stamp once a day or a week and you will be ahead of many people.

I think many people collect for the accumulation and completing reasons and enjoyment of the art and workmanship on stamps. Not all are at all interested in varieties of rarities different things.

And the worth itself of a stamp depends on other people wanting it. Just because a catalogue says it is worth this much doesn't mean you will be able to find a person at the right time who is willing to pay that for your stamp. Condition, supply and demand, and also your own selling skills and knowledge of the stamps and market will help determine the value of a stamp at a particular time.

Realistically, the catalogues are only a guideline of what is rare or in demand compared to what is not.

I have never heard of lists of rare stamps in the manner you wish. Tony is tracking his collection for his own interest and others track theirs similarly, but this is a work done by persons for their own satisfaction.

In stamp collecting you learn something new every day it seems. That is how much knowledge there is out there on a vast range of stamps.

What I did (maybe not typical or recomended to mess up any catalogs) is take my older copy of unitrade for canadian stamps and highlight those that would have potentially higher value if I were to find an error or oddity. This way when I have a pile in front of me of assorted I can put aside ones that need to be looked at closer for varieties. At the same time I happily accept that anything roughly early 1900's is a keeper even if lower value. For example the canadian admirals while generally not high value I tend to keep them and anything older. Another thing is I generally keep anything queen victoria. As mentioned you need to first pick a starting point or country you enjoy- If you are sorting through a worldwide collection the quickest method is to grab the scotts catalogs and you can roughly seperate what could be valuable from what is definatly not. Those that are lower value but have varieties keep aside to check with more detail. It is definatly not a quick process and age doesn't mean value- some 1850's stamps are simply worth 50 cents (although that makes me wonder why)yet same stamp with watermark or even used vs mint can make a huge monetary difference. Its tough when about 95% fall into the low end of the scale.

Hm I understand the point of many of you. I mainly come from another collection. And I have about 15,000 different things memorized I can tell from image alone. Also Im studying asian languages where there are over 100,000 kanji, picture letters/words, so I see memorizing as just something I need to put time and effort in to achieve. Though you are very correct about values, people wont buy things at full price. I do have stamps I enjoy, and I guess I like to be a hoarder of things worth money. So I guess I should limit myself to everything worth $50 or more.

Different, I'm afraid it's not quite so simple: there's a great deal more to be committed to memory.

The real value tends to start where the catalogues stop. To take an example from an area I know, this Bussahir stamp (SG 35a: the 1900-01 2 Anna orange with monogram in mauve)



has a nice clear postmark of Rampur, the State capital. As such, it's catalogued at £110, and might fetch £60-70. With even a reasonably legible postmark of one of the other two post offices in Bussahir - Chini or Rorhu - I could ask, and get, £1000.

The moral is: specialise. Get to know one area very well, and the more obscure, the better. That way, dealers and ebay etc sellers are less likely to recognise what they have, and the competition is less. Of course, it can also be harder to offload your findings. However, once you become a specialist, you'll usually know who the other collectors are - and how deep their pockets are - or at least, where to offer your rarities for sale.

Different,

'Absorb the advice' tonymacg gave above and your hobby outlay will be returned handsomely in a few decades.

Remember, a neat room with shelves housing World Albums full of basic common stamps means nothing later in life compared to a room with 1 album full of Quality scarce desired stamps.

In our area the collecting Category that always disagrees turns out to be those with home/shed filled with boxes of stamps and kilo lots etc etc.

Different,

If you can find a copy of 'Rare Stamps - Pleasures and Treasures' by L.N. and M. Williams, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1967 (1st edition) or 1970 (2nd edition), it will give you a good overview of the rare and wallet busting stamp treasures that are out there. The book is not a complete list but does include most of the great classics. Enjoy.

Terry

One more example, from the other side of the coin, of what I'm driving at when I say that knowledge is power.

This is (most probably) a perfectly genuine copy of Jasdan SG 4 (the 1946 pale yellow-green 1 Anna)



catalogued mint at £22, and used at £225. It sold a while ago at auction in Germany for near enough to full catalogue value for used - not surprising for Jasdan, which is a very popular Indian State. What was surprising that some idiot paid anything for it. The cancellation is a perfectly genuine one - of Bandikui in Jaipur State - but could never, ever have appeared legitimately on a stamp of Jasdan State. So: a £22 stamp ruined with a silly par complaisance cancellation. No problem if you know what Jasdan postmarks



and Jaipur postmarks



look like, but a BIG problem if you don't have the knowledge.

So I repeat: specialise!