When The End Comes For A Stamp Collector !

My old friend passed away March 21 and the gray haired members of our club want to meet with his wife to suggest possibilities for selling his collections...i am a bit timid about the whole thing..i know when someone says they have a 100,000 dollar stamp collection and the auction house or dealer ends up paying 10 thousand ...there can be doubts and questions...our club can not afford to buy this collection to auction off at our meetings..there may be some stuff that the auction house or dealer may not want that we will end up with ..well perhaps we can at least prepare her !

I am sorry for the loss of your friend. Its a shame that a life long collection of history and joy of collecting can be bought or sold for mere pennies on the dollar. Try to keep in mind that even if the collection is sold in bits and pieces or one stamp at a time , that maybe somewhere , some young person will find the hobby and enjoy it as much as we all do.

Phil,

Perhaps your club can do a consignment auction? If not public, then perhaps online? Our club does both, 3 times a year. 5% of all sales go back to the club. Unless she is in immediate need of $$, this gives reasonable time for an honest assessment of your friend's collection, and will give his widow a fair price for the collection in the end.

Brian

I appreciate the replies...Brian, I have done the math on selling at our auction ...we only have a couple of people with pockets deep enough to buy the better stuff...i am sure she trusts us...but I would rather things got buttoned up quickly...i remember when I was executor of my Fathers estate...i was worried to death that my sister or two brothers would question something..but they were happy enough to let me have the headaches..my father was old..he told me the estate was in a trust and it would be but and dried but it still took me exactly 12 months to settle everything !!

Sorry to hear about the loss of your friend philby

Odd you mentioned this because we learned just last Wednesday at our club meeting that we too also lost a member.

I am sure that your club can collectively advise your friend's wife on the best way to dispose of his collection.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Peter, I just read your latest on the "hoarding" thread and now this one...both make a lot of sense....i heard my friend mention that his 13 year grandson would inherit some of his collection...how written in stone that is (and how wise) I may find out this week..Joe may have been figuring on staying around a little longer ! You sound like you are very organized..as for me trying to whittle down the hoard takes a lot of time and work !!

Yes, sorry for the loss of your friend and fellow collector. Like Bujutsu, our club also recently lost a member. She was 101 yrs old, and though I never met her, many of our members were grateful for her assistance and expertise.
As the club newsletter says, another album closed.

Phil - I, too, am sorry to hear about your friend. It is very difficult to come up with what all would consider the ideal solution. It has woken me to the fact that my non-collecting wife would also need help in determining what best to do and that possibly I can help by creating a "disposal document" for her.
I think I would try to at least identify the more valuable and sell piece-meal or in small groups and let the rest go as one unit.

Sorry to hear your lost of a fellow collector.
The first thing your club needs to do is set up a day with the widow and plan on doing a INVENTORY.That means to first collect everything in one place.A few members need to view whats there.After the group viewed the collection and how it was kept .Then have a meeting on how its going to be boxed up ,try to keep all the same kind of stuff together,like albums in one group,dealer cards and enevolpes group together,then stockbooks and finally loose material.After having everything sorted try pricing each group to wholesale value .Make a list for the family and then start to contact buyers who could view the material,remember to have one experience member present during the viewing and if the buyer wants only to talk to the widow ,say its not going to happen.
Have the club members review each offer to their own estimates and then the group from the club members makes a recomendation to the family .
Questions you don't answer--------who else is bidding on it,whats the cheapest the family will take,are they prepared for a right now price,has anybody already looked at it ,and they want private time with the decision maker,also stop the dealer if they start to tell you how they will sell it at a small fraction of catalog and start to show you what bulk lots sell for and always have a experience collector sitting on the sidelines with the understanding they say absolutely nothing........that will all guarentee a fair price.

HOW I WOULD STEAL YOUR COLLECTION FROM YOU SPOUSE--------I tell her stamp collecting is a dying hobby.......I would show her the big decline in APS membership.I bring them a few advertisments showing $1,000.00 catalog of stamps for $50.00 and explain im not making much on the resale. I would show her that graded stamps are the hot market now and what her husband bought years ago is not popular right now.I have never seen a collection were I can't point out all the damaged and defective material,if I see a hinge mark on a mint stamp them I would act shocked ,really shocked that he would dare collect such a stamp ,also any used stamp with a heavey cancel would again reduce the value of the whole collection .I would comment positive on any low value set in a positive way and then tell her its nice but not much value.The better stuff I would skip over.I would always tell them I feel their pain and how sad I was for their lost,but you were not a expert in stamps and only collected for fun. I would not want any outsider in the room while I estimated what I would pay. I clearly don't want to have a APS member in the room ,to safer guard against some knownledgeable collector my defense will always be I don't know the material that well because Im a specialises in Upper Slovbira stamps.

The inventory sounds like very good advice..i know he has some items in a safe deposit box..and I hope he discussed with her some of his better items...a few years ago another of our members with a room full of stamps passed away and Dutch Country auctions came up and offered the wife a thousand dollars for everything...she declined and she and her son packed up a van with the collection and took it down to Delaware for the auction...i believe she cleared 6 thousand dollars by going to auction !!

interesting PHILB.......some how I just don't trust someone who wants to only talk to a person who doesn't know what they are selling.

My family expressed the same concern about my collection, so here's what I did.

I keep an electonic inventory on my computer, which is periodically upload to secure offsite storage (in case the computer dies). In the safe with my collection, I left written instructions on how to access the electronic inventory, a list of philatelic auction houses specializing in Germany, and what they should expect as a percentage of catalog value both for a straight sale and a consignment (so they're not surprised at getting only a fraction of catalog value).

Now if I can just get them to remember the combination to the safe!

Hi
It is always sad when a collector has to go to The Great Album in the Sky
I have told my wife that my collection is not to be savaged by dishonest auctions houses or dealers.
When I write up pages I put the current catalogue value on the back of the sheet and tell my wife that I have done that so that she is aware of current values as of the day that I listed them.
If my children do not want to keep them hopefully I will sell them all before.
I can tell you that there are a lot of dealers here in Australia who do rip off the elderly. (I have seen this happen with Rare Books Dealers and estates)
Like PostmasterGS, I have told my Wife that the prices are only guidelines, but will help in preventing her being cheated.
Regards
Horamakhet

James

I am sorry to hear this.

Was that member Maggie Toms?

If so, I have met her on many occasions and found her to be a very nice lady.

Chimo

Bujutsu