1874 Album Help/Information

Hello,

I am looking for some help with a French poste album I found. I have include a photo of the first page and a few of the stamps. It contains about 470 pages with half the pages being descriptions and the other half stamps. It has stamps from all over the world and is mostly complete. These are my questions:

Are these albums common?

Would it be best to keep it together and sell as a whole or separate the stamps and sell them individually ?

Which countries stamps are on average are most valuable? I have only looked at the first page (Britain) and the first stamp a 1840 queen Victoria black stamp seems to valuable.

All the stamps are older than 1870 is there any specific stamp/date I should look for that might be very valuable?

I hope I posted in the correct forum let me know if I should use another instead. Thanks for all your help in advance and if you need more photos let me know..
Dave

There really is no rule of thumb as to which Countries carry the most value. Penny Blacks (GB Black stamp in picture) can sell for a decent amount but it's really too hard to tell from the small photo. With Stamps, condition is everything and with the blacks 4 Margin stamps carry the most value. I like a couple of the US Stamps you show, but again bigger Scans / Pictures are required to place value on them. For condition, like I mentioned it's all about the condition of the piece, front and back. Age of stamps does not always equal value as there are many Stamps from the 1800's that are only worth a few cents so scarcity is a factor.

No. There are people that collect old albums, but it's a niche market. The album has value ... do not throw it out!




I'm sure you'll find more than one opinion on this question. I think it's ok to separate and sell these stamps. Some of these will require a little groundwork on your part to determine watermarks, plate #s, grills, and condition.




Generally speaking, the most valuable will be the items from countries where there's demand. US, British commonwealth, Germany, and China are always in high demand.




Not all of these stamps are pre-1870. I can see some US stamps that date from the 1890s. I'm sure there are many more to be found.

As a rule, there are a couple of things to look for if fishing for valuable stamps.

1) Condition, condition, condition. Catalogue values are for sound (undamaged) condition with Very Fine (VF) centering unless otherwise stated by the catalogue. Values for Damaged stamps drop dramatically and a discerning collector will never pay catalogue value for an item with flaws.


2) High face value. As an example, the US 24c George Washington stamp catalogues at a minimum of ~$200 in sound condition with VF centering. There are a number of varieties of this stamp and values skyrocket for the uncommon types. This is where you need to know what you have before trying to sell.

3) Old does not necessarily mean valuable. Letters were the only means of long distance communication in the 19th century. As such, stamps were issued by the billions upon billions. Most US stamps with low face values (esp 2c and 3c stamps)are so common that they are only worth from .25 to a couple dollars from this era.

There are exceptions of course!

I would recommend taking some high-resolution photographs and posting new threads in their appropriate forum (US stamps in the "Classic US" forum, and so on.

Congrats on you great find!

Brian

Brian and Stallzer,

Thank you very much for the tips and information! Quick follow-up questions:

You mention posting high resolution photos but in adding the photos above I was limited to 100k?

Is it appropriate to use the forum to ask questions concerning condition and value? I don't want to anger folks.

Thanks again, great forum..

There's no issue with this at all. The key is taking high quality photos/scans of the stamps front & back.




I'm no expert on photography, but I do just fine with my cheap digital camera. Taking photos at high resolution, then using a free photo editor to reduce the size to 100k is actually quite easy. I think there's a few threads on this forum on easy ways to accomplish that.

Brian

I am pretty good with France. Poste a scan of them for me..

I want to add one more thing.

SCF gets a lot of inquiries on collections. It's highly unusual for a guest to post pictures of anything with potential value, so many members will steer away from threads like this, and we try not to get your hopes up.

Your case is clearly different. At a glance, I see hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in potential catalogue value. The 2p Blue Great Britain stamps alone could be worth that much if they are genuine. This is why it's worth it to invest time into posting high resolution pictures. I hope you take the time to do so!

Brian

If you are using a point and shoot Camera, use the Macro setting if you have one. Also you won't be limited to 100K if you use a free hosting site such as Photobucket. Like Brian stated we don't like to get anyone's hope up but there is some potential from the photos. Looking at the middle picture, the 24¢ violet US stamp appears to be missing the bottom right corner, and that stamp would have had value if not for the BR corner. Your Great Britain 2d Blues, is there a white line below Postage and above "Two Pence" ? The top 2d Blue appears to have no White lines which is better, but it looks to have no margins ? Do you have a scanner ? If you use a hosting site you should be able to produce pictures like this.