Inherited Tons Of Stamps - Where Do I Begin??

Hi Ladybug. Welcome. I have seen complete Scott catalog sets on e-bay for 30 to 60 dollars.Basically you can just get a set from A-Z and use them as a reference to help you identify them. This way you can get the feel of thumbing thru them. I use 2008 year Scott Catalogs. The 2010-2012 sets are kind of expensive. I currently joined a stamp club and had a lot of fun. Many people with the same Identification problems. But its nice to sit in the comfort of my home and play with stamps. The hobby is very educational. When you can't find the info on a certain stamp you turn on the scanner,upload and let the "Wizards" give you input. Have fun. Keith

Ladybug
Could be the start of a great adventure. There is always something to learn. You can use the search engine also with keywords. Very helpful. Members always like to see scans then they can give you an idea of the stamp values. But for me when you start it's not very important. Most important is that you found a hobby that make you learn, relax and make interesting friends. Think about it before selling it all. Daniel

Welcome!

Don't assume you are going to get rich off the sale of even a very large collection.
Most used stamps from after WW2 sell by the pound! Literally. However, you do need to
go through the collection and search for rarities, if for no other reason than to do
right by the family member that put this collection together for you to inheirit.

Good luck!
Hope you really do find treasures within!
Dave

Of course, we always love to see pics!

i know I have said this before...more than once..when I see a post similar to this....if a person collected seriously and spent quite abit of money on his collection...why would they not leave some information for the heir ? It would not have to be too detailed...just giving the inheritor some idea as to where the value is..it seems that either people think they have a lot more value than they do..or they are totaly clueless and get ripped off !

philb:
I know what you mean.
My father collected, but never taught be about it until his very last days.
I was clueless.

The great part now is I am learning the hobby and having fun with what he started as a child.

Philb,

I hear you.. why didn't they leave information...? Well, my Dad thought all that would go to one of my brothers - but he has no interest nor is he much of a talker. So, my Dad never guessed I would get any of it. Besides, my adopted family was kind of odd in that no one seemed to have close relationships. Bizarre huh?! (My birth family is just the opposite!)

Another funny thing (unrelated) was my Dad was a pretty world-wide known ancestory expert. People from all over the world knew and wrote to him. But my Mom hated it, so it was never talked about, despite my Dad spending thousands of late nights working on it. Fortunately, after he died, my aunt ran up and grabbed all that genealogy stuff and donated it to a proper library before my older brothers tossed it. I cringe at thinking all the valuable stuff my brother(s) tossed. Oh well.

So.. you kinda get the picture?

Ladybug, thank you..thats a good explanation..i know my stamps will be a burden for my children to get rid of..(i was executor of my Dads estate) and as he told me he was not doing me any favors..there were 4 of us siblings and everything was divided by 4..they left the headaches to me and trusted me completly..even with almost everything in a trust it took a full (miserable for me) year to button everything up !!

Many members started collecting when young, stopped when life started getting in the way and then pulled their collections out again at a point that worked out better. If you think you might be interested later, why not keep it for awhile?

Also some members collect with their children so if yours are old enough (5-7+) it might be something you would enjoy doing with them. I started a friend's 7-year old son collecting stamps and he enjoys looking at the world-wide stamps and finding the countries on his globe. He also likes looking for stamps with maps on them and stamps with soldiers on them. (His brother is in the Army and sending him stamps from Japan.) Kids can learn history, geography, culture and all sorts of stuff from stamps.

Keep reading the SCF threads and eventually we'll hook you in!

Just kidding... sort of.

You don't need to buy a catalog, here is a bible of sorts...

http://www.mysticstampcatalog.com/

It is from a stamp vendor so the prices are a bit jacked up but it is a good guide depending on what year stamps you have you can use the page finder page 48 has 1971 stamps then you can simply use the right and left arrows to back and forward in time. I started you at 1971 because you say your dad collected them from 40 years ago so there you go...

as someone else said scan them and post the scans of a few and we can gauge what you have and maybe even make an offer....

c ya

rick

Well for free the Mystic catalog is not bad in helping to identify newer stamps, but if you were trying to identify the older stamps with lots of little varieties, or figure out why the red color is too far to the right, it won't be much help with that as they don't list all the potential varieties, and their prices are really inflated. Let's take the special occasions booklet pane, 2274A. They want $30 for $2.20 worth of mint stamps I send and receive on my mail. Now, they do have a great database of images, but either way if her dad collected worldwide or only stamps from the German occupation of Ljubljana (or something along those lines)It won't work. It could be that he collected stamps from Spanish West Africa or the Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus, it still won't work because it's a catalog of U.S. Stamps.
Well, just my own two cents to put in.

Check your local library for the Scott catalogs. Where I live (which is major metro area though), I am apparently one of the few collectors that check out the catalogs, so they are always available where I live. I have them all checked out and usually renew the max number of times and then start over again.

I don't know if anyone said this, but don't mount the stamps if you plan to sell them. Though a stock book or stock pages to present them for auction might be a good idea.

I am wondering HungaryForStamps, what exactly you mean by "don't mount the stamps." Most all of the stamps I have are in albums, and they are what I would call "mounted" to the page. What other way is there to keep collections? I am very curious, if this is what you mean. (It's been a long time since I have done any collecting)
Thanks!

Lori: He said don't bother mounting them "If you plan to sell them..."