Worth The Effort To Check Each One?

It depends...I say yes. I got a bag of those once and I found a mistake. What was thought to be a useless stamp, had perforations that were difficult to gauge. There were only two perf choices for that stamp, and upon careful examination it turned out not to be closer to the junk perforation, but rather the perf for the gold nugget.

The stamp had condition issues, yet I graded it at $15.00 in "good" condition. With all the stamps you have there, we have to ask ourselves "how much time did they spend going over those stamps?"

My point is that the examination of stamps, doing the philately, is what makes the hobby the more fascinating for me. Even if I had to go thru hundreds of stamps, I would set the time aside and spend a few months doing it. And may find a mistake!


All The Best
-IBFS

Heck yeah you should. Check every one cause I did and found one that didn't makes sense and turns out its a possible 423a 10 x12 flat plate and there only one other in custody which males it Moe valuable than a Franklin grill worth about 3 million right now. . The exciting part is I have 2 of the same Perez stamp on identical post cards. I haven't worked in two weeks studying these hings and now I'm scared to let them gonout of my hands for grading cause I don't want them stolen from me. Big dillea but.a good one. Look my friend your retirement has a chance of being here. Just like he lotto if you don't ever play, don't expect to ever win.....

Now which service is going to steal your stamps? I am certain they have a track record of doing this? Come on if you missed two weeks of work I think you have a larger shot of never getting that money back than you do a theft from one of the top three grading services.

Now going through the Franklin and Washington is a ton of fun. You learn a lot when you start identifying these stamps. I don't claim to have the largest collection but it is very large. No I have not found a rarity but it has forced me to really know this series. It takes time and requires a lot of studying on the subject. There certainly is enough reference material available to help you.

My opinion:
1) Whether you are looking for the $100,000 rarity or a $15 album spot-filling variety, it is always worthwhile. Search the recent discovery of a 2c Canada large queen on laid paper - one of 3 known. From the reports I read, it sounds like it was unknowingly sold by a dealer! You just never know when it's your turn to hit the stamp lottery.

2) As a courtesy to other collectors and to yourself in the future, once checked, consider sticking them in labelled envelopes "Checked for perf Y x Z variety" etc.

3) I find it hard to follow the Scott cats for checking these so I write all the varieties for each value on a piece of paper and can quickly check the stamp against each to speed it up.

4) If you have a lot to check, consider doing a pile at a time and then doing other stuff in between so as not to burnout. I will often check 50-100 then move them aside and work on more "fun" and less mundane tasks for a few weeks then go do another pile. Currently I have about 500-1000 left to check. Doing them all at once would be tediously boring (for me at least!)

My 2 cents worth on the 2 cents stamps. I have thousands of 2 cent reds to sort through. Every once in a while I will spend an evening putting them into vario pages and scanning them so I can look at them in greater detail. I still find 599A &634A's. It is still fun and a bit of a thrill for me, lame as that sounds. After a few hours they start to drive me insane and I catalog the few hundred that I identified and put the rest of the hoard away until I need the challenge again. I do the same with the A88's and the Washington/ Franklins. What I still find difficult is some of the early low value machins. I know this is the wrong category to post about British stamps, at this point I am just rambling.

If in doubt send it to Bill Weiss for identification, cost is $5.00 plus postage. I just got a cert for a #19 on cover from him. Check out the cat value for that. Having a business steal you stamp or cover is very unusual and more rare that the stamp getting checked.

Art

Another fun part of a big lot like that is finding the perfins and precancels- I'm always finding new surprises in even the most seemingly homogeneous kilos.