Fisherwoman Introduction

Hi stampers,
My husband and I inherited a vast collection of stamps from his great grandmother who lived in Buenos Aries, Argentina. Her heritage is that of Swiss and German. My husband's father was born in Cuba; his grandfather was born in Ireland and immigrated to London as a boy. He later became a missionary in South America and collected stamps from all of the countries of Latin America., mostly those of Cuba.

We have new and used stamps from US, Europe and Asia dating back to the late 19th century. These stamps are from many of the colonies of Spain, England, Germany, etc. His father started collecting in the mid 1940's and my husband started a collection as a young boy.

We are retaining one collection for our grandchildren to query on their summer school break and wish for you to assist them in this endeavor.

The use of Wikipedia and the Foreign Stamp Identifier Index has given us an enormous background of the postal history. We are retired now and on a quest to catalog all our collection and take it to the next step: How does one go about obtaining a fair and honest appraisal of the lot?

Thank you for all your continued assistance and for welcoming us to your forum.
We enjoy our family, traveling, fishing, boating and snorkeling the Florida Keys. Fisherwoman

Welcome to the group fisherwoman,

There are some articles on the internet about what to do when you inherit a stamp collection.
If you google it, you should be able to find some.
Here's one from the "Virtual Stamp Club" website:
http://www.virtualstampclub.com/inherit.html

In my opinion though, to get an idea of the value of the collection, you would have to get some stamp catalogs and identify the stamps you have and then check their catalog value. This is a huge investment in time. If you take the time to learn a little about the stamps you have, you can decrease the amount of time you would need to value your collection. For instance, most recent USA stamps from 1940's to now in mint condition are worth no more than face value because of the great qty produced.

Hope you stick around awhile and enjoy it here.

Dave N.
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Hi Dave N.,
Many thanks for your Virtual Stamp Club suggestion. I will definitely check out that website. We have been gathering lots of history and wish we were young enough to retain it all!
I do plan on sticking around to chat with you again.
fisherwoman