Help W/ Inherited Collection

Hi All, I recently inherited my Grandfathers coin & stamp collection. I've spent a month sorting & going through the coins & now I'm to the stamps. The coins were pretty easy once I got up & running because you can find price guides online to see what's pricey & what's not. The stamps on the other hand are like a closely guarded secret or something. No online price guides that I can find, no easily understood grading system & no good info that I can find on how to figure out what is there. He has full sheets of stamps from the 60's-70's & MANY big albums with the stamps hinged to the page running from 1860's - the 1980's.

Any advice? I really don't have room to keep all of these albums because the coin collection has already taken over my walk-in closet. So I need to find out what's worth keeping or selling & completely dump the rest.

I'd post some pics, but have no idea what's worth posting at this point.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Before you dump anything, have someone look at it. Find a stamp club. No stamp club. Find a dealer. No local dealer, there are some who will travel if they think it could be of worth. As a last resort, you can ship it to one for an offer. Otherwise, you will need to be patient and do a little learning, post a few pictures.

The full sheets will probably sell for less than face.

Try posting some of the early pages from the U.S., Canada, Newfoundland here.

There are also ebay sellers/dealers (make sure it is a stamp seller/dealer) who will sell it for you on ebay, generally for a listing fee plus commission, and they will do all the work, take all the pictures, write all the descriptions, do all the shipping and followup.

Thanks. Are there ANY regular issue stamps that I should look out for in thses albums? The only stamps I see listed for any kind of money are errors & variations

What do you have in early U.S.? Early Canada and Newfoundland? Early British Colonials? They can tell a lot, unless the collector specialized in some other area.

How are the stamps mounted? Are they carefully hinged?

If you look at the British Colonials, do you see full sets of the long, definitive issues or a mere scattering of lower values from the sets? Is there much in the way of 19th Century British Colonials (stamps other then Great Britain) with Queen Victoria or King George V on them? Or issues with other designs from around the same time.

Is the U.S. collection in a separate album or albums? How is it for early issues? Does it have the first two U.S. stamps from 1847? If you look at the airmails, do you see stamps with zeppelins?

Are there old covers (envelopes) with stamps from the nineteenth century on them? Or covers or folded letters without stamps but with postal markings that came before stamps?

Is there much in the early kangaroo series from Australia?

Welcome to the stamp community, MrRick!



Modern_who has already given you some great advice. You may want to consult some Scott Catalogues which are available at most public libraries.

Most of the albums are still at his house occupying a huge wardrobe. I only grabbed 6 books to bring home to start with. 2 of the albums are only US, then he has seperate books for the sheets & many others with foreign stamps. The oldest in the US albums are 1867 & they're definitely scattershot with plenty of missing pieces. I'm putting in a pic of a page that fairly representative of the albums in general. They seem to be hinged fairly neatly.

That's a page of revenue stamps, not used for postage but to collect taxes on various things. It may not be a valuable page in itself, but it does show the collector was generally careful in choosing nice sound copies and displaying them neatly, in other words collecting with some care. There just might be some good things hidden in all those albums.

Sorry about that. There's a bolt that goes throught the book that I had to unscrew so I just pulled one of the last pages. I'll post some regular stamp pages shortly.

I appreciate the help

There is nothing wrong with revenues. Many can be valuable and some collectors prefer them. I was just letting you know what they were.

Hello MrRick.....

....and welcome to the club.

Mods' advice will get you started here and he's right.....there's absolutely nothing wrong with revenues....just ask T360 how he feels about them....seeing a page like this gives a good indication of the type of collector your grand father was....careful & meticulous. I think we can look foward to seeing some interesting material.

Here's a couple mre pages. I pulled a couple of pages that had quite a few. let me know what you think

It looks very nice but common so far. Does it have any of the Columbians from 1893? What I would be looking for is the stamp values $1 through $5 used or mint. Also does it have any other classics from 1847 through 1869? This will give me a very fast way of telling what you have.

I would like to thank Tom who sent my daughter the very nice used flat plate and rotary series of the above stamps. It made her a nice Christmas present.

Only have the 1 through 10 cent for the Columbian Exposition. He has no stamps in these books older than 1867

Why I asked is usually if an album has some high value these stamps would be included. The 1 cent through 10 cent used Columbians are pretty common. The six cent would be the highest with a used stamp going for around $35. Of course it could be much lower or higher depending on grading and market value.

Though depending on what you have there are some winners in the 1867 through 1900 years. If you get some time post those early years.

Even if your grandfather didn't concentrate on obtaining some of the better items that might have greater value (you asked about stamps worth any kind of money), it doesn't mean the collection is, as a whole, without worth.

Hello all, I am posting here to get some help for an older friend who has just obtained a stamp collection from a dead relative. My friend and I know nothing about stamps. I know a little about the internet so I am starting here.

Ideally since we know nothing about these things I think she would need some sort of consultant to appraise her collection. We are talking at least 2-3 thousand stamps the majority of which are from the late 30's-50's. Some are from Germany and other European countries. Some have been used and some not.

I think that there might actually be some sort of FEE involved and that is fine. I would rather pay a fee and get an honest look than to be ripped off by some charlatan. Can anyone assist?