Selling US Stamps

I guess the question is are you buying stamps as a collector or as an investor? There are stamps that are what I believe are a okay investment, but you are not going to get them at the post office and you will likely be laying out some serious dough. Common stamps will always be common stamps and I agree with the others that it is simply a supply and demand thing.
If you are buying as a collector the knowledge you will gain and the friendships you can make are invaluable. You have to have a passion for it for any "hobby" to last. I agree with Tom in that my catalog is mainly to identify items. The value is secondary, but it is nice to see that something has value.
So I am not worried that common stamps produced in the billions have no investment potential.

I honestly think a lot of people don't understand what a hobby is. It doesn't matter what you collect, be it stamps, comic books or bottle caps, you almost certainly will not get back more than you put into your collection. Hobbies are a losing proposition. The enjoyment one gets from one's hobby is the reward, not making money. The flood of people we always get to these forums of people thinking that their grandfather's stamp collection is going to make them millions is really kind of absurd. It won't. If you want to take up the hobby and enjoy yourself, great. If not, dump it at a local dealer for whatever it is realistically worth and take the money. It's more than you had before. The reward is in the collecting, not in the selling. I will never sell a single stamp in my collection. When I die, I don't care what my family does with it. They can burn it for all I care, I'm gone, it makes no difference to me. I got my enjoyment out of it while I was here.

I don't hold out any hope of coming out ahead financially as a result of my collecting. I don't plan on selling any of my main collection while I'm alive, so I'm not real concerned with resale value. I assume my heirs will be lucky to get 10-20% of what I paid for my stamps, but that still will be a meaningful amount given the total investment over the years. I'll just do my best to make sure they have a detailed inventory so they don't get completely taken by a buyer.

Great response Cephus.

An inventory, along with a listed of suggested appraisers will be a great aide to non-collecting heirs. My advice to my non-collecting children is to have the stuff appraised, charge the costs to the estate, give it to an educational philatelic organization and take the write-off. The stuff is out of the house and no one's problem.

Don

APS American Philatelic Society.