There's Nothing Like An Unobservent Quick Flip.

Dropped into my local coin/stamp shop the night before last and the owner had just purchased a large stamp accumulation. Part of it was a rather large pile of postage.

I took a brief glance through it and asked how much he wanted for it. He said $75. I couldn't say "SOLD!" fast enough. I had expected it to easily be over $100.

About 90% of it was in 20-cent or higher denominations, which are useful, and there were some non-face items in there, e.g., joint issue packages with other countries including the 1992 Columbus souvenir sheet set with the souvenir sheet sets from Spain, Italy, and Portugal.

Postage can be VERY deceptive in terms of evaluation without counting. He thought there was about $125 in face, and I speculated it would be about $175-200.

We were both WAY off.

When I got it home and counted it: $429 in face.

Usable postage at 17.5% of face? Heck yeah... He should have taken the time to count/estimate it better, but I'm not complainin'

If there's not much packaging, a small pile can add up fast.

I've had the same good luck. Bought huge lots and did quick mental count but was always short. Even if you can never sell it you're good for postage for years to come.

I had a similar situation once as well. I bought the collection of a friend's uncle, who had passed away 20 years or so prior. I didn't want it all that bad and didn't have much money on me. My friend wanted to clear up the space and wanted whatever I would give him. I gave him $50 for what was quite a large assortment of common US and worldwide material in various albums and glassines, shoeboxes, etc. There were at least several thousand stamps, but most were so common that they probably weren't worth $50 altogether. However, there was a mint US plate block collection that ended up tallying about $250 face, which was a lot more than I expected.