Classic US Stamps Certified By Alan Miller?

I was informed by one of the members of the Forum today that they were discussing my certificates. I have never heard of this Forum before but glad one of your members looked me up and told me about this.

I have been in the stamp business for 43 years now. I started in 1972. I have been issuing certificates from about the early or mid 1980's. I do not sell anything on ebay to clarify this. One person said they saw my certificates on StampsToGo. These are not my stamps. A dealer who sells stamps on that site sends me stamps for certification because he wants to make sure he is selling the correct stamps. I have been doing this for him for about 5 years. I have a number of dealers and collectors asking me for my opinion. I have run 75 Mail Bid Sales over the last 35 years and have one of the largest stocks of Used United States Stamps in the World. In my career I have probably handled over 100 million dollars of stamps and consider myself a student and expert of United States Stamps. The only way to become an expert of a certain type of stamps is to have handled them and learn what can be done to them to change there value(ex. reperfing, regumming, and many other things). I give my best and honest opinions of the stamps people send in. Sometimes my opinions are not the same as other expertizers. 99% of the certificates that I have done are for stamps I have not owned. I only issue a certificate on a stamp I sell if the buyers wants one. I do not use the certificates to sell my stamps. I also do list faults on stamps. The bottom of my certs have been changed and now say "The above is only our opinion and not a guarantee. We cannot be held financially responsible in the event of an error" As with all expert groups except for the APS the certificates are only there opinions at the time the stamp is sent in. Opinions sometimes change over time with new discoveries and research and sometimes the condition of the stamp changes.

I hope this has cleared up some questions.

Alan Miller

Alan, Welcome to the Forum!

Thank you for clarifing the situation for us.

I hope you will browse through the posts and lend a bit of expertise when you can.

Classic US is a frequent topic.

Thank you Alan, that clears up my question. I saw your certs but had not yet heard of you, so I was looking for more information. I also hope you stick around to share information.

I am new to the forum myself, and have already created a ruckus. I hope I didnt offend anyone or commit a faux pas.

Franklin, there are good ruckeses and bad ruckuses.

Don....
I think you owe Alan Miller an apology.

Mr. Miller, thank you for taking the time to come here and give a reply. It sounds like you have been at this long enough to have a reputation for it. Sorry I'm not already familiar with you, but this is leading me to take a look.

One point that is still not clear to me concerns whether you offer a money back guarantee on the stamps you sell, as many dealers do. If a buyer asked for one of your certs on a stamp you are selling, it would seem that the disclaimer is at odds with whatever other sales guarantee you might offer. How do you actually handle that?

In reply to essayk,

When people buy stamps out of my Mail Bid Sale they can send it in for a certificate to anybody they want to. If it comes back not as described a full refund is made. They have submit the stamp as soon as possible after getting the stamp and notify me within 3 months to receive the refund. If it takes longer they just have to tell me that the certificate has not come back as of yet. Most do within 3 months. I cannot guarantee it longer than that as many of the stamps in my sale are on consignment. Once I pay the owner for there stamps it is Final. On stamps I sell out of my stock I usually give a 6 month guarantee. I do not feel that a dealer can guarantee stamps for ever. Stamps get damaged over time in some cases. Any stamp I sell can be returned if sent back right after they get the stamps if they are not happy for any reason. Many of my customers have been with me with over 20 years and rarely return anything. Most of them are very happy with what I send.

Kevin,
I get the feeling you either don't read my posts or see what you want to see in them. I said nothing against this fellow. Here are the posts I made, please point out where I owe anyone an apology.







So by saying that folks might want to do further discovery means I owe someone an apology? I made it abundantly clear that that what I had heard was only hearsay; hence the phasing 'it was bought to my attention' and my suggestion that folks might do more discovery if they desired to do business. I am pleased that Mr. Miller has responded here, he did not address the stories but he has no responsibility to address them if he does not want to. If my 'sin' was to simply inform folks that there is a potential issue in the past and to do their homework, then so be it.
Don

PS. This post was about 'self-certing' in general, the difference between Bill occasional selling a stamp with his cert, and has nothing to do with Mr. Miller. You apparently understood this post that I was speaking about Mr. Miller, which was wrong. I never mention his name and was replying directly to you. I used 'a person' to indicate 'self-certers' in general. I have no idea if Mr. Miller sells on ebay or not, since I wasn't referring to him it didn't matter.

You know who you were refering to in the above quote....




BS!

Glad to see Alan Miller post here....

Oh well....I should have know....
Don is never wrong.

END.

The Internet.....WOW!! Are you serious???

Atleast he used his name as a id.....
He is legit.

I called him today to alert him to the thread.


Why dont you state who you are?
You have 4 posts here??

Why hide behind the id??

His phone # is out there....
Look for it....
Call him...

I can confirm that Kevin is occasionally assertive (read: combative), and that he has his ongoing spats, and that he is capable of taking an unfair bite out of Don'n'Bill, but I would not for one moment think that winning a forum curfluffle would move him to deception.

Neither should you.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Internet, schminternet...

Elvis, pelvis, schmelvis...

Probably both the same person, hiding behind
fake wannabe little boy looking for attention...