Are Common Stamps Really That Worthless?

I bought a half-pound of US stamps from ebay, and the stamps were good, but I have a question. The seller put them in covers from the 50's, 60's and one from 1970. Which was nice of him to do, more interesting than a regular old glassine. But he wrote in pen on each one and taped them together! Which ruined them. They way they were taped together dog-eared some of them.

I know they are very common covers and worth pennies, but I would never treat any cover like this! I think all stamps and especially covers should be taken care of , not just tossed around and written on, etc. just because they aren't worth big bucks. ALL will be someday, even if its 300 years from now. I am sure our decendents would love to see our mail years from now, even if they are common. Whats common now will not be common in the future. Besides new collectors, like me, would be thrilled to receive these!

Am I wrong to feel like this? Are they enough common stamps and covers floating around that they are literally "worthless" and should be treated as such? I just cringe when I see something like this, I want to take care of them all,lol!





Edited to add images.

Eww. That makes me cringe too. I like covers and it would really turn me off that seller to see them treated like that, no matter what they are worth (or not worth). Whatever I'm collecting, I always feel I have a responsibility to treat those items with respect. I believe there are certainly other envelopes (even used) that he could have used.

I had a collector send me some items enclosed in a 1980's damaged FDC addressed to me with added postage to cover the shipping cost. I found it interesting and odd at the same time. I couldn't see myself doing that, but to each his own. I guess it was better than throwing it away.

When I print my cachet covers I always have imperfect ones with ink smears, lines, smudges, etc. I set them aside to use for coorespondance with other collectors & requests for postmarks and covers.

Yes,common stamps are totally worthless and useless to me,the value will never go up for sure.

Well, I believe I would be somewhere in the middle of expressed opinions. Common stamps with a heavy cancel or damaged are worthy of the burn pile. I do, however, keep nice copies of common stamps for myself in order to have a complete collection.

There is a stamp for everyone. Most of my collection would be considered common stamps and I'm not concerned about value. Some of my favorite stamps are very common & contemporary. I just enjoy collecting. Plus, dependant upon the collectors sources for stamps, commons can still be hard to acquire and elusive. Of course, here in the US regularly seeing stamps on covers that are not for special occassions or bulk rate mail are hard to come by.

That bothers me too

If the seller had lightly marked the covers in pencil, rather than in ink so that you could 'carefully' erase the writing later, it wouldn't have been so bad.

Whenever I hear about taping, that scares me too not to mention get ticked off

Cheers

Bujutsu

To me they are very important and valuable part of my collection.
Try completing a collection without all those "worthless" stamps.

Steve

First stamps and then covers.

1. Common Stamps - there are commons (lowest price in Scott) and then there are really common (i.e. the highest volume definitives). I enjoy 1 copy of commons in my collection but I struggle to trade/sell volumes of modern definitives...they do seem to be worthless unless weaved into a broader collection to help up the count. I don't think interest will increase until the supply dramatically declines (meaning the reason they are popular is probably due to the same reason ours are no longer around).

2. Covers - I'm not hoarding the old mail with common definatives I find. I don't think the stamps will be of value in my lifetime but there might be something of interest someday around the cover/cancel/etc. so I can see why one would want to keep them, but I don't might if they get thrown out or damaged by others such as using them as packaging. It's the continued destruction of common covers that may one day lead to them being collectible.

If I saved everything I would even more clutter and dilution than I do today.

I like common stamps and shudder to see the envelopes treated that way. Maybe to the sender they were common or garbage but to me or another who doesn't have the stamps or covers or cancels on covers or stamps (bulls-eye cancels etc) they would be special and worthwhile.

A lot of the mail I get now a days comes in business envelopes (#10) and because I have a hard time storing those I sometimes throw them out (after carefully removing the stamp).

I like to study stamps and covers and learn more all the time. But perhaps some folks do not so the value of the stamps or covers are variable. If I had ten thousand of those envelopes to look through and store and sort I would end up throwing a lot away I am sure. Depending on what my priorities at the time were. (Selling, studying, sorting, classifying, etc)

The definitive stamps probably won't have much value but collecting the postmarks that are on them can be fun!
http://www.postmarks.org/

Here are some basic categories PMCC members use to organize their collections: http://www.postmarks.org/members/pref.htm

Dan