Just Given Huge Collection Of Stamps. I Know Nothing........

Hello everyone, I recently received my stamp collection that my grandparents had been saving for me. I actually never collected stamps but they did and created a huge collection from the 30-60's from all over the world. They were European so the collection is from everywhere imaginable. I was never interested in them and completely forgot about them till my mother mailed them to me. My grandparents are long gone now. I was wondering if anyone has advice on how to sell them and find out their value. I refuse to leave them with anyone if I am not around because there are 1000's and could be easy to steal should one be worth something. I'll be photographing them and putting them online in the near future.

Thanks.

Congratulations.

This is a very common problem for a non-collector. There are many similar posts on this site and the best advice is to get hold of a local stamp club. I am a member of the Rochester Philatelic Association in upstate NY and we typically meet twice a month except during the summer. We have a casual discussion for ~1 hour before each meeting and about 3 times a year, someone like you brings in a collection for general evaluation and advice. In many cases the stamps are common but sometimes there are some real treasures. Often there are club members with good expertise in the ares of the collection and sound advice is offered.

If you don't live near a local club, try getting hold of local dealer and have him/her evaluate the collection for an insurance appraisal. Tell them you have no interest in selling the collection (to prevent a low estimate). This will cost you somewhat for the dealer's time but it will pay for itself with interest when you decide to sell the collection.

The last choice, and the worst, is to get a set of catalogs and try to evaluate the collection yourself. There is a lot more to evaluating stamps than looking up prices in a current catalog. Condition is very important and can affect the values by a factor of 10 (up or down).

Then there's some consideration about how you are going to sell it. If it's sold in bulk lots, the cost of labor to break down the collection must be factored in. Multiple copies of the same stamp will also cause the price to drop since it takes a lot of time to get rid of duplicates. For good quality material, dealers will generally offer 10-35% of catalog but collectors will pay 50-75%. Of course, you have to find those collectors. Again, the stamp club or ebay (and other sites) offers some opportunity. However, exceptional quality and/or very rare items should be sold by auction firms to get the best return.

Good luck!

That is good advice. I will look for a stamp club in my area. I also planned on bringing them to a collector to do exactly what you've stated, but got scared off after reading the reviews of these same collectors. I actually had one who said to call them when I was in front of their shop and they would take the box of stamps while I looked for a parking space. LOL! Yeah right. When I received these stamps I did not realize there were thousands of them. I went through a small fraction of the collection and looked up on ebay some of the more common looking American stamps and saw they were selling for $4-10 dollars each. It was then I realized how much this collection could be worth because of the sheer quantity and origin of the collection. If there is a section for posting images on this site I'll post them when I start photographing them. Thanks again.

Hello and welcome photojunky. Good luck in your quest to sell.

welcome photojunky

i am interested in any india mnh that you might have. Thanks.