New To Stamps

Hello,

I am new to stamps simply because I inherited an old and rough collection that has little to no information with it. However it is a lot of stamps, all seem to be older, not modern, and come from all over the world. I am interested if anyone can give me some suggestions on how I can start to find out the values of all of the different stamps that I have? I have scanned some pictures and sent them to a stamp shop here in Maine to see if a random sample of stamps would help see if it is worth looking at. The stamps I have scanned cannot fit on this post, but if anyone is interested I would be happy to e-mail you some scans!

Thank you!

Marc
Waterville, ME

Welcome! Please ask any questions you may have, there are some very knowledgeable and friendly people here. You may want to go to your local library and take a peak at the Scott's stamp catalogs, they list each country in Alphabetic order and then most stamps chronologically by issue date. Also, take a look at previous posts about inheriting a stamp collection and ID'ing stamps and assigning values. If you would like to post pictures go to the tutorial on the left side and click "uploading photos".

Well Marc first of all to the forum,
If you have a library in your town go and have a look at the Scott catalogues there,though inflated this will give you an idea of prices.
Most but not all will sell for around 10% of those price's depending on rarity centering and condition of the stamps,It will be an interesting adventure for you and you may never know you might get bitten by the stamp bug.
regards Harry down under

Sorry just reflecting Stampdude comments.

Hello marcgray20 Marc! Welcome!

If you belong to Image Shack or some other image hosting site you could just put the links here (post them) and we could look at them that way.

I would be happy to have a look but I cannot give you exact prices on everything. I have only a few catalogues for a few countries, bot a general all-world catalogue like Scott's. But I can tell common from good and rare mostly, and warn you of possible trouble areas or good points. Not as well as some on here but

I can give it a good shot. I have collected Worldwide for years and sold on ebay and elsewhere for 5 years or so. I will not post my email here for all the world to see, although I am really wanting to get emails from everyone everywhere, really I am.

Just shoot me a question at ebay to puzzler47 there, that is me. You cannot use the email feature on this forum until you have 50 posts or more.

Best pretty well anyone can do for you here.

Now I think I am going to get all kinds of offers on ebay. ha. Well, I asked for it, didn't I?

Thank you! I will have to check out the library. All great responses! I am excited to see what I have, I am sure much of it is probably worth little to nothing, but I probably have over 1,000 stamps, all very old. So the search will be fun, especially if I find something rare.

Marc

Have fun with it!

Beware of the library route for one reason.
It is great to get a general idea of what a stamp is and who and when issued and price BUT any varieties or 'errors' or colour shades etc etc will not always be stated in the general catalgoues. You will need specialized catalogues of that countries stamps, or even an expert's opinion sometimes ($$).

Example, it might say #345 stamp but your stamp may have the odd colour shade and the slight printing flaw that makes the price (and interest) jump upwards.

Cancels (postmarks) are also of interest, especially on older stamps.

HI Marc,
How is waterville these days?
I hail from Maine, and lived in Waterville for awhile..
I knew a guy named Marc who lived there too...

anyway. you can get a free account on imageshack and upload images there...
Welcome