First Issue Silk Revenue Stamps For Trade

More likely they will be $20 per cert because they will come back as c's rather than d's

Where is the $20 figure coming from? For revenues, you need to be sending to The Philatelic Foundation, and their minimum fee is $27 plus $2 per order handling fee (plus shipping costs both ways obviously).

For items like this, I personally would not trust any of the other expertizing companies, unless for APEX and PSAG I knew for certain that Richard and Eric would be among the examiners for the items (not always the case).

But as others have mentioned, in all likelihood it would be wasted on these items.

Good to know Dan. For the sake of this exercise I was just using the base APS member fee.

Ahh, ok. There wasn't any specific service mentioned, so I wasn't sure. APEX is "ok" and can be an especially good deal if you are expertizing something from the online Stamp Store, as it is a flat $25 regardless of the value of the stamp.

However, the marketplace by and large doesn't like APEX certs. For revenues in particular, if you're going to spend money on expertization, you might as well spend a few shekels more for the service that is more accepted/respected, especially if it is (potentially) a big ticket item.

Revenuecollector, because it was so hot today, I went back and reread your cited references again, third time I've read this. I must say its a good start. Are you planning to add to the information, maybe some original research would be nice!

Just for kicks, do you have any of the stamps I was looking for?

Expertizing services have change a lot in the last 60 years, back when I was just a young collector, and a collector like myself could not get a cert, you had to be a recognized dealer, or nationally recognized big collector.

Cheers

David (Stampmaster)

So I've seen many references to how certification has changed over the years, especially Barts comments about condition. Sorry to take this a bit off-topic, but can anybody expound any more on how it's changed? I'm a fairly young collector (51 and counting) and it's only been in the last few years that I've devoted my interests to a specialized area. Thanks.

For many years the experts at the PF were dealers who did not prefer to get involved in condition issues, and there was always the potential for a conflict of interest. That finally changed about 35 years ago. Now there is a full time staff who have many years of professional experience mostly as former auction describers. There is also a group of outside consultants with serious knowledge in many specific areas if it is thought that more eyes are needed for an unusual or unique item.