Large Collection, Need Help - Can Send Pics

I posted last week about a very large stamp collection I inherited from my father who collected heavily since 1970. I was told to get pics together. The collection is rather overwhelming it is so large. I have book and books of stamps and have no clue on value. Can someone please give me direction, and tell me whether a collector who had these types of books would have a valuable collection? I tried posting pics but the loader is ridiculously hard to understand. I can email pics

Honestly, most stamps issued since the 1940s are worth very little. There are exceptions, of course, but most collections from that era or after are more of nostalgic or memorial value than financial.

Posting pictures isn't that hard. Start by being in 'Switch to Full Reply' mode which gives you some blue text below that says 'Upload Image', 'Free Image Optimizer' and others. It's best to do this on a PC with mouse and keyboard. Have your images saved on a file that's easy to get to. Click 'Free Image Optimizer', and have two windows open at once so that you can drag one image at a time onto the green bar. When it locks in adjust the number fields so that the file size is decreased to a number below 300kb. Hit 'save', and then use 'Upload Image' to select and then put this new file directly into the message. The tutorial is there too. It's worth learning how to do this. No need to be in a rush.

Thanks for the replies. I struggle with understanding why someone would put so much time and effort into collecting tens of thousands of stamps, putting them in books, with little to no value. That would be like someone spending years and lots of $ to collect common baseball cards, you really don't see that. I get if the stamps were valuable but otherwise seems odd to me, I just don't get it.

For many it is about the collecting not the value.

Each is a little work of art, and each tells a story. It's an aesthetic, emotional pleasure, not a financial one.

Yes I guess so. Is this a baby boomer thing, is the hobby dead with newer generations? I know of no one else that collects and it doesn't seem like purchasing collections is a common thing. Just trying to learn more about this, it's foreign to me

It is, like a lot of hobbies, big among boomer kids that carried on to adulthood. A lot of kids did everything, eventually gravitating to one or the other. Building plastic models was once a big thing for many boys, now a thing that mostly old men do.

I wouldn't say that stamps are dead but it sure is not the hobby it was before. There were once stamp stores in every town, two within easy reach in the city where I lived, not to mention a bunch downtown. So there was access and help. Even chain variety stores sold inexpensive stamps and supplies. Relatively few stores exist now so there's little around for today's kids to be exposed to the hobby unless there is some relative seriously into it. Also in the boomer era, there was more disposable income.

Today, there are newer and easily available distractions for kids, like video games and r/c (radio control) cars and planes. There can be high initial cost but after that, it's just games (that can be traded) or parts needed for the r/c stuff. And I've been hearing that demand for r/c has gone to zero during Covid lockdowns so we'll see if that hobby makes a comeback. Independent hobby shops that depend on r/c have take a huge hit or are gone.

We're all probably a little bit crazy, with perhaps a touch of OCD

It is rather like Meditation,
you sit, you do nothing, you focus on the breath.
Appears absurd.
Yet there are payoffs, those whom do it, know.

Relaxation, Mental health, fitness, serenity.

Consider Volunteering...very little value there
but the benefits are astounding.
Those whom do it know.

Focussing on money all one's life, is surely a trip to madness.

That is why it is called a hobby and not an investment.
You might asks yourself where the sense is in paying big money for a picture of a guy in the hope another person will blow anywhere near that amount if you want to get rid of it. The loss in that value can be much bigger.

For me its the transition from collecting football stickers as a child aiming to fill an album completly.
i now get the same enjoyment with stamps trying to assemble all the sets. purchasing job lots and sorting, then finding stamps you require gives me a great deal of satisfaction and as was stated earlier in the feed the stamps post 1940 are relatively inexpensive making collecting achievable to people on all budgets.

Well you do see that, all the time. People buy what they can afford. "Collecting" is nothing more than organized accumulation, regardless of price. The value is as much in what a thing can be sold for, as in that thing's place in a larger set. Sports cards, coins, stamps, art, books, watches, pens, calculators, wine, typewriters, coffee mugs cars. Some people collect, others don't.

There are a few types of hobbyists, I'm sure everyone can see themselves in one of these:

• Trophy hunter: buys the rare or expensive thing, but has not interest in the actual hobby. Stuart Weitzman (the designer) bought an inverted Jenny block of four, only because it was unique/expensive, and very highly prized. He knew nothing about stamps otherwise, and didn't care to.


• Accumulator: buys for the sake of buying, but spends little time actually becoming familiar with what they have. Their acquisitions are usually forever in stockbooks, glassine envelopes, and boxes. Rarely sorted, organized, or cataloged, the accumulator adds little to no value to the collection. Could be a mania, in its worst cases they might simply be called "hoarders."


• Completionist/objectivist: they collect with a goal. That may be a single example of every issue of a certain country, or every stamp that shows an airplane, or ten stamps from every country in the world, or one cover (letter) from each mail balloon deployed by the French during the Siege of Paris 1870-71. Most collectors I'd think fall into this category.

When you say "rather overwhelming" and "books and books," what exactly do you mean? Ten stockbooks/binders? A hundred? More? Are they all full, or are four of them mostly empty? Adjectives are entirely subjective.

If after some time you can't make heads or tails of what you inherited (sorry for your loss, of course), your father may have simply been an accumulator. Stamps tickled his fancy, so he just bought them. Lots of them, with no rhyme or reason. Sadly, that means he put you in this position today: no understanding of what he bought, and no time to spare to figure things out (if there's anything to figure out). Shame.

Dbrite111,
I sent you an email and can help you get some images posted. Images will help folks in giving you advice on the scope of your material and how best to disposition it.
Don

Have you tried to google Stamp shop in Huntington NY? I found 2 in Huntington plus several others on Long Island.

Have to say, really great community here, very helpful members!

Thanks Don, just sent.

Classic paper: definitely very helpful, thinking I better understand the 'why' which helps put this in person for me.

Gibby, thanks for the smile. Think he was the same a bit, aren't we all ;)

Wkusau: yes but in the book "I've inherited a stamp collection now what" I believe their direction is not to have a shop that sells provide any indication of value so I have been reluctant to contact local shops