Selling Hinged Stamps

Hi , I have inherited my late father's stamp collection, there are seven albumns
about 7 thousand stamps pre 1953.
Questions.

1. Is it a good idea to remove some of the lightly hinged stamps from their pages to sell on ebay?

2. Will full pages sell on ebay even if the stamps lightly hinged ?

Please can someone offer some help on these 2 issues.
Thank you

The question is not so much whether a page will sell on Ebay. Anything may sell on Ebay. The question is what it sells for.

A lot depends on what pages you are talking about and what is on those pages.

Some albums include full sets. Some albums include only cheaper stamps. Some albums just provide spaces for stamps. Some collectors make their own album pages.

If people are looking for a specific set, they may not be interested in other sets on the same page. You might receive more selling individual sets. However, it may take longer to dispose of the sets than of the pages.

Then there is the general appearance of the pages. A spacefiller next to a nice stamp may detract from the value of the nice stamp. A lightly hinged spacefiller remains a spacefiller.

Postage also comes into consideration. An album page is a 'Large' item. Sets taken from the album pages can be sent as normal-sized item. No one would like to pay for the page, but it adds weight on top of being large.

You might find it troublesome convincing people they are lightly hinged. Search Ebay for lightly hinged British Commonwealth stamps. You will find a lot that are very heavily hinged. Personally, unless it is a reputable dealer, I take nothing for granted when it comes to sellers claiming stamps or unhinged or lightly hinged. If I am interested, I would ask for a scan of the back.

http://goscf.com/t/82479&whichpage=1
http://goscf.com/t/82418

Thank you for the reply, most of them are lightly hinge, should I remove them from the page? I don't know what to do here, help?

Opinion.
Absolutely not, I buy from ebay, I take the ripped and torn and abused.
I snap up pages, but leave single stamps alone.

Who want to pay 50c for a 20c stamp and pay $3-$4 postage?

Pages in my experience always sell better.

Please, try to give us some impression of what you are talking about. (Pictures)

Your earlier posts showed some stamps that had issues. If that is the general picture, the hinges are of little consequence. Lightly hinged, primarily, is relevant if the stamps are in good condition, never used, and have their original gum.

Used stamps with hinges remain used stamps.

edit: I agree with rod222 if those are low-value stamps. However, if you have higher-valued full sets in very good condition, you might be better off selling them as individual sets. People prefer to pay GBP 1 postage over buying a page they have to pay GBP 5 extra for a set they already have.

Are the pages single-sided or double-sided? Your options for cutting or folding are limited when dealing with double-sided pages.

Have you tried removing a few stamps yet? Are you sure that they will be lightly hinged?* Hinges vary widely in their willingness to let go of the stamp. Some leave almost no trace - as if a housefly might have once breathed on the stamp - while others remove half of the thickness of the stamp's paper. Unless your father was a devotee of one brand of hinge, you could find varying results across the albums. Potentially no fun if you are removing the stamps from the paper after selling but before mailing.

ebay sellers of pages are all over the board. Some picture the page but note that the stamps will be removed for mailing. Some tell you the page will be folded, some don't (but the page will almost certainly be folded; you occasionally see negative feedback when a buyer comments that the page was folded and they expected that the page would be intact).

* There might be some disagreement on this point, but I don't think it is useful or fair to describe a stamp as "lightly hinged" when it is still on an album page. To me, "lightly hinged" means that the stamp has previously been hinged, the hinge has been removed, and there is some minor evidence of the prior hinging. If you've pulled it off the page but left the hinge on the stamp, then it would be a "hinge remnant" stamp (to me).

There is some risk in removing a stamp from a page, and then removing the hinge from the stamp, so all things being equal, I'd prefer to buy from a seller who has already done this.

My 2d.

Some pertinent points in the above.

I have been buying from my dealer for 10 years+
He rips out pages from albums,
He may fold, he may cut around stamps if there is only 2 or 3 on a page

That is the beauty of a lasting dealer / customer relationship,
each knows what the other does, and respects.
Anxiety free. No fuss, no whinging.

My local dealer is no longer with us, and I miss visiting him and having him pull out a folder of things he'd been setting aside. Or getting an email from him asking if he could mail a couple things for me to look at.

Summary of comments so far (and maybe my own) for the TL;DR set:
1) anything allowed to be sold on eBay, will sell on eBay, for the right price.
2) if still attached by a hinge to the page, it's not lightly hinged. That opinion/determination can only be made once the stamp has been removed from the page
3) high-value stamps are usually best sold individually or as part of the "natural set" to which they belong
4) a mix of used and unused, or hinged/not hinged, usually isn't as attractive to a wide audience as separating by those categories
5) whatever you decide to do, be very clear in your listings about what you have and in what form it will be delivered to the buyer

Assuming they are common stamps, and you value your time sell the albums. Consider the time involved in shipping and packing hundreds of items as opposed to one. If on the other hand you do not value your time or have lots of it to spend sending messages, packaging and dealing with the inevitable PITA customers then by all means create hundreds of listings (THAT is a giant time suck) and pray that they all sell the first time around.

There are a lot of variables involved.
If you can identify items that the market has demand for, those will yield a better return if sold on their own, as many won't want to buy a lot of other material they don't want or need, unless it is a really hard item to find. This will require that you have the experience to know what to pull out and present, or have the time to research the online market places to see what is in demand.

If the binders are in good condition and the albums are fairly full or complete … again the variables, some album brands are more in-depth than others, some collectors have added their own pages … offering the whole album may be a more attractive offering. Some collectors are looking for used binders or starter collections they can expand on. I would list the albums individually as many are not in the market to buy a whole seven binder collection.

If some of the albums are not very full or not in great condition, and assuming they are fairly common stamps, you might consider pulling those stamps to sell in 150 or + stamp lots. As a buyer I would expect to see some decent group photos of the lot (spread those stamps out) so I have a general idea of what's in the lot. You might do better if you offer country or regional lots, but who knows, as there are all variety of collectors.

A variation on the above would be to sell the album pages by country. This saves you the trouble of pulling the stamps and the buyers will have a better idea of all the stamps being offered. You will just need offer enough pages in each lot to make the "oversize postal charge" worthwhile. I personally have an aversion to paying more in shipping than the value of the item being purchased.

I suggest that you go to eBay and type in the brand name of the albums you have (i.e. Harris Citation Stamp Album), and then do another search for worldwide stamp lots, and perhaps a third search by country. This will give you some good clues as to what is happening in the market with the kind of material you have.

Another suggestion is to check the American Philatelic Society Event Calendar
https://stamps.org/events/events-calendar to see if there is an upcoming stamp event near you. If so you could make arrangements to show the collection to some of the dealers at the event.

@moneil,

Some good points.
I suppose, for OP the nearest event would be New York city, as OP's profile shows he is from the UK. So, maybe the ABPS (https://www.abps.org.uk/) might be a better option to check for local events or dealers.

From previous posts, I would not be surprised OP has a mostly GB and Commonwealth collection and may have a British or European album.

I have just discovered this loose page it is full of Queen Victoria Canadian stamps.
I want to sell them, please can anybody advise me on value and thank you all for responding to my questions. I suspect I should not remove any from the page?

Since you just want to sell, why not just track down dealers in the UK (at least two) and see if you can get offers? That might be the easiest thing to do.

First, to gain confidence in what you are doing, obtain a catalog, study it for a bit and see what you have.

You cannot call these anything but used; the lightness (heaviness) of the hinging cannot be determined until the stamps are removed.

Even if you don't sell to a dealer and sell them yourself, I also would recommend keeping them on their pages. (are you sure those stamps are hinged? they look pretty tamped down ... could they be glued?)

Yes, these stamps are hinged, please can anybody put a value on this page?

I think you may find that a little difficult given what is visible. For instance, the 50c Jubilee (fourth row) is a better stamp, but appears to be foxed. And one can't see any possible back damage.