World Largest -Biggest Stamp Collection

Without rocking up to a viewing, this is the best you can do.

https://auctions.cherrystoneauction...OT29596.aspx

You can see there is SOME decent stuff tucked away but condition is going to be mixed.

70% of it looks to be almost kiloware material.

...and here's ABC... https://stampauctionnetwork.com/B/b13635.cfm#205 Kinda tricky seeing the photos for me but lots of them!

The large WW collection at Cherrystone, Lot# 1490, failed yet again to find a buyer at $14000.

Of the 14 WW large lots they offered, lots #1490-1503, only 6 found buyers. You would think they might get the hint that they are overpricing their opening bids.

StampSlacker ---Agree , not a $14,000 collection . It looks to be a 2 cent per stamp collection with a seperate box of $100.00+ catalog items . I see a lot of cheap stamps and very few in the $10.00 to $100.00 stamps on the pages .

It almost can be stated the better stuff didn't come from the person who filled those pages ,that area of $10.00 to $100.00 is a clue that the stated better stuff was added to raise the value but it failed because collectors/bidders saw thru the effort .

I would be interested in something like that but not for $14K.

Rest assured that Cherrystone owns the lot and isn't concerned about how long it takes to catch a fly.

Pricing of the lot by me ,without seeing it other than what is on line .

$3,000 to $4,000 for the 100,000 all different stamps .
$3,000 for 120 dealer pages of $100.00 and up stamps . Depending on which stamps. $33,000 cat.
$1,000 for the 77 binders with printed album pages

A $7,000 lot maybe $8,000 if they have a lot of complete sets in those albums ,again didn't view the lot ,but you tell me what I missed .

"Another reason is never paid anything for what they have . They buy mixture lots and then claim thousands of dollars worth of stamps when you would be hard press to find anything that can be a seperate auction lot . Another thing they spend a high percentage of their money on stamp supply and big size impressive albums with good amount on mounts."

Except for the mounts (which I despise), this describes my collection just about perfectly. And I love it.

I'm lucky to have a lot of room in my home and some sturdy all wood bookcases, so I have very much enjoyed assembling a worldwide collection of album pages. It would be an exaggeration to say that I've collected album pages for the last several decades with some dabbling in stamps, but it's not that far from the truth either.

Now, with the albums mostly complete, I love filling them up with cheap stamps. Right now, I'm having a blast with a Bolivia accumulation from a local stamp show. I think I paid $15 for it but the cumulative catalog value has to be at least $750.

I am under no illusion that the stamps are worth $750, or even 50% of $750. No, they're worth what I paid for them, $15.

And I'm happy.

"I was heart broken when they told me at the local stamp meeting with a room filled with members to the whole room 'it was worthless'......never forgot that."

I had been neglecting stamps for several years, focusing on my ancient and medieval coin collection, when I decided to drop in on a local stamp show in Vienna, Virginia, down the hall from the coin show.

The dealer at the biggest table there -- who is locally very prominent at stamp shows -- took great delight in telling a young man (who was probably 45 years younger than the average age in the room) that the US stamp collection (mostly FDC's) of his father was so worthless that the dealer wouldn't take it if he gave it to him.

The young man was crestfallen and I didn't go back to another stamp show for years.

This is just my experience and perception, but my feeling is that there is a streak of meanness in some stamp collectors and dealers that you rarely run into with coin collectors and dealers (ancients and medievals, at least, I don't know about dealers and collectors of US coins).

It's a sore spot with me.

Alas, just like everywhere, there are the uncaring, impolite people in stamps too. The proper answer would have been "Thanks for showing it to me, but it is not for me". But this is too much for some people, unfortunately.

This happens happen many times a day when someone posts a collection they inherited on social. 99% of the time it is the usual 50/60's album filled common stamps where the collector did not very far.

I am taking stamps from an old album and some stamps were attached with folded masking tape. Luckily the tape hardened so easy to remove.

In the end I will still have more and learned more than other expensive leisure activities like golf, gambling, etc. that yield little in the end.

I admit that after seeing many collections that it is easy to assume that most are probably not worth much. The ones I feel the worst for are folks that bought into those fancy FDC subscriptions with the heavy binders. There's some value to those if they are from the last 20 years, but one will never recoup what they spend. I try not to break hearts. I do ask many up questions. Sometimes what is the most valuable in the collection are things that did not make it into the album. "oh yeah, there are a bunch of old envelopes..." Maybe not super valuable, but a chance something could be interesting. The most valuable thing could be the unused hinges! One really gets a feeling about how they collected when paging though an album.

Do you ever stop and wonder how many basements there are like this one? This is an oldie but a goodie. Pity those Scott Internationals weren't cracked open. I wonder where this one wound up?
Part 2

I found the thread on that one.. https://www.stampcommunity.org/topi...PIC_ID=21073

Those pictures tell you a lot . That is NOT a collection ,it is a accumulation of a lot different people 's accumulations . No order to the room is evident .

I can duplicate those piles of binders ,albums and boxes by just going to a major stamp auction and buying two or three of what they call a "pallet lot " of 25 boxes of material ,maybe 2 or 3 different pallet lots total . Most stamp dealers ,maybe 95% of dealers would pass on touching this room of stamps . You would need a box truck to move this room full ,that is a dual axle truck that can hold 12,000 pounds on the rear axle . Most people couldn't move this in a cargo van . Then the question is storage ,try telling the wife she needs to park her car outside for a month or two and need her space for stamps in the garage .

Sure there can be stamps that have value but with what do you do with the 99% that don't , The cost isn't in the purchase price ,the cost of moving it and handling it is what kills you over the next few months . This is like a boat ,you have two happy days with a boat . The day you buy it and the day you sell it ,all the work is in the middle .