Might Have To Sell My Stamp Collection, What Should I Do?

Hey everyone, never planned on selling my stamp collection, but I'm looking to buy a house and I need some $$$.

What would be the best way to sell my collection? Auction? ebay? Stamp store? Clueless millionaire?

And if you want to see what I've got...here's what I posted on photo bucket a little bit more than a year ago.

http://s929.photobucket.com/profile/Minesweep77

Obviously I've added new stamps, but it's more or less the same, no new big pieces.

I'm all for "Clueless Millionare" but I suspect most of them got that way because they are NOT clueless :)

You're going to get a lot of opinions on this one. I can't wait for the flood to begin!



Brian

Dont! I have nothing against providing for your family and everything. But unless you paid a lot of money for each individual stamp. You will probably get only a fraction of what you paid for it. By way of example, if you have 1,000 stamps that you paid $1 each for, you would be lucky to get $100 from a dealer, and $300 from selling in ebay.

how effective are consignment operations as compared to ebay , clueless etc?

also - how much labor do you want to invest in selling your collection / will it fetch more broken up or together?

I'm curious on this one myself for exact reasons. I know splitting things up is about the only way to go but still hate to start piecing things out. A bunch of $20's and $50's just don't seem to add up to the $1000 no matter how you do the math. Auction houses seem to be doing well at realized prices but theres the waiting and of course the fees attached. I think when it comes time and only if I have to, I will part with the least personal ,least favorite and only let go of my personal favs if I absolutely have no options. Just the thought of doing full page scans plus close ups of better items to encompass everything would be a multi month task in itself. Just typing this is tough so maybe all the jewellery can go first and see if the Mrs minds that one.

If you are hoping to have the money quickly, for an imminent home purchase, then I'd have to agree with "don't sell." I don't think that there is a quick sale methodology for an entire collection that nets a regular collector a fair return for the average collection.

If your time horizon is a little longer, then you can do some of the breaking up and parceling out yourself, and maybe net a little more in the process.

As I think about what I would do if I needed to convert my accumulation into cash, it seems that if I assume I could get x from parting with everything, I suspect I could get at least 80% of x from selling, say, 100 items. Maybe fewer. I could keep the rest of the stuff almost for free.

Again, this probably depends on what you have.

Everyone's going to have an opinion, that's for sure. Looking at your photobucket site all I see are newer pieces, and I don't think you're going to get a down payment out of that.
I was going to suggest an auction house (unloading one piece at a time on ebay or other online auction would take too long), such as Maresch in Toronto. I see you're in Montreal, so there must be a house up there somewhere closer to you. An auction house would get things sold more quickly, but I'm not sure such a place would handle newer stuff such as yours. It's just too new and available.

Minesweeper, firstly congratulations on deciding on 'Home Ownership', the smartest investment you'll ever make.

I don't know the sort of money you put into individual items but when selling 'quality NOT quantity' becomes all to obvious.

If you collected (purchased) Quality scarce popular items - genuine collectors will snap 'em up.

Ask a local museum for a charitable receipt for the catalogue value in exchange for the complete collection without any restrictions on their use of it. Claim the receipt on your 2011 Income Tax filing and get a nice refund. The refund should exceed your face value many times over even at the minimum tax rate of 21% (estimated Fed 15 + provincial 5).

BlackJag, excellent advice, if speaking generally, his collection was sourced from collectors left-overs/seconds, donations and kilo lots.

from the pictures I looked at, your collection is modern...
all the MNH stamps are at lest worth face for the most part.

You need to determine, how much money you have in it, include the album pages in the price (those looked like hingeless pages). Then determine how much you are willing to take.

What do YOU think it is worth?

The Charitable donation for a tax deduction is a good option but you must wait until the end of tax season for credit/return.

Selling in parts is best to max out the value of the collection, but then time is an issue. Do you have the time to sit, break up, price, post the collection, that can be very time consuming.

Sell in complete sets, year sets or countries, or air mails as a group or Postage dues, etc.

Indiviual stamps greater then a dollar up to $50. maybe double or triple up with a like vauled stamp.
A stamp over $50. you could sell individually.

Remainders sell the albums with stamps as a beginners set & hope for the best!

Congratulations on the new Home possiblity!

For the modern MNH stuff best bet is ebay in lots of $50 or so. Couple auction houses with large 2-3000 lots of face material only seem to be getting 60-70% . If you find a place to take face at full face value in large quantities I'll give you a finders fee. My goal would be to keep my classic pre 1950 or if I had to let it go I'd set a firm price and if sold fine if not even better. I know what your going through because you probably don't want to sell and not have the right deal on the house , but if you don't sell you might loose a great deal on a house as well. Consider this especially if the housing market is simular to mine in SW ontario --BUY BUY BUY its about as low as it can get and you can always start collecting again.

"Minesweeper, firstly congratulations on deciding on 'Home Ownership', the smartest investment you'll ever make."

Off topic, but check my profile and you will see that I agree!!

If I sold my half a room full of stamp and cover albums...i MIGHT get enough to put a storage shed in my back yard !!