How To Sell A Collection

Nitrolures

Your estimate may be giving false hope.

My guess is that with so many post office sheets in the boxes the remaining items won't be much better. I doubt whether the FDC cachets are particularly desirable.

It is too bad that dealers who actually purchase discount postage have not posted here.

$700 for the postage would be a great. The trick is to find someone who has the cash to spare.

DaveinMD, don't be insulted if you are offered $500. You would not be ripped off.

I imagine there will folks out there who will disagree. Look forward to reading your comments.

For counting face value, only count after 1945; anything before is likely (but not guaranteed) to have collector value and would not be sold for discount postage.

There should be a big manila envelope for each major denomination, and sub-separated into envelopes of 100 for easy confirmation of totals. Maybe too late for that?

I think you will feel better and be more optimistic once the big bulk of discount postage is sold and out of there forever.

Your right Lorddenning- my estimate is really assuming the remainder has some decent value. FDC's basically 50cents-$1 but a bulk lot even less so a couple hundred FDC's will maybe add some encouragement if not cash value. I figured the $1000 face should fetch 70% but as you mentioned finding someone with disposable income may be a tough one . With $700 from the face My thought is the remainder would be another $300 with hopes theres something were not seeing / reading to peek some interest. When I mention start out high its not in anyway meant to be looking down on any respectable offer or assuming its worth such but may be a means to an end of a happy medium.

My friend insists I sell them one box at a time, selng the newer sheets first. I argued all over dinner that I do not see the advantage in that but maybe some here agree. A buyer may not want to write a check for the entire collection but may be willing to buy the newer sheets at a percent of face.

Are the old 1/2 cent, 1 cent 2 cent stamps or the stamps from the 1800's stuck in books sound like they hold any value?

Selling the sheets sound good! The confusion about the rest of it!

Why not pick someone out and gift that stamp collector?

OK just as I feared we were told we were sitting on basically nothing with the exception of the face value of the sheets. We have a ton of UN Stamps, a ton of First Day of Issue postcards, a lot of pretty much worthless cancelled stamps. The disappointing part was the beat up albums that had a few stamps from the 1800's filled in. Was kind of hoping they would have some value.

Does this assessment sound right to you guys? He suggested I ask for 50% of face and to get that we should offer to throw in the rest if the dealer wants it. Make sense to you folks?

Dave

Thank you for letting us know so promptly about your meeting. As many of us suspected, the accumulation would be unlikely to fetch a lot of money.

I wrote earlier not to be insulted if you were offered $500. Your next task is to find a buyer.

Since the "value" of the material is so little, may I suggest that instead of splitting the amount you receive with the lady who gave the boxes to you, you give her a small gift. After all she may have gotten you half way to a pump.

Your post was a catalyst for an important discussion. The gentleman whose stamps you acquired was an investor/speculator. Why else would he have bought sheets of stamps. Investing in stamps requires much knowledge and luck.

Dave, thanks again for sharing your story and best of success in disposing of your stamps and covers.

I was really hoping you had something else hiding in those boxes to boost the end result. If you plan on doing 0 effort the suggestion of a take all at 50% of face to a dealer is about right. Most won't give 50% (seems a shame) but the extras will balance that. He will likely make a couple calls and get $20-50 per box on everything else as is . Last option to try if you want some strangers dropping by woud be a Craigs list add or find a local auction house and roll the dice. Best of luck and thanks for keeping us updated along the way. Considering this made 5 pages and not a single pic its a good learning tool.

Dave,

You have a choice, educate yourself as to the value of what you have (stamp club, dealer [expect to pay for his time and expeience], here) or take on faith that what you are offered is acceptable. Without education you will always suspect someone has taken advantage of you.

Unfortunately, with many '000s of items, it is not as simple as valuing a car but you may find the research you do to may spark an interest in a fantastic hobby that need not cost you much.

I've been collecting 35 years and I learn something new every week.

Pictures of what you have would help, it isn't that hard to do.

The bulk of used US stamps are without value (particularly post WW2) and modern mint is worth far less than face, in most circumstances. There is a likihood that after your reseach, your hourly rate of return will be a pittance.

Good luck.

It was a daunting task to determine what to take pics of. So here is a sample. I couldn't find the older single stamps similar to photo 3 but I'm told they are from the 80's in smaller denominations such as 1 cent, 1/2 cent etc. The first pic is from the album I mentioned earlier. There are a few pages with a few stamps of this era (late 1800's) the rest is blank. We also have a ton of first day issue card. I'm told the ones with the images (forgot the term) are of minimum value, the ones without are not.

What do you think?

Wanted to bump this thread because I am taking the collection to the a dealer this morning and wanted final thoughts. Are the pics too difficult to assertain what I'm trying to show? The middle stamp is from the old album I was referring to, stamps from the late 1800's.

Dave,

The images are low resolution and it is hard to see precisely what you have in the pctures.

Having said all that, it looks like the sort of meterial a dealer will have plenty of. I wouldn't get my hopes up too high.

Good luck in any case.


John

I hear you on the resolution and the low expectations. Problem is when I tried to load a higher resolution the site said the file was too large.

Let me try a Photobucket link just for the heck of it, then I'll leave you alone.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f...11d3c9d4.jpg

If it hasn't been mentioned already, you could take some pictures of the few coins in the batch and post them over on Coin Community Family (sister site to Stamp Community). With some good pictures, they could give you a good idea of the condition/rarity of the pieces and how much they might be worth. http://www.coincommunity.com/forum/

Good luck at the dealer's!

A note that may help you later -- you can make MUCH better images with a $40 scanner than you can with a $400 camera. And the resolution doesn't matter on SCF, it's the size that matters. Make scans at 300dpi or 600dpi and reduce them with Microsoft Office Picture Manager (part of Windows) to about 90KB; they should come out sharp and bright. Forget Photobucket for your purposes; they are a convoluted nuisance to deal with anyway -- always changing the format and layout, plenty of loud obnoxious "commercials," and a lot of privacy concerns. The "new" Photobucket is especially LOUSY.