Collection With 2 Million Stamps

Here is a story of someone who did try to collect stamps for investment purposes. Although I don't know how he would have worked it out...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...lection.html


-IBFS

Interesting story.

Unfortunately, it appears the majority of his "collection" was really just an "accumulation" of mostly common stamps. It is, however, curious that the article includes this quote, suggesting that even though much of it may be common material it is so vast it may actually have a negative effect on the stamp market:




Sounds like an episode of "Hoarders" but instead of hoarding any variety of things, his passion was just stamps.

I'm highly dubious that two million stamps could affect the market. That's the equivalent of 100 collections of 20,000 different, although there's probably nowhere near that many different in this hoard. That many exasperating collections probably arrive into New York dealers' hands every week. A drop in the bucket, many destined for the dumpster. Don't put much stock in gee-whiz articles.

I'm with Doug on this one. What I would guess is that the family was told that the collection would garner a thousand pounds as dealer stock, or they could break it up into three lots of dealer stock and realize 500 pounds per lot.

Stacks of stamps in rubber bands is not a good sign. Nor is his method of accumulating them. (Nothing wrong with soaking piles of contemporary covers, but it doesn't really accurately describe a '2,000,000 stamp collection'...come to think of it, if they had saved the covers, they might really have something.)

Keep in mind that if you have just fifteen running feet of shelf space dedicated to stamps, your collection of albums "is as tall as a house."

His family never wants to see another stamp again.

I agree. Assuming that the picture shown is of the actual stamps (and not just a stock photo), it's really a collection of bundleware, although neater than some I've seen. I can't believe this would depress any market except possibly the bundleware segment, and that one can probably handle it.

The endeavor is kind of sad in a way ...

-- Dave

I agree with the above statements made by others here ,just bundles of cheap worthless stamps that most dealers and stamp auction houses would not touch .Let me add that 2,000,000 stamp ain't nothing .

Very sad!

They have probably already found out about its true value of the stamps.

Those elastic bands makes it even worse if that is possible.

even at 1 cent per, that's $20,000.

Hi cstamps

I have about 1.5 million stamps in bundles of a 100 from 1950 to 1989 and approx 150kgs of stamps off paper from the same era which is about 225,000 stamps and they will not sell. Then there is the stamps on paper.
There was just soooo many stamps printed in that era. What do we do with the sets that are not complete. Missing a bundle to a set is a totally...and that is what happen when you start to get to the last 20% of the lot and that is if you are lucky. I have learnt the hard way!

In Western Australia about 2 years ago a lot of bundleware was offered and boasted over 1.2 million stamps. It sold for just over $300. Rod222 posted it. So it is in the SCF history somewhere.

Thanks KGV Collector for confirming what I posted ,two million bundleware stamps really have no value.We don't have the packet making firms like we did in the past during the 1950's who would purchase such material.Today it would be diffcult to even find a buyer for such material.It sounds impressive to the general public and in a news article but this stuff all soaked off paper and bundled into types was a big waste of time .
Now you ask ,was there a way for the collector who was on a limited budget during that same time frame to build a business and save something for retirement ?--------the answer is YES......believe it or not !
Yes ----a stamp collector could of cleaned up and made a huge profit for himself in retirement .