Inherited 1000+ First Day Covers/How To Sell?

Hi Everyone, I inherited over 1000 first day covers. They are in pristine condition. I don't even know where to start to sell them. Is it better to sell individually on ebay? Or find a dealer to buy the whole lot? They are all 80's and 90's, probably nothing of great value, but I guess you never know. Please help, I have no idea where to start. Thank you!

Hello Judi, welcome to Stamp Community!

FDC's value depend on the artist's name or artist company name on the FDC or the artwork being recognized in a FDC catalogue.

The better art is of course worth more to more people or potential customers.

Very nice art on a hand painted or hand drawn FDC can be worth a lot.

Topical ideas on cover like popular collecting areas such as birds, cats, dogs, flags, famous persons, ships, and other popular subjects can be worth more to their respective collectors.

A common stamp done up right with nice artwork on a FDC can be worth more than just one cancelled without artwork.

ebay can be a good place to sell, but as there are more than 100,000 listings on ebay right now with the term FDC in the title, the better chance is of selling them cheap or having something special about them that makes them worth more.

A dealer will give you a small percentage of what a collector will because he has to sell them on himslf. A collector will pay the highest.

Can you tell what you have or show pictures or scans of a few?

Hello! Welcome!
Best thing for you to do to get an understanding of the value of modern first day cover from the U.S. is to research the completed auctions on ebay. Make sure you are comparing apples to apples, meaning compare the same stamps and cachet makers as well. Cachets are the pictures on the left side of the envelope.

Having said that, most modern first day covers can be bought for $1 or less if sold individually, especially if the covers are addressed, sealed or common cachet markers like Art Craft, Artmaster, Fleetwood, etc. Now if the cachets are handpainted by a known artist that might change things as there's a premimum for many hand painted cachets, but otherwise the printed ones are mainly mass produced and have flooded the markets and not a high demand for them. Most can be bought in bulk lots/collections at 10 cents or less per cover. A few FDC's might have higher value for stamps that have higher face value like the $5 definitives, priority and express mail stamps, some stamp blocks, booklet panes and souvenir sheets.

If you have a scanner or very good with a digital camera feel free to upload some pictures here.

You could post a few scans/pictures and maybe we could get you in the ball-park informatively. Like previously mentioned some sell for more than others depending on quite a few things like subject, company eg: artcraft, C.S. Anderson..etc.. If you provide images, and I hope you do try to do a couple from earliest dates to the newest dates to give a profile of what you are dealing with.

Thanks everyone! Within the next few days I will try to post a few pics. I really appreciate this forum, and all of your help!
Judi