A Tale Of Collections And The Ultimate Disposition..........

Hi,
Last year at this time I buried my younger sister's husband, and last week I buried my older sister's husband. Both were avid collectors, but handled their collections very different from one another.

My older BIL has collected antique cameras for about 50 years. His collection is immense, and museum quality. He had catalogued each piece (well over 500), and made sure his wife and son knew "what was what". He also made sure they knew of fellow collectors who could help out if need be. In short, my older sister should have a fairly easy time of disposing of the collection.

My younger BIL collected sports memorabilia, and has a dozen or so boxes of baseball cards, and also various antiques and other collectibles. He catalogued nothing, and never advised his wife or children of what he had, or of fellow collectors, or anything that could possibly help out in the disposition. Of course, he thought he would outlive everyone.

My point is, if you care about your loved ones and/or your collection (whatever it is), please take the time to document what you have. And, provide instructions to your loved ones to aid in its ultimate disposition.

This is great advice for all of us! Word of caution, however...be realistic! Don't set your heirs up for disappointment when they find that the collection is not worth Scott catalog value, and maybe will only sell for 1/4th to at the most, 1/2th that...unless they are a serious (and very rich) collector who has been in the hobby for many many years! In another thread on here, regarding "writing in albums, not only the Scott number and CV would be good, but also what one actually paid for it, and the year it was purchased would also help, if you could put it in an unobtrusive spot under the stamp.

Absolutely! Too many times in this hobby and my other (model trains) have I heard from folks who ended up being very disappointed in the real world value of what they got (usually inherited).

I know a lot of people and out of them all including me I don't know anyone who has what I would call value enough to take the time to do this for any of their hobbies. My family knows what I have and I have been upfront, it is all common stuff not worth much that they have to worry or fight over money.

They are material things, I don't really care where they end up at. Probably the greatest possibility would be to break everything up and part it out so each part can be the beginning of something new. I could think of no greater plan than this as everything would be loved and cherished by so many different people.

I've already made it clear to my family that Scott catalog value (CV) is generally inflated (at least for the general quality). My wife knows that what I've purchased for X% of CV could probably be sold for 5-10% above that given the work I put into cataloging it. If fact, when I told her that story of the New Jersey wife who tried to put a hit on her husband with her stamp collection with "value" of $60,000, she immediately said with a gleam in her eye, "oh, so that's $6,000 ebay value. That's pretty cheap!"

APS provides business card-sized cards to place into your albums. I tape mine on the inside front and back covers using those ubiquitous address labels that charities like to send to you. The cards have a place to write in the name of a person who can assist in settling the philatelic estate. Or, if name & contact info isn't given, the card refers heirs to the APS Estate Advisory Service, composed of volunteers. Heirs can take advantage of the service for one year after death. Only question is how close a volunteer might be to some isolated place, like much of the Intermountain West.

Some time ago; maybe from this site; I learned of the following web site. Appears to have a LOT of useful information.

www.inheritedstampcollection.com

Hi again,
May I add.........
In my "life travels" I've met a lot of folks with various collections and valuable assets. Most of these folks that I got to know well had "end of life" papers prepared. But most of those that did not - all otherwise intelligent folks - seemed to fall into two categories.

The first acted like "they would live forever", and were likely just not up to facing their own mortality (aren't we all?).
The second group assumed that everything would fall into place when they passed, and their family would do what they wanted.

I've seen the fallout from all the above first hand. It ain't pretty.

Now I'll go back to my Scott's Part III album assembly..............