Inherited Stamp Collection

I just inherited about 50 boxes of all kinds of stamps from my Aunt.
I have no idea what they might be worth. I'm sure most are not worth anything but I am not sure. Can you give me any ideas on how I go about checking on their value.

Are the stamps still attached to pieces of enevelope, or by themselves, or sorted in glassine envelopes, or on full envelopes (do not remove stamps from envelopes), or in albums? :)

Perhaps you can take a picture or even scan a few stamps for further analysis.

50 boxes? Even if these were just small shoe boxes, it would be overwhelming! Without knowing your aunt or her areas of interest, it would be impossible to tell you what you have without pictures. Might I suggest opening just one box, taking several photos, and posting them here for us to see?

You need to start somewhere!

Brian

Here is one of the albums that I found full of stamps.

I'll echo what others have already said as far as providing a little more information. As a general rule, if the stamps are loose and disorganized, they *probably* don't have much value because your aunt would have likely taken more care of them otherwise. If your aunt was a typical collector (and she might not have been), any stamps with much value will probably be cared for somehow, in an album, stock book, glassine envelopes, etc.

The first stamp that was posted in this binder was issued in 1866

I looked in the StampManage software for values. They have a 30 day free trial, but it doesn't include foreign countries in the trial.

Brazil started with numeral stamps in 1843.

I was a real estate appraiser for many years and see that ebay is actually showing bids for the Brazil stamps from 1843 of $50 and $100. That's good news for anyone trying to sell 1860s stamps. The auction will arrive at a price, just like the market does for real estate, but the problem is that novices don't know the stamps like the experts do and so they may not correctly identify it so the value is like a treasure hunt for the buyer, which makes it nice for an expert. On ebay you can check "sold" listings as well as "actives."

Could be worth 20 cents, could be worth $1000. People would need photos of what you might instinctively consider the valuable stamps, even photos of full pages would at least give viewers a pretty good feel for the depth of the collection....does it contain anything "beyond the common stamps". Otherwise, you can obtain a copy of a Scott's catalog from the local library and start in after having separated by countries, realizng that the catalog values are not what anyone would pay you...those represnet what you could expect to pay a stamp dealer for the stamp in the stated condition, lop off a great percentage more if your stamp has condition issues.

I just happened to find the following website today while doing a Google search for something else. I know nothing about the site, perhaps others here can give input on it. seems like it might be of use to the original post. I find the first couple chapters useful as a newbie.

http://www.inheritedstampcollection.com/index.htm

Caddy, one thing that I would do with this much material at hand is find out if you have a local stamp club. You can do this through the APS, the American Philatelic Society. Someone would have to actually see this many stamps to give you any kind of an honest opinion!

Peter

Marmus, I don't know anything about that website, but I poked around a bit and it generally looks to be good advice, with perhaps an exception that dealers will pay around 25% of SCV (on "good", i.e. other than cheap, common stamps) for a collection, which seems a bit high.

I will second that! My experience is anecdotal only, so take my comments for what they are - opinions.

It is my experience that dealers will not pay more than 10% for anything with cat value of $10 - $100 UNLESS there is something exceptional about a stamp (great centering, great cancellation, etc). If a stamp has average centering, has a heavy cancellation, or any noticable flaw, you might be surprised, if not offended by the offers made by dealers - even for the more expensive items!

For stamps that catalogue less than $10, you are unlikely to get 10%. For stamps with the minimum cat value of .25, don't expect more than .01/stamp.

Brian

Brian - that's more or less in line with what I'm thinking one can expect as well. Given the retail selling prices of stamps (the "sweet spot" seems to be around 20-40% of CV in my collecting areas) and the fact that dealers have to make some sort of profit, math pretty much dictates they're not going to give you 25% of Scott, unless of course, like you said, there is something else special about it. I pretty much figure on 5-10% for better (over $10 in CV or so) material.

I'd say about 2000$ per box... but it does depend somewhat on the size of the boxes.

Hi!
This subject is quite frequent around here, and gets lots of good attention and advice.

May I just say that I would first hope that you would want to get into the hobby, to carry on your Aunt's passion.

I am so overwhelmed with all these stamps. I've been researching with google and some of the stamps I can't even fine. Not sure what I will do next. Maybe I'll box the ones that I can find information and box the ones I can't .