Inherited Stamp Collection

Hi again,
Where abouts do you live? Perhaps there is someone on the Forum in your area that would be able to give you a ballpark idea as to what you have.

The last thing you want to do is offer it for sale to a dealer. You will get little or nothing.

If you have a number of albums, and insist on selling them, I would take several pics and offer on ebay. Typically, ebay will let you know what the market value is (via ending auction price). If you do offer them for sale, do one album per auction, take good pics, count the stamps, and have your listing end in the afternoon on a weekend (assuming you live in the USA or Canada.

I know you may be overwhelmed, but there are a lot of folks on this forum that would jump at the opportunity to help you along.

Most libraries have copies of the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalog that lists all the stamps of the world in 6 volumes. That's probably your best bet to get an idea of what you've got. Just keep in mind that the prices you see there will not even be close to what you can get for them. Also keep in mind that if you find what looks like a really expensive stamp in your collection, it might be a cheap, common one that looks nearly identical, so be careful in making assumptions. While you probably wouldn't want to tally up every single stamp you have, you could at least get a general idea as to whether you've got a bunch of stamps with little monetary value or something more substantial.

If you can post some pictures of the actual stamps here, I'm sure you'll get some opinions. If you're looking for valuable stamps, older (pre-1900 or so) stamps from the US and countries in Europe and their colonies are typically worth more than stamps from other areas (such as Latin America), although those areas certainly have valuable stamps as well.

I'm not sure where you live, but most larger metro areas should have at least a couple stamp dealers who could look at your stamps and let you know if you have anything or not. If it's a large collection with lots of valuable stamps, it would take them some time to give a true market value (i.e. an appraisal), but they'd be able to tell pretty quickly what kind of collection they're dealing with - i.e. if it's just cheap stuff or if there are some better, harder to find items that are worth more. Finding a stamp club in your area might be an option as well, since knowledgeable collectors can also tell you what kind of collection you have.

good advice for him Art
Tom

You could also try searching on ebay, Delcampe, or BidStart dot com sites for stamps. Millions are listed on there and are updating constantly.

There are also other sites that are auction sites or auction houses that sell stamps of exact countries or worldwide. Search on SCF here for stamps and sites also, posted by other members.

For someone who knows nothing about stamps, I think selecting a few to check on ebay or in catalogues is too uncertain. I would look for someone from a local stamp club (or the forum) or a reputable dealer to do a quick look at the whole lot and see if there is enough obviously good stuff to go deeper, and maybe be prepared to pay someone to do a more thorough assessment. But I agree that if you have the slightest beginnings of interest in stamp collecting, don't do anything with them yet. You could never duplicate the effort it took to accumulate what you now have.

Just found an album of Vietnam Stamps. From 1951 - 1995. It's not full but has a lot of stamps. I am trying to break this collection down but their is so much. I think I'll try to find a collector in RI to help.

Finding a local collector is definitely a good option.

That album looks like a Mystic Vietnam Album. I don't have any experience with the album itself, but Mystic Stamp Company makes a lot of albums such as these and then offers people monthly shipments of stamps to put in them. There's a decent chance that your aunt partook in such a service. Stamps offered through such a service are usually fairly common and not worth a lot individually. However, if the stamps are well taken care of, they can sometimes have a fairly significant aggregate value, particularly if there are many albums like this. Again, you'll want to have someone look at them to give you a better idea, or post some more pictures here of some actual stamps.

Your right the folder is from Mystic Stamp co. Here are 2 pages from the 50's

For something like this particular album, your best bet would probably be to sell it on ebay as is. I doubt the stamps in there are worth much (although you never know for sure), and the album itself might be worth as much to a collector as the stamps in it. If you put it on ebay, picturing every album page would be beneficial, but a few representative pictures with a decent description would probably suffice for an album such as this.

Again, if you're looking for something valuable, it's really old (pre-1900 or so) stamps from the US and Europe (and colonies) that tend to be worth the most. That's not to say there aren't valuable stamps in other parts of the world or from other years, but old stamps from the US and Europe would be the first ones I'd look for if I was looking for something that had value. Very few stamps (as a percentage) issued after about 1950 from any country have much value, although there are still many that will cost tens or hundreds of dollars; just a few rarities go higher.

The most likely outcome is the that the collection was a hobby collection that mostly gave your aunt many hours of enjoyment, but does not hold much financial value. However, the value of continuing a stamp collection down through the generations is priceless.

What I did when I was disposing of the bits of my grandfather's/dad's collection I did not want was go to a local stamp dealer with the bits that looked more interesting to see if they could give me guidance on value and how to sell them. I found that was a great way to establish a relationship with someone very knowledgeable who was able to guide me as I got more serious about stamp collecting.