New To Stamp Collecting With A Selling Question

I mentioned Rasdale earlier in this post. No need for you to travel to them, they would surely be willing to come to your location to look over what you have. Besides, why pack up all of this stuff and travel with it ?

My biggest fear here, is that well meaning posters are pumping you up with catalog values that are unrealistic to expect in 95% of most stamps. If you do a little searching by Scott # of items that have been sold on ebay you'll get a better reflection of values. Just do a search by Scott# and click on on items sold. Compare their condition to that of what you have. I checked an unused #112. They gave you a figure of $700. On ebay over the last couple months many have sold, and they range from $20 up to $100.

Plus remember that the stamp dealer is a businessman. He's not out to screw you, but he's not a charity either. He needs to turn a profit to compensate for his time. If they are going to sell part of the collection at auction they usually get 15% from the seller and another 15% from the buyer. That covers cost of the sale, cost of catalogs, advertising and access to their network of stamp buyers.

Thank you I will take that into consideration!

Land - in your area, Rasdale is worth considering, but some other auctioneers, such as Harmer-Schau, will travel to see your collection (if it does turn out to be as good as the first pictures suggest).

The one big factor you have to understand is that condition has a huge effect on value and as a newbie, you are not in a strong position to dectect many of the issues that plague stamps.

(Shakily groping for the keyboard after the images tossed me to the floor---Redd Foxx "It's the big one") WOW! Nice collection starter there. I would suggest keeping them as intact as you can and identify them as best this way. possibly later getting the more valuable ones certified?? As far as selling. dealers are good sources for information and such but as others have said, they will usually lo-ball if they know you are planning on selling. get an idea of how scott grades for their prices, figure most stamps in a particular collection are not going to be as high of a grade that scott gives, and prices do drop off fast, yet on the off chance the stamp grade is better than scott lists, the price may skyrocket also. it still a crapshoot. what one person deems fine-very fine is not what another sees. Good luck.

All I can is WOW, what a great way to get started. I saw it mentioned to use EZstamp, might I also offer StampManage by Liberty street software. Not the cheapest but I like it better than EZstamp, and I only upgrade every couple years. Just got the 2014 upgrade offered to me by email for 19.95.
When testing out software always try the demo first.
Good luck, and good times.