Inherited But Not Knowledgeable: Need Advice

Hi All. I do not know anything about stamp collecting but have been recently sorting through a huge collection from my Grandmothers & mothers estates. There are hundreds if not a thousand plus of first day covers (I've been researching) from primarily the 30s on, nearly all stamped with some kind of stamp (caches? I'm a little vague on that), nearly all to Fred Sanders who was evidently the president of the ny aerophilatelic club at some point. Although many are empty envelopes, many still contain missives, receipts, newspaper clippings, postal newsletters. For example there is extensive correspondence between Mr. Sanders and the NY Senate and Olympic committee members from the 32 Lake Placid Olympics about special stamp issues, securing the commemorative stamp/woodcuts and the receipts for such. Some are signed by members of the Olympics committee. Or there are WW2 related FDCs from ships with the mail pilots signatures. It's an amazing history. Then there are thousands of loose stamps, most used but some as early as the late 1800s. I'm currently organizing and inventorying all of this myself because I don't know what it is I have, but I think it's pretty amazing and not having any knowledge I don't want to be taken advantage of in any way but I'm not sure what to do next. I'm attaching a picture of one of the FDCs that has a significant amount of documents in it as an example. Thoughts? Advice?

Your photo is too small to be able to see what you have. If you would like to post some larger and clearer photos I am sure the folks here would be happy to give you some idea of what each one is.

From what you describe so far I would not get my hopes overly high as it sounds like fairly common stamps and covers, though there could be some nicer things mixed in. In general things like clippings and letters and such will not add much value unless they are signed by famous people or unless they are handwritten letters from famous people. Olympics officials would not normally be seen as very famous. Some pilots are, though many are not.

With the amount of material you have you may do best by going to one of the better known companies. Make sure they are members of the American Stamp Dealers Association as they have to abide by ethics. They will give a fair price but you have to know that they do not work for free. When they buy a collection they have to factor in the cost to pay their professional staff to put things in order, pay for the cost of tieing up their money until they can sell the material, pay for their advertising costs, pay for auction catalogs, and factor in their internal costs such as salaries and benefits for their staff, pay the rent and electric bills, etc. and then making a profit to make it worth their while.

An alternative would be to sell it yourself - one item at a time, or groups of similar items at a time on ebay. You will need to include really clear photos, a good description and have a starting price that is set very low. Setting too high of a starting price will kill any interest and you will just wind up paying fees for things that do not have a chance of selling for high prices. Overall you will get more money than going to a dealer by doing this, but you will also put in very large amounts of your own time and accept the risk of a buyer or two not getting their item in the mail and you having to reimburse them. It depends on how much you value your time - do you feel your personal time has no value, or do you see your personal time as being worth a substantial amount?

It's telling me file can't be larger than 100kb. I'm not sure on any of these forums how I'm supposed to upload a decent pic--having same problem everywhere :(

Hi Kailin99,

This forum has a free image optimizer, which can easily reduce your image from 5MB or less, down to the 100kb size (reduce it to 96kb to be sure). You can see the link at the bottom of each new message, or just open this up in another tab

https://www.stampcommunity.org/imag....asp#534,600

Good luck. Looking forward to seeing some of your items.

Since you are taking an overview picture, it will still be unreadable using the image optimizer. Unless you post pictures of specific items, you will need to use an offsite image host to post pictures showing several items at a time.

k

Also, I can't read the writing on the cover in your picture, but are you sure that it is a first day cover? Perhaps it is a first flight cover or some other type of cover?

The resolution size is very different from the image size. Reduce your resolution to something like 300 dpi and increase your image side to something like 640 pixels. Be sure to take your photo using your macro setting so you can get it close up and extra sharply focused. Internet photos with greater resolution than around 300 dpi are usually pretty detailed. Mega pixel cameras are great for printing photographs, but they need to be dialed down for internet images.

Still working off the mobile--got to get into work! But are any of these any clearer? Trying the optimizer.

Hi, I don't know what area you are from, but my best advise is to find a local stamp club and contact them to see if they can help you.
The Olympic stuff would be of interest to someone. You will be disappointed when you find many of the first day covers are hard to sell.
Pat

Doesn't matter how much you reduce your resolution if you take a picture of a bunch of stuff together. Once your reduce the file size down below 100kb, the small print will be pretty much unreadable, as I had predicted. Resolution/pixel/image, whatever -- won't make a difference which criteria you are using.

You need to take a picture, using Kimo's suggestions -- but take a picture of ONE thing at a time, since these are large items and not single stamps.

I can tell you that your cover is NOT a first day cover. However, it is likely worth more as postal cover/history. As I don't collect postal history, I'll leave that for the others to chime in.

Glen Estus collects and exhibits stuff related to the Winter Olympics and has an exhibit on this stamp and these games.
This is his blog site (he's also involved with Vermont Postal History).
I'd contact him through that site and let him know what you have. If anyone can give you an idea of it's value or rarity, Glen can.
http://vermontpostalhistory.blogspot.com/
Click on his name to get to an email link.

Hi all, thank you.

As per the pics... I'll keep trying to work it out over next few days.

In regards to the first day cover--may I ask what am I confusing if it has a stamp on it that says "first day issue" and the date matches the post mark date?

And Glenn contacted me thank you all, it seems everyone in this circle knows him ;)

Looks like you might have some things of interest other than stamps. Have you searched for collectors of Olympics ephemera?

It appears that you have some sort of event cover. neat.

If that's what it says, then it's a first day cover. Like I posted, I can't read most of the writing/print in the picture. We can only help with what we can see/read clearly.

When you get your answer, please post the results for us.

Also, either post the results in the other forums that you have been posting and asking for help, or let those forums know you have found a source to help you. That way you don't have dozens of collectors doing duplicate work at several forums. Thank you.