The Round Robin Honor System Stamp Exchange

I belong to this stamp exchange club and we are accepting new members. Cost is $5.00 per year and the cost of postage. We trade stamps based upon Scott Catalogue Value. The club will send members a booklet to place stamps in. Stamps with a Scott Catalogue Value of .35 or higher are placed in the booklet. Stamps with a CV of less then .35 can be included but only as part of a complete set of stamps. Once you submit a booklet you will start receiving booklets of stamps submitted by other members. You are given a credit equal to the CV of stamps you submit to use to select stamps from other members. When your stamps have been seen by at least 12 members or there are 3 or less items on a page they are returned to you. If you are interested in becoming a member you can contact the Club President Cynthia Lawrence at email cmlstamps@charter.net or by phone (541) 482-0261. There has also been an ad in recent issues of "Linn's Stamp News" in the Trading Posthorn section.

Can new issues be included? Since the Philatelic Catalog requires a minimum purchase 4 stamps of each issue this would perhaps be useful it getting rid of so many duplicates.

Is it strictly stamps or do you also allow cover exchanges?

This looks great ... I will try to remember to send in my application.

I recently joined myself and find it a useful way to dispose of duplicates and obtain stamps I need. There are no restrictions on new or old material. I've submitted and received 19th century to very recent issues, CV of 35 cents to a few dozen dollars. They do have a service for want lists and souvenir sheets but I don't think cover exchanges are done, although you could send an email to find out for sure. You can let them know which countries you're interested in and you'll receive stamps from just those countries. The postage adds up a bit (typical mailings are at least $1.50 each way, and you have to have a postage account on file as well) but it doesn't cost any more than a typical, cheap mystery lot, only you won't end up with scads of duplicates.

For those that have joined, about how many stamps and how much CV do you send in with your packet? I'd like to join but I'm wondering how many of my dups have a CV of 35 cents.

Well, I've got scads and scads of duplicates, so in my case I purposely picked higher cat items (by "higher" I mean between $1 and $5 in most cases, maybe a few a little higher) so as to build a good balance right off the bat. I think my initial submission was around $200 or $250 or so. They give you a booklet that will hold 100 stamps. I've received many pages with stamps mostly around 50 cents, so I know it's not uncommon to submit stamps in that range and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. Every collector needs common stamps at some point or another. There is a time factor involved in submitting the booklets because you have to identify the catalog number and value of each stamp, so it can take an hour or two to put a book together to send in. You pretty much have to have a Scott Catalog or be able to get one from the library, etc.

In my case, I typically already have a large portion of the most common stamps of the countries I collect, so I typically select the higher cat (again $1-$5 or so) items as those are the ones I need. I've submitted and received stamps cataloging $30 or so each, so I know those exist in circulation as well. Eventually, if no one selects the stamps you submit, they are sent back to you an removed from your balance. Since I don't want a ton of them to come back, I purposely avoid submitting the most common, cheapest ones for that reason as well.

If nothing else, I'd join just to try it out. The risk is minmal (postage, basically) and it could be a really good way to acquire more stamps. If you don't like it or if it doesn't work out for some reason, you can always quit.

I assume that the stamps provided for trade need to all be fault-free? I haven't seen this requirement, but would like to think that stamps are expected to be sound.

Also, I wonder if forgeries/reprints are checked by someone.

Thanks Artful. I do think I'm going to give it a try

Stamps with faults are allowed but should be stated that they are faulty and discounted off of catalog accordingly.

Forgot to mention that they do have a want list service as well.

As far as forgeries and fakes, I don't think there's anyone who monitors that except you (the collector). I've only been in for about 3 months, but most of the stamps I've seen have been common - 90% probably cataloging less than 2 or 3 dollars and rarely if ever faked. Maybe I have to be a longer-standing member before I see any "big guns" in a shipment, but it doesn't strike me as a service to obtain truly valuable stamps that are often faked or forged. Now...there is a possibility for misidentified stamps (due to watermark and perf varieties, etc), but I haven't come across that yet. Even if I end up with something that's not up to snuff, the only cost was some duplicates I didn't want anyway, and a little postage.

TheArtfulHinger - thank you for the input - I have plenty of duplicates, just some very narrow/specialized collecting areas. I might join to check it out.