Need Help With Selling Collection

Stamp community,

After 200+ hours of organizing, labeling, and categorizing 20,000+ stamps, I have finally finished my collection. I would like to sell it now, but I am not sure how, where, or to who. I live near the Portland, Oregon area and I found two collectors that look good.

I really want to get the best price for my collection. I have sheets and sheets of stamps from the 1930s to the 1980s from all over the world. I also have about 1500 pseudo-3D stamps from Middle Eastern countries that are worth about $1-18 each. I also have some unique Nazi canceled German and Polish stamps. Most of the other countries also have a unique flair.

Should I get and appraisal from multiple buyers and then sell? How would you do it?

I will attach some pictures of the collection as soon as I take some.

Thanks!
pckmcc

If you have two potential buyers, show the collection to them and ask for offers. That will give you data to start.

pckmcc,

If you live near Portland, pay a visit to one of the Oregon Stamp Society's next events for an appraisal. The Rose City Stamp fair is on the second Saturday of every month and features profession dealers from the area. Stamp Collector's Corner is on the fourth Saturday of every month and features club members pretending to be dealers (I run this event). You are more likely to get and open and honest evaluation at "Stamp Collector's Corner".

http://www.oregonstampsociety.org/

But I warn you - you will likely be disappointed in the actual value of your collection. Throw the catalogues away.

If you have "sheets and sheets of 1930s-1980s stamps from around the world", then they are likely common stamps and you can expect offers in the range of .01 to .05 per stamp. I don't know much about your 3d stamps, but my experience is that stamps with cat values less than $50 don't get much attention from dealers. At best, you can expect offers of 10% of cat for those items.

Feel free to email for more details on Oregon Stamp Society schedules.

Brian

Thanks! I will try to contact them and get some meeting times set up.

Brian,

Thanks for the info! So, you would recommend going to the Stamp Collector's Corner over the Rose City Stamp Fair? Should I go to both? How should I present the collection?

Hi,
If the money is important to you, and you have the time to do a bit of work, I would urge you to put the collection up on ebay. Now I don't mean the entire collection as one offering, but by country instead.

In my experience, ebay will usually come close to the true market value (not what is in the cataloges) and will beat out dealers offerings.

But, selling on ebay (Properly) is a bit of work.

mobilman44,

Thanks for the idea about selling on ebay. I already sell toys and small collectibles on ebay, so getting a store up and running will not be an issue :)

If I sold on ebay, you would recommend selling by country, correct? If so, how should I list the stamps so I get the highest value? What are people looking for when they buy stamps on ebay?

Any tips and tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
pckmcc

I'm not speaking from experience, but I suspect the following advice is still useful.

To find out what people are looking for on ebay, you need to look at past auctions. Besides sorting by country, you need to know the proper way to describe a stamp. For US stamps, this will be with a "Scott #." Scott also has catalogs for foreign stamps, but in special cases other catalog reference numbers might be appropriate; I cannot speak to that.

Once you know a catalog designation for a stamp, look it up on ebay and select the option to "Show only--sold listings." This should give you some idea of how what you are trying to sell is typically listed and described, and some idea of what you can expect it to sell for.

I plan to sell some excess items on ebay before too long. Having bought them on ebay, I already have a pretty good idea of how to describe them. I'm not expecting to make a lot of $$$ doing this. In my case, a strategy I'm considering is to group two or three items together (in my case, covers, not stamps, though the idea would apply there as well) on some logical basis and offer them at a low starting bid (and a low shipping cost--I despise sellers who offer low prices, especially "buy it now," and then try to make it up in shipping and handling). Since what I'm selling is excess, I consider anything I get above shipping to be "profit."

Dear pckmcc,

Please let me know the Ceylon/Sri Lanka list what you have.

Thanks in advance.

If you're selling a collection on ebay, the smaller the pieces you break it into, the more money you'll end up with in the long run. It becomes a tradeoff of the time it would take to list everything vs. expected extra benefits.

I'd list more expensive stamps & sets separately. Most stamps with a retail value (retail, not catalog) of $10 or so and up generally move fairly well if they're priced right. Is your collection mounted on pages or in stockbooks? If on pages, I'd leave them there and sell them by country in relatively small chunks of a few pages, representing no more than a decade or two of issues. Smaller chunks will interest more buyers as some won't want to buy (for example) France 1960-2000 when they really only need stamps from the 80's. Again, you'll need to figure out how important getting every last penny is vs. the time it will take you to list everything, pack, ship, etc.

Agreed!

Expanding on this thought, I'd like to add that when selling large collections, there are "diminishing returns" with larger collections. Simply put: You attract more potential buyers with smaller, more affordable lots. Once you exceed a certain price, you exclude budget-minded buyers.

Of course, this means more work on your part, so you must weigh the benefits of breaking down your collection vs selling as a whole.

Brian

Yep. I love to buy collections and assortments of various kinds, but in my case, the huge collections have two strikes against them: the price is too high and they contain too many stamps I already have. A smaller lot is within my budget and I can pick from areas where I really need stamps rather than just buying a big bulk lot.

Thanks for the info! I have another question though :) I have about 1500 stamps in my collection that are worth anywhere from $1-$34 each. Should I sell them in a high priced lot and see if someone takes it and if no one does, split it up and sell the individual stamps?

Thanks!
pckmcc

If you just want to be rid of them quickly and efficiently, sell them as one lot. If you want to make the most money, I'd parcel them out in smaller lots. The lot should just make some kind of logical sense - don't just grab 100 random stamps, for example. Sets of stamps with the same design are good things to list as well as year sets and stamps from one country from the same general era. Topical lots might work as well.

If you have a number in mind of how much you'd take for the whole collection, put it out for auction starting at that price and see what happens. You're not out anything if there are no takers. Unless the stamps are from a hot, in-demand area, I'd be very surprised if it brought more than 20% of total CV, and probably a lot less than that. Stamps cataloging $1-$5 look good when you total up the aggregate CV, but stamps in that range regularly show up in 2- and 3-cents a stamp mixtures that I buy and sell. Most serious collectors of those areas probably already have most of those stamps as well, so it's mostly the higher CV items that most people would be basing their bids on.

The numbers I'm about to throw out are generalizations, but basically for stamps CV under $10 or so, 10-20% of Scott seems to be a rough going rate, often even less. Start getting closer to $50 and you might be able to get 40% or so. The higher the catalog prices, the more realistic they are (again, in general). Long story short, those stamps that the book says are worth $5 are probably worth somewhere around 50 cents or a dollar to most collectors if they even need them at all. Not trying to discourage you, just trying to give you a realistic idea of "true" value and what to expect.

Thank you to the SCF member: blcjr !
I did not know about searching for auctions that have ended.
That is GREAT to know (blcjr suggested to look at auctions that have ended by doing this search: "Show only--sold listings")

Silly me, I've been clicking WATCH THIS AUCTION to see how well they do or if they sell LOL.

I have not been on ebay in four years (as a seller) and then, only sold a couple items. I started again Saturday, I now have 31 auctions, only seven have bids, but I am happy happy joy joy as I've not been charged any fees for listing them. MNH USA to Foreign, interesting what people view more like the lot of my triangle stamps compared to 80 MNH foreign auction right? Here is the link if anyone is curious:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/emycrocheth...op=12&_rdc=1