Selling Stamps

Can someone suggest who to contact to sell stamps. My wife's father passed asway recently and she has many, many stamps that she wants to sell.

Also, assuming she finds a potential buyer, how will she know if she's not getting ripped off by being offered a really low price...

Hi and welcome, First of all, its hard to determine a true value of what stamps you have. Because of all the variables in stamp identification. It would require an experienced person to go thru them. Unless there are some valuable stamps within, you could basically get penny's on the dollar for average typical type stamps. Depending on the valuable stamps condition which also brings the value down. Possibly someone in the family may have some experience in identification or you can get some reference catalogs from the library and start looking thru them. If some of those stamps have no cancellations on them and the back of them still has the glossy type gum then you would not want to touch them with your bare hands. Hope this helps a little. Gary

I can imagine my heirs facing the same thing some day, though I hope to give them some guidance before I pass on. It would be nice if some of the more experienced members of SCF with knowledge of such might suggest some dealers who offer to evaluate collections/estates. I might look through APS for ads, but the poster here likely wouldn't know how to evaluate dealers, let alone evaluate the stamps themselves.

You know what would be nice? A "sticky" post with suggestions for those facing this problem. Recommend dealers to contact, that kind of thing. I imagine it would be different for different kinds of collections. In my case, my collection is heavily weighted toward airmail first flight and first day covers, so for a collection like that, I imagine the recommendation would be different than for a dealer to evaluate a collection of 19th century US postage, not to mention various other nationalities. But I see ads all the time offering to buy collections, so I think it would be useful to have a post we could point to when getting questions like this. While I would expect it to be mostly neutral, if users have experience with specific dealers that they would recommend, that would be helpful.

At the same time, I think it only fair to warn people that selling entire collections to a dealer is only going to get pennies on the dollar of what the collection might bring if auctioned off bit by bit by someone knowledgeable. Does anybody have enough experience to offer guidelines on just what to expect, besides "pennies on the dollar?" E.g., if a collection has a "Scott Catalog Value" of X, how much would a dealer typically offer to buy it? 10% of X? Less? More? I know that there are lots of variables and unknowns in a question like this, but surely there are some typical rules of thumb, or ballpark estimates to bandy about.

Something like this: if the SCV of a collection is X, a knowledgeable collector might be able to get 40-50% of that selling it piecemeal, over time, on ebay. Selling it outright to a dealer may only bring about 5-10%. Obviously, culling out the more valuable items, and selling them off individually, and then selling the rest outright would probably bring something in between those extremes. Sound about right? Or would you beg to differ?

Basil

Sellers without knowledge need an intermediary who can brief them, translate for them and maybe even act for them if they intend to dispose of a collection. Novices bringing collections they know nothing about to established dealers they do not know will rarely get a bountiful deal - because that dealer has one interest only - making a profit. And in the market today making a profit is totally dependent upon getting sale material at rock bottom price. Novice sellers should seek out collectors through stamp clubs, or part time sellers active in forums and clubs for advice. AS a art time seller and philatelist I am frequently asked for advice and pleased to give it.There are many like me.

The American Philatelic Society provides a free evaluation of stamp collections in a program called 'Stamps in your Attic.' This is provided at many national level stamp shows, so depending on where you live, you might find a show within a reasonable distance here:

http://stamps.org/National-WSP-Shows

I know cash is king... But consider donating it to a nonprofit. I suggest boystown which has an awesome philimatic museum. They will use the proceeds to support the community.

Unless there are some really super stamps, a dealer is like an attorney. They Weill make most of the money...