France Collection Advice

I inherited a family members France collection a few years ago. They had a pretty good eye for quality stamps. I scanned the first two pages in hopes that you can tell if everything appears correct. All the stamps in the album were most likely purchased in the late 1940's to early 1970's to best of my knowledge. I do not know much about French stamps. I will try to upload some more pages at a future date. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks

A little tough to tell from the small scan, but it appears that the stamps are in the right places. Nice examples of full margin early stamps. Congrats on an excellent collection to start ...

You have a good starting point for a collection.
There are gaps that you see in most collections as to fill them would cost a fair amount e.g #2 and #37.
Do you plan to continue with building the collection?

Here is a good website for further info on the early France issues if you would like to learn more about them - http://www.timbres-de-france.com/co...l-france.php

Thanks for the replies, I am considering trying to fill in some of the holes,(money permitting). Do you think I should get the high value stamps with certs or signed? I do this with my US Stamps? I noticed a lot of France stamps are signed, not with cert's. But can signature stamps be trusted are there any tell-tale signs to spot a fake signature? Are there any web-sites (prefer English)out there with list of authenticator signatures? Thanks again for the help.

Excellent collection SavStamps. French classics are beautiful stamps.

Hi Everyone, I scanned another couple of pages. I am curious about the Bisect in the first scan, does any one know what this rate would have been for and is it a legit usage?

SavStamp

A year or two ago I sold my copies of #2 for $70 and #37 for $60. They weren't the finest examples, but not in a very rough shape as well.







They weren't certify, but I'm pretty sure they were authentic.

With a little wait you can find reasonable copies at a reasonable price, and I don't think you need a cert, unless you want to spend some good money. But again, this is just my opinion.

Danko, Both stamps looked great... I will wait until I can get them for a price I can live with, the hole's have been blank for this many years and few more won't hurt anything.... Thanks for sharing :)

If you can accept some faults you can find some spacefillers for very little cost.

These two cost me a couple of quid each.

I just thought I would share a few more pages from the album. I keep finding new things every time I flip through it.

There have some of the mid value items such as the 50f Clement Ader (could be both thick and thin paper types) and the 1937 Louvre semi-postals.
These are $100+ items but more importantly some of the most beautiful example of postage stamps.

AnthonyUK, The 50f Clement Ader's are both the thick and thin paper. I agree they are beautiful

The French semi-postal issues seem to have attracted bigger prices than anything else in 20th century France. I've managed to accumulate quite a few of the issues but still missing a few key ones.

It has been a few months since my original post, thought I would show some updated scans of my progress. It is by no way complete but I am happy with how it's coming along

Savstamp,
You really have a beautiful collection here, quite some progress since last year . Admire your outstanding SOTN beauties !

I happen to have a liking for the french myself, but I am absolutely no expert, being simply a 'non-specialized' WW collector. Still I want to point out I suspect you have one stamp misplaced. As you probably know, it was issued a few stamps in the general French Colonies almost identical to those of mainland France. I think your France no.7 (Ceres 40c 1849) is actually no.14 from the colonies.

Example:



The postmark 'mute losange' is as far as I understand a clear indication it's from the colonies. In my mind, that postmark makes that stamp much more attractive, regardless what the catalogue value says. It's much more common to find that stamps from France than the colonies, so IMHO I cannot understand how Scott set the catalogue value?? See this link:
http://marcophilie.org/los-des-colo...nerales.html
And what a beautiful cancelled stamp you have - Congratulations!
I would swop with my own France-postmarked no.7 anytime

btw
- your no. 27 with that 'anchored losange' postmark (= maritime post / paquebote) is also something way out of the ordinary, and much more attractive than any normal postmark. ENVY...!
- your 40c Bordeaux has a grosse chifre postmark 5055, turning it into a forerunner for Algerie (Skikda), if you are interested in that stuff. Many others surely are, so that postmark is also sought after.

Probably you were aware of this already, just wanted to let you in case you didn't.
Cheers, Jon