I Have To Get Serious About Liquidating Dad's Collection...

Excuse me...
I guess I must mention, so people don't question my motives, that it was my father's
deathbed wish that I liquidate the collection, as he had no life insurance, leaving
my mother saddled with debt. I knew nothing about stamps at that time, and he told me
that they were worth "a fortune". I just assumed he knew what he was talking about.

He spent the last couple years of his life confined to bed, slowly, and painfully,
dying. During this time, instead of putting money back, he thought it was a good
"investment" to mail order stamps from Mystic. While he was in bed dying, he spent
$11,000 with them, and somehow thought that by the time I liquidated, the return
would be even more than what he spent. He told me so.

So now you can leave the smart comments to yourself. I bailed my mother out of debt
myself because of his lack of insurance. He died thinking his wife was going to be
rich! LoL There is much more to it than just stamps, but I'll get off my soapbox.

Ringo,
You have a good point about taking what I can get.
After immersing myself in the hobby the last several years, it would
make that very hard to do. If I had never bothered to learn about the
hobby, I would be able to walk away much easier.

There are so many "shoulda" moments through this whole thing. If I had
known what I know now, I would have got Dad a PC and turned him loose on
ebay with that $11k. He would have gotten quite literally 10x the value
for his money. Heck, he might have researched and found out that stamps
weren't this booming, valuable commodity that they were when he was an
active collector decades earlier.

I just have really sore feelings about the whole thing.
Mostly for my mother... She HAD 2 houses. Now she lives with me in 2 rooms
that I added on to my house so she would have a place.

ratio411, that is a hard deal. I'm sorry to hear about your Father and also the current situation.
For what it's worth coming from a stranger, it's admirable how you've stepped up for your Mom.

ratio411,

I don't mean to get personal, but you make it sound like you are close to death or death is imminent. If so, you have my sympathy and I understand completely your fear the collection will end up in the trash.

If death is no where on the horizon, then good. You have plenty of time to do the right thing with the collection, whatever that might be. There are a few options at least:

1. Sell the entire lot after conferring with a few interested parties.
2. Sell the collection piecemeal, however you like to get started (I suggest less valuable parts first)
3. Spend some time cataloging what you have and doing the work for your eventual heirs so it won't be a burden and enjoy the collection. The upside of this approach is eventually you might learn enough to sell it piecemeal.
4. Just enjoy the collection and will it to the American Philatelic Society if your heirs really would send it to a landfill. [edit: oh yeah, and make a will and appoint an executor that is not your wife]

I'm sure there are a few variations on these options, but that's basically it. Now make a decision!

Break the whole collection up in groups of similar items, older covers, then fdcs by country, then loose stamps by country etc then send them in groups into Harmer auction house and auction them off bit by bit. You can't send the whole lot in to auction house at once as the postage cost would be enormous. I think this is a better way to sell them then trying to sell the whole lot off in one go. If you did sell all of them to one collector what you you charge the buyer on shipping the lot to them?

I know the feeling. Am sitting on my fathers accumilation of stamps that he managed to gather over 30 years. So apart from the collection, I have tens of thousands of stamps which he used to buy in bulk (mostly on paper) and would spend days soaking them. His ultimate aim was to set up a small business selling packets of stamps. He also purchased thousands of stamps from the South African post office as well as homeland issues which to a large extent, even in mint condition aren't worth much, and being so common... I started selling on e-bay, got rid of some, but I was selling at practically face value in order to be able to sell - I was under no illusion that I would make millions out of it, problem is, I am still stuck with only God knows how many tens of thousands of stamps which in all honesty are worthless, the thought of chucking them out doesn't sit well with my consience either. If you don't have the immediate need to sell, take your time about it constructively. It will probably take ages but small well thought out steps are better than rushing in to get things over with. Take what you need for your collection if you haven't already, break it up into country lots, then break up each country lot into stamps, postal history, FDC's etc you could even try sorting them out into thematic lots; start chucking them onto e-bay, Delcampe or whatever other on-line site. Going through established auction houses costs quite a bit in sellers commission too and most dealers buy at a fraction of catalogue value anyway so if you have the time, patience and nerve try do it by yourself,

What a waste of time ,put the whole collection on the kitchen table and call in a expert or two . They will charge you $100.00 or two for a real price value .Then take it to a dealer or a auction house and get rid of it .
This is down right silly to think you can sell it on ebay and make some huge increase in value. Selling on ebay will make you $2.00 a hour for your time ,go out and get a job at McDonalds and make 3x or 4x as much .

Hi,
From your pics/description, I would say you could divide your holdings into three "pots"...... The first would be the albums/covers that are - for want of a better description - readily available, recent, and of lesser value. These I would package and sell on ebay in similar groupings - not too small, not too big.

The second group would be country collections - be it in albums or covers. If the albums are really filled, I would consider splitting them out by country and selling on ebay. Otherwise, put it on as a singular album w/stamps.

The third group is to cherry pick the valuable stamps/covers and sell separately (or as related groups)on ebay. Using a price point to break into the three groups is subjective, and I would base it on Scott's valuation.

NOTE, using the Scott's valuation is to allow you to separate the high dollar stamps from the medium from the low. The value does not represent what you will get for them, but it does tell you that "this one is worth a whole lot more than that one".

I've bought/sold a lot of albums/stamps on ebay. It is work, and after all is said and done you will net about 75% of the gross sales price. If you do decide to try this, log on to the USPS.GOV site and order up the various FREE - "delivered to your door" - priority flat rate boxes/envelopes.

You'll find selling on ebay may not bring you the prices you want and its time consuming. Dealers will only offer you a fraction of what the collection is worth so a big name auction house is your best bet. They do charge fee but so does ebay & paypal.

A big name auction house does not want UN material.
Go ahead....call me names, whatever.
But that is the truth....sorry.

From ratio's description of his father's deathbed buying practices and his brief description of the high end (well, really middle-level) material (GB Penny Black, US 1847 Franklin etc. -- a lot depends on what shape these two are in) and the total amount spent ($11,000, much of it paid to Mystic), a big name auction house will break out the dozen or two dozen lots that might be saleable on their own and remainder the rest as a box lot at the end of the auction catalogue.

True, all things considered, this will bring more than shopping it around to individual dealers hoping for cash on the barrelhead (a dealer might well buy it but for a pittance, and rightly so) and will save a lot of time over breaking it down and selling it DIY on ebay.

So it is indeed probably the best compromise.

But please, let's be realistic about what an auction house that takes it on consignment will do. It's possible there might not even be a handful of lots that would sell on their own--the whole thing might end up as a box lot at the end of the auction catalogue.

And going the consignment route will take months.

At least that's my perception from having tried to read carefully what Ratio wrote about the nature of the collection.

Who do you think buys the large box lots??

Dealers.

Which is my point, Kevin. If most of it is going to end up as a box lot at the end of the auction catalogue,the idea that going to a large auction firm will yield a better price pretty much evaporates. One advantage would be exposing the box lot to a larger pool of potential dealer-buyers as compared to shopping it around to dealers oneself or throwing it as a box lot on to ebay.

So it turns on whether the collection has many or any middle-level lots to break out and realize a bit more. From Ratio's description, I doubt that it has very many.

So going to an auction house on consignment won't necessarily bring much more money, if any, but it saves a lot of work breaking it into lots and selling on ebay. That's the upside, small as it may be. The downside is the months of delay, but that might not be much more time than it would take to break it down for ebay as a DIY job.


edited for typo

This ignores the crucial difference(s) between ebay & IRL auctions.

IRL auction lots can be inspected and, if you ever visit an auction house during the inspection days, you will see that plenty of bidders show-up to do just that.

If a lot is inspected - album pages turned, piles of covers thumbed through, et al - somebody might spot something they really want - or a few somebodies might spot a few somethings in which they see some value - and it is of such things that bidding wars are made.

Even if you post quite a few scans to ebay, large lots will mostly attract pig-in-a-poke bidders who have very little idea of the total value of the lot, as they have not turned all of the album pages, thumbed through the piles of covers, etc. Yes, there might be more pokers (a lot more pokers) on ebay, but that does not get them into a bidding war with each other.

Blind bids must, necessarily, be lower bids.

An inspected lot will support a higher level of confidence in a higher bid.

For the box lots, go with a sales channel (visiting dealers, consignment to an auction house) that lets someone see something.

PS: major-player auction houses will generally list box lots with significant value (min U$D 100s), whereas smaller players will often list box lots with relatively minor value (eg U$D 10s). Which one gets that giant box of UN FDCs?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Yes, dealers are typicaaly the ones who buy the large lots, but if it is broken into a FDC lot, a regular covers lot, a US stamp lot, a mint UN lot, not sure if there is anything else, then there will be different buyers for the lots and they will pay more to get just what they want rather than someone buying the entire thing, keeping what they want and turning around and dumping what they don't want to some other dealer.