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

Forget selling this lot on ebay, if you do ebay auctions items will sell very low. Because most people wait till the end of the auction to get it at the lowest possible price. Or someone will snipe it at a low price. The market has been down on ebay. If your in America you will maybe end up using the global ship program which is enough to scare of international buyers. Also another downfall with ebay is paypal as buyer can claim not received after 175 days and get their money back. Big auction houses don't take paypal and for good reason. I just have the latest HR HARMER auction catalog, price estimates way above anything you will sell items for on ebay. Big auction houses have folks walking in the door and inspecting every item. You could at least send all the American covers & stamps to an auction house and see what happens. I spotted at least one CSA cover in your image so there maybe others in the lot from 19th century and other covers like Zep covers that people want. I have seen some of the covers I sold on ebay in auction catalogs later down the track going for at least 5 times what I sold it for in the first place on the bay.

Hi again,
I stand by my recommendations for dividing the lot into groupings and selling on ebay. But there are some ifs/ands/buts I should have mentioned..........
- does the owner have the time/inclination/ability to do the work involved in listing and follow ups?
- how badly does the owner need the money? He may realize (I.E.) $2k from all of it, and to some that is a huge amount and worth the effort of selling on ebay. But to others, it is just not worth it.
- timing and presentation is everything when selling on ebay. Doing it right is a job, but the rewards tend to be higher.

Whut Ikey said.

Going back to my message which seems nobody read . ----GET A EXPERT TO LOOK AT IT AND TELL YOU WHAT YOU GOT ----it is so hard to pay a outside party and get a honest opinion of value .

Yes floortrader is correct the whole lot should be valued by an expert or even two different experts. I still say not a good idea to selling that accumulation all on ebay unless the original poster has a lot of free time to list everything and deal with all the sales one by one. So get it valued, break it up into groups, send to auction houses.

Based on what I see so far, no "big name" house will be interested, nor will any dealer. Everything you've shown so far is slow-moving, lower value stuff. The economics don't add up - it's dozens (or hundreds, if offered individually) hours of work to extract what, $100's? Maybe low $1,000's? Dealers (by necessity) have to value their time at more than that. IMO, there will be little interest (at any price); any offers will be calculated "very" conservatively. I'd suggest contacting a couple mid-range auction houses to see if they'd even consider running it (they might, but don't be surprised if they estimate the whole thing at a couple $100's.)

I might suggest you consider charitable donation (tax write-off.)

I work with estates pretty frequently (I've been full-time dealer for 18+ years & buy a collection every 2-3 days on average.) Many of those collections look exactly like this. When dealer after dealer politely "passes," and auction house after auction house tells them it's not valuable enough to reach their minimum consignment, and they think hard about what's required to sell it themselves (hours, effort, learning curve, etc.,) the idea of promoting the hobby in memory of the deceased, minimizing their work and "being done with it," and gaining the potential tax advantage, often is seen as the best possible outcome. Just something to consider...

A few kind words about tax write-offs.

The write-off is only of use if you itemize deductions. People with mortgages & significant continuing medical expenses usually itemize; other people (eg healthy renters) often do not.

The greater the value claimed, the greater the documentation (eg, expert evaluation/offer, in writing) you are going to need. If you have photos of cartoons of philatelic material, and ask for a few tens of dollars per box, you are probably safe. But to claim any 'real' money, you're gonna need more than your own guess.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

IkeyPikey is 100% correct. Obviously depends on your tax situation & yes, you need to itemize if you're going to take a charitable deduction. Speak with a tax professional if this might be of interest.

Still, it's perfectly legitimate, offers potential benefits on several different levels, and I find that a pretty high percentage of stamp collectors do indeed itemize -- they may or may not have a mortgage, but "many" have property/state/local/sales taxes, medical deductions & other charitable contributions that exceed the standard deduction. In fact, the more common problem I run into is that they're "too" wealthy (i.e. subject to AMT) and the Schedule A deductions are limited.

Individual charity-giving as a tax dodge? This must be America! Here the bin-bag's dumped at the charity shop on a no-strings basis. Unless it's one of the days when they reward your trek up the hill with a "Sorry, we're not accepting donations at the moment".

"But to claim any 'real' money, you're gonna need more than your own guess."

Definitely. I believe the current threshold is $5,000 before a written appraisal is required, however I usually recommend written appraisals for donations of less than that. It's a common area for the IRS to audit.

Yes, that's correct. The APS in-kind donations page at, http://stamps.org/Inkind-Gifts, has this information about valuation:

I'm just now reading this thread and agree with Floortrader. Hungary for Stamps also gave a good reference. The APS has a volunteer appraisal service, which is where I agree that you need to start. Forget about the commentary to split things up, list on ebay, etc. In my humble opinion, that is a waste of time until you know exactly what you have.

If the APS does not have a volunteer near you, then by all means pay a dealer something to spend a few hours reviewing your material. Another option is that there are a number of philatelic libraries scattered throughout the country; most are volunteer operated and will likely have members who can assist you.

I had a similar problem about a year ago. Since then, I have made three trips to the local Auction House and I have more to go. The first thing I did was take the stamps that I really like and separated them out. All the other stamps are in my stamp room. This is where I do my stamping so putting these stamps here lets me focus on them.

I have organized 10,000's of stamps into albums and stockbooks and placed them into boxes.

The Auction House has three Sales each year. Two months before each Sale, I take whatever is in the boxes and take them down to enter them into the next Sale. They give me a general estimate for Insurance purposes. I provide a list of what's in each album. They separate what I have into Lots and I attend part of the Sale to see how I do. A couple of months after the sale they send me a check.

Sometimes I think that I might get more on ebay or it costs less to sell on ebay. But I'm not sure that's true. And it's a lot of work to sell on ebay. Selling at auction is much easier. Even though it costs a little more, I think they attract a slightly higher bid. Hopefully, the stamps will continue to sell until I run out of stuff.

100% agree which is what I have been saying all along. ebay is a lot of hard work and likely less profit than auction house. Unless your planning to be a dealer on ebay full time send them in groups to auctions houses and slowly clear the lot. They give you estimates each time you take some in to their auction house. Otherwise a lot of items are going to sell on ebay at 99 cents each just to much hard work

Lot of variables on this topic..........

I am very pro ebay - recognizing it is work, but with proper packaging/grouping and verbiage and timing, you will do good.

If one lived in Chicago, NY, Philly, Boston or the like, you might do well at an auction house.

HOWEVER, I (for example) live just north of Houston Texas. I have yet to know of any stamps up for auction down here. In fact, after living here for 34 years, I have yet to know of another collector. So an auction house is just not very workable here for that purpose.

Ha, I also have a sizeable collection of postwar Lionel toy trains. Up north, particularly from Chicago east to NY, this is still a somewhat popular hobby. Down here, it really never was.

It was suggested that the OP get an expert or two to look at his holdings. I heartily agree with that. I didn't mention it in my earlier posts as I "assumed" the OP had a fair recognition of what was worthy.

Gotta close by saying, I don't believe there is a definitive best answer to the OP's situation. But I would definitely pursue all the suggestions made in this thread.