Bulk Old Covers

Where can you buy bulk old stamped covers (envelopes)? I see them from time to time for sale on ebay. What I'm trying to find out is where do the sellers get them from?

The ebay sellers are buying their bulk cover lots on ebay.

Okay, just kidding.

You can find bulk lots of covers at the auctions.

http://stampauctionnetwork.com/auctions.cfm ... will get you started

However, don't expect to find 'unpicked' 'unexamined' etc lots.

Bulk lots are like that Xmas fruit cake that just keeps getting passed around.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

mcalla -

I doubt if many resellers would reveal their sources for bulk lots of covers, for obvious reasons. Possible wholesale sources include auctions (best to preview lots in person), estate sales, estate appraisals, advertising to buy collections and accumulations, ebay (auctions are best here) and etc.

I would say most collectors would always like to buy wholesale, but the problem is you have to develop your own sources, your own contacts, to see what works for you (for example, take what you want for your collection, sell the rest, and finance your collection that way).

John

I guess what I should be asking is where do these covers come from that auctions get?

What kind of "old covers" are you looking for? Just ordinary everyday mail or covers from a specific time period, or covers with advertising on them....etc.

I get covers from two places..... businesses that get a lot of mail and are willing to support stamp collectors and "famous people" fan clubs. In my home town Bobby Vee would give our stamp club all his fan mail envelopes. We were absolutely swamped.

So check out "fan clubs" (there must be 1,000s of them) and see if they will give you covers. (Of course the Bobby Vee fan club was in town, so getting the envelops to the stamp club was free and easy.)

I've got boxes of envelops if you want some.

ikey, expect a surprisingly heavy box from for Christmas!

The above suggestions are all great! Wish I had this kind of access to businesses and fan clubs, but alas it is one of the downfalls of living in a small town :(

I'm talking about the pre 1940 stuff. Where is the source of these? Where do they get the 1800 and early 1900's covers or have they just been passed around for the past 125 years. How did these covers survive? I'm 73 and when I was 13 I started to collect stamps and would take the stamps off of the envelopes. Just started back to collecting after 50 years away from it, but all of that time I always cut the stamps off of the envelopes and put them in a box for some day to get back to collecting.

They come from peoples collections. They come from the store room of some old business where they sat undisturbed for years. They come from a dealer that went out of business. They come from great grandpas attic. and so on...

Hi mcalla see my ebay lots if you want a source to get covers from pre1940 I list them back to 1600s but each week is different so you have to keep watching my ebay shop. There are many sources to get these covers and there are hundreds in circulation in the collecting world. Some sources are deceased estates, stamp shows, big auction lots, buying direct from collectors who are selling, finding agents, online websites even ebay etc but no seller will give you their supply chain in full detail. Pre1940 covers is a very popular collecting area I seem to never run out of bidders.

99 percent of them are recycled from collectors and dealers, passed around and around and around, resold and resold and resold. In this process the covers get picked over dozens or hundreds of times so you will not find anything of obvious commercial value. The other 1 percent come from places that others have mentioned such as the attics or basements of old houses, from old businesses that have never cleaned out their files, and from garbage dumpsters where people who are cleaning out their attics and basements and old business files dump them. The problem with trying to find such newly discovered caches is they are very, very few and far between. You can go to a thousand garage sales and ask the people selling their junk if they might have any old covers and maybe once every 10 years you might get someone to say they do have such things to sell to you. Perhaps a better method would be to make up a flyer or business card that you can give to any guys who specialize in cleaning out people's attics and basements or selling off the contents of old homes after the people die or whatever and say that you are looking to buy old covers. You will need to let them know that you will pay a reasonable price for their taking the time to notice whether there are such covers and for their time to put it aside and let you know to come pick it up, and you will need to buy everything they find including the completely valueless newer trash or they will not bother with you.

I've only seen a few dealers on ebay that sell decent bulk cover lots and the bidding wars for them can be very fierce. I know of one German dealer who regularly sells large bulk lots and some will jump in price $500-$1000 or more in the last second on top of the previous bid. I sell primarily covers on ebay, but rarely ever buy from there. Like others have mentioned, bulk lots are easier to find via the larger stamp auction houses, certain dealers at stamp shows, estate sales and occasionally even antique stores.

As Kimo mentioned above, it is hard to find something of obvious value like a Penny Black on cover in a bulk lot, but dealers do miss a lot and large auction lots are usually woefully underrepresented in auction descriptions and may not even include pictures. It would be nice to be there in person for the auctions, but unless you have the means or close by sometimes you have to take chance. I've had some mediocre buys, but have always been able to turn them around and I've found some real nice items that I resold for several times over the purchase of the whole lot. Aside from bulk lots, I do cherry pick items from dealers at shows and antique stores. The latter tend to be fairly clueless and usually will overprice common items, but they also will grossly underprice very expensive items as they don't know much about stamps, postmarks and usually anything foreign. Dealers at stamp shows will pick out anything obvious, but there's still a lot to be found as no dealer knows everything and some have literally hundreds of thousands of covers or even more. Dealers sometimes will let covers sell for a small fraction of their worth if it's something outside of their expertise or they missed some little detail like the postmark, the sender, the receiver, other postal marks and labels, how the stamps are used (strips, blocks, solo, etc.), contents, etc. Dealer's perception of damaged covers vary too - some will not add a cover they perceive as too damaged to their better stock and will put it into their $1 box instead. Some of those covers definitely belong there, some are even worst, but others are still worth quite a bit more due to other factors listed above or it's hard to find that cover in any condition depending how unique it may be. I also find that items change in value depending on the market. A Singapore cover might languish in a dollar box at a small show in New York, but worth $10-$100 on ebay because it will be noticed by the collectors in Singapore and many other collectors of British Commonwealth in Asia.

Getting back to auction houses - http://dutchcountryauctions.com/ It's a good start. They usually have quite a few large cover lots in their auctions, but expect competition.

They come from peoples collections. They come from the store room of some old business where they sat undisturbed for years. They come from a dealer that went out of business. They come from great grandpas attic. and so on...
It's really like any other Ephemera. Don't you think?

I think that's what you were asking...no?

Thank you all for your help. I now know what I have to do. Thanks again.

mcalla

I can get you as many as you want. They would be world covers but they will be heavily weighted with Australia and NZ.

However they could be sorted into US only or US part world if thats what you are looking for

Let me know ASAP - I will be at an auction in the next 24 hrs

Hi Bas S Warwick I would be interested in pre 1880 USA covers stamped or stampless and early pre 1920 Asian covers. Send me a message if you can get these fairly cheaply for me from auction houses. Cheers