Hello, I Bought Recently 2 Massive Collections With Over 4000 Stamps

As the title says I recently bought two collections from a gentleman who was selling his uncle's collection.
His uncle passed away a while ago and he was getting rid of all hi possessions.
His uncle worked his entire life at the post office and one of his collections contains roughly 2943 stamps from about 230 countries.
The second collection is a bit smaller and haven't had chance to look into it.
I do not know if sell them or not because even if I never had anything to do with post stamps these collections are astonishing and I would like to find out the value. Any advice on how to do that ? Because to take pictures of each stamp requires a lot of time and I probably won't even be able to post here all of them.
Thank you and all the best.

Welcome to the Forum, Augustin - hope you get good advice on this SCF - It would be nice to have some scans of your earlier stamps. 2943 stamps in 230 Countries is quite diluted for a WW collection but we do ot know what you have
Good luck !

Welcome
You might want to start by posting 3-4 images which you feel represents the collection. There are some folks here who will be able to give you an opinion on the scope of the collection based on those.
Don

Everything looks commonplace. The "Penny Black" looks like a photocopy. If you want to sell to another collector or online, for retail sales price, figure 5p to 10p per stamp for a price of under £300. Collections like this routinely sell on ebay for £100 to £250. Dealers, presuming you could get one interested (many will pass because they already have this material) will pay you wholesale, probably not more than £100.

Thanks for the info, my partner was looking yesterday through the collection and checking stamps online from random pages and found few of the with a guide price of around £50.
Now I need somehow to manage to take pictures from every single page so somebody can appraise it.
If there are some countries or certain stamps that are quite rare please do ask me and I will have a look.

Hi Augustin, welcome to the forum,

There'll be a lot of factors in appraising your collection. Everything you've shown here online, are used, i.e., cancelled, stamps. With very few exceptions, used stamps are usually worth a fraction of unused stamps. If you do have unused stamps, being hinged [mounted with a small gummed, glassine tabs] to the page is another factor that would detract from the value of the stamp. Although, many collectors collect nothing but used stamps — but mainly due to their accessible pricing [some collectors collect certain postmarks on the stamps]. Even mint [unused], with no hinge, stamps can vary in value due slight design variations or plate flaws, the clarity of the printing impression, centering of the image [with even sized margins on all sides], the condition of the "original" gum on the reverse side or the freshness of the paper, i.e., oxidation and other unplesantness. There's a host of factors in determining the grade of a stamp. Some factors would be difficult to determine from a photograph, ex., someone earlier mentioned your "Black Penny" looks to be a photocopy. Personally, I wouldn't judge it from an online photo, although, it does look a bit greyish, but if it is real and unused [as it appears to be] that one stamp could be worth some heavy coinage. A photocopy would be worth nil.

I bring these points up because you mentioned your partner looking at selling prices online. The condition of what is being sold may be different than what is in the collection you've acquired, for better or worse. Just some things to keep in mind. Perhaps your local library has a set of Stanley Gibbons catalogs in the reference section. Aside from median pricing, you can find information regarding how to judge the grade [condition] of your stamps.

I'm sure you've heard this before, I'll still put it out there. Any pursuit of collecting should be for a love of what is being collected. It's evident that the person who built your collection did so out of an admiration for the stamps; working in a post office probably gave him the opportunity to obtain loads of stamps from discarded envelopes. Stamps as an investment is a tricky proposal and should be pursued with some knowledge of the stamp-trade. And remember, just because it's old doesn't mean it's valuable. High values are usually due to rarity and/or a superb specimen of a given issue.

Sounds like a wonderful collection. Have some fun with it . . . good luck with the valuation.