Bit Overwhelmed And Looking On Help To Being Going Through Inherited Collection

HI everyone,

My grandfather passed and just now going through his stuff and I have a stamp collection that is international and from the 1800's through the 1980's. My current guess is he had around 50k stamps overall.

I've started to go through them just to see how he "categorized" them but he didn't use a coherent system I can understand. Have been randomly googling stamps but then put them back in their envelope and move on to the next one.

Looking for some advice (notice there are multiple stamps from same year depending on perforation, etc.) on how to begin to catalogue the collection so I can see what exactly he had.

Thank you in advance, I greatly appreciate the help!

Cheers,

Jimmy

Hi mate and welcome!
first thing I did was go to Stampworld.com to sort out the types of stamps and countries into years, then I joined some forums like this one, and got myself a catalogue as I wanted to build on the collection.
If you want to sell them, go to a reputable auctionhouse or stampdealer who will give you a realistic price and save all the hassles of trying to sell yourself on ebay!
If you do want to go the ebay path, search your items by sold price, not what some loony is asking for the same, as I have seen 20c stamps listed for 2 or 3 hundred dollars!
First thing to do though is get an idea of exactly what stamps you have, people here will be happy to help, just post up a good quality scan or picture.

Cheers
Laurie

Welcome!

What is your intention? If it is to sell, you probably should contact a dealer if you plan no interest. With the number I doubt you will want to spend that much time organizing them. I suspect the majority will be common. You can post some pics of samples of the older ones.

Now, if you want to continue or maintain the collection, you will need to get more information (like a Scott catalogue) and decide how to organize. Most do it by country in more or less chronological order.

Jimmy, Look around some more, Granddad probably had some sort of catalogue which would help you understand how he organized his collection. Which may have been by country name as he knew them, lots of which have changed in the last 50 years or so.

This is the line that makes me think we have fairly common stamps, maybe grouped by country or by topicals (birds, Disney, etc.). More than likely very common stamps. As Angore suggested, post some pictures (scans) of the oldest ones and we can comment. There may be some winners in there. Good luck and welcome to the forum.

You may also be able to get some help from a local stamp club.

For advice on value or selling.

http://www.aldrichstamps.com/index.php?id=61

Just started going through his older ones. There was no rhyme or reason to how he categorized them except for some of the older ones, he had in separate church envelopes. Just took a bunch of photos (man, it's hard to photograph stamps! haha) and once I figure out how to add the photos here, I'll upload them. He also has a ton of older stamps from all over the world from the 60's/70's (Thailand, Cambodia, China, Kuwait, etc.) Think I'll just try to worry about the US ones for now.

Thank you to everyone for the advice. Figure I am going to try to go through as many as I can as I just don't trust dealers in any way. Thanks again to all!

1

These are just some of the photos I took. There are no duplicate photos, he just had that many of some of the same stamps. Can post more photos if anyone wants to see.
Cheers, Jimmy

Unfortunately, nothing much of value so far. (A few cents, at most, per stamp.). You may have some interesting cancels in there. Keep looking.

Rest of the photos.

Thank you Partime for taking the time to look, I truly appreciate it!

Still all common stamps. Value of a few pennies each.

While nice scans, I agree with those above...find a stamp club and donate them..good luck!

Those are nice stamps. If you want, you can call up Mystic Stamp Company. They are fair and you can most definetely trust them.