Does Expertizing Mean It's Valuable? Cat. #139

I have an inherited collection. US 1850 to Curr and British Commonwealth 1850 - Curr. 10 full albums.

One stamp in the collection has been expertized. Does this mean it is valuable?

cat. No. 139 1870 .10 brown color

Please advise what I do with this if anything.

Hi smiledr and welcome to this forum. Yes, generally an expertized stamp is valuable. What to do with it is totally up to you. One idea could be to take up collecting, since you have ten albums - that is a good start of a great hobby!

Peter

Stamp collecting is not for me. I do not have the patience. Any Idea what this stamp might be worth or where I could go about finding that information on -line. I live in a rural area no stamp clubs and very small library.

Well, it is a Scott 139 according to the certificate. I found a few on ebay and they are asking $400.00. Not quite enough to retire on but you could contact an auction house like Kelleher and see if they are interested. If you have all ten albums available there ought to be something there!

Peter

Yes you may have quite a nice collection. Contact an expert auction house. I think you can request or arrange for appraisal using the APS website.

The issue is not the certified stamp you show but what is encompassed in the 10 completely filled albums that you mention. It is curious that considering you are talking about US and Beitish commonwealth stamps essentially from the beginning that this #139 would be the solitary expertized item. I do not immediately assume nonetheless that this is the most valuable item in the collection. Why don't you post a few pages of the early stamps in the collection--i.e., pre 1900

The 2017 Scott catalog values #139 at $850, but as Petert4522 indicated, undamaged stamps of this era commonly sell for only 20 to 50 percent of catalog value.

I agree with funcitypapa's suggestion for you to show more stamps from the collection, preferably the earliest stamps. I would suggest pre-1890.

I wouldn't send them to an auction house until you get a fair sense of the value of the collection as a whole. There are plenty of friendly and knowledgeable collectors here that can help you do that.

He has pics in this SCF link.

https://goscf.com/t/58210

So, I didn't realize that the link pointed out by rodgcam referred to the collection mentioned in this thread. If that is the case, then my response is a little different.. I would not have described the stamps in the link as complete US and British from 1850-current. What is shown is very much a mixed bag: used/ unused/ damaged/ perfinned high value admiral etc. the Scott 67 with the CDS looks nice if sound it could be worth a couple of hundred. The Scott 69 looks too narrow to me and I would wonder about reperfing on one or both sides. Under these circumstances, the Scott 139 might indeed be the bell weather of the group.