Advice Regarding A Large Volume Of Inherited Material

Hi, I'm new to this forum.

I'm not a collector but we've inherited a large quantity of philatelic material (mostly Australian decimal) from both my mother-in-law and my mother.

It consists of mint stamps, booklets, presentation packs, postcards, envelopes, maxi cards and some albums. Almost all in excellent condition.

I've spoken with a couple of dealers who've shown little interest and said most is only good for postage at a very hefty discount to face value.

After looking around on ebay and other places it seems we can get probably 65% of face value for the stamps.

But before we break up all the packs etc. I just wanted to learn if there are any particular issues/items which I shouldn't do that with because they may be worth more than face value?

And what about the envelopes, postcards and maxi cards? How best to deal with them?

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thank you.


*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

There's some items I can think of, off the top of my head, that you should look for.

Anything to do with the 1970 Cook Bicentenary should be put aside and scanned/photographed so we can offer more advice.

The other is any packs from 1970 with Japanese text. One of these packs, the Australian Definitives issued in September 1970, without the Japanese text, is also worth looking out for.

Anything overprinted 'Specimen' might be worth grouping together and again, scan/photograph so we can help.

I sold all of my father's decimal collection 4 years ago and it contained similar material so I'm happy to help, I know what it's like to be confronted with a large amount of material. I can offer advice on how best to present it to an auction house or ebay if that's what you're thinking of doing.

sorry, not the response for this thread ??

Rene

Thanks Bobby.

Most of the material is from 1981 to 2003 so wasn't able to find any of the items you referred to.

Have looked through the topics in this forum but didn't see anything that looked like it would answer my prime question about any stamps worth more than face value.

So, much as it seems a shame, I'm going to start extracting the stamps from all those beautiful presentation packs and sorting them by face value to bundle up for sale on ebay.

Somebody may be in for a pleasant surprise if there are any worth more than face value!

It does seem a shame, but I've been doing the same with around £800-worth of GB stamps that I removed from presentation packs to put on my outgoing ebay lots. At least they're being used for their real purpose!

The maxi-cards and postcards (postal cards?) will be a tough sell. Envelopes almost as tough.

Opinion,
I think you are approaching it incorrectly.
Presentation packs will get you better value.