Question About The Value Of US First Day Covers From The 1950's And 1960's.

I inherited about 100 U.S. first day covers from the 1950's and 1960's.

These are the produced covers with artwork and the stamp with a First Day of Issue marking on them.

From looking at a few sales prices on ebay, it appears they are close to worthless, but I just wanted to see if maybe there is a better place than ebay to sell them.

Also, assuming they have minimal value, should I consider bundling them into yearly groups for sale?

Thanks for any suggestions.

First day covers of this era are very nice and fun to collect. The question you are asking, though, is what might they sell for and the answer is that you are correct - with very few exceptions these bring very little money when selling them. The reason is they were made in very large quantities and there is no longer a matching number of collectors there once were for these.

My suggestion might be to bundle them in groups of 50 or maybe 25 and auction them as lots with a starting bid of $1 to ensure you will get at least some bids. Also, decide how to mail them to the winner in the least expensive way possible and do not try to make money for 'handling' or other ways to puff up the shipping cost. In your photos, make sure each cover is seen in full so the bidders can decide about condition, which company's cachets are present, whether they are addressed, etc. Or, perhaps the better option is to keep them and make them the core of your own collection of first day covers and take advantage of the low prices to build a collection for the fun of it. Collecting these can be an iunexpensive hobby.

Thanks for the advice. That confirms what I expected.

I buy British Colony collections and break them down for my collection and sale from my website. I donate the unsaleable items to the APS, or local stamp clubs.

It looks like these covers might get the same fate.

Donate. Faster, easier, and more rewarding than trying to monetize them.

I was wondering if your collection contained First Day Covers of this nature/style.





or, this style