Great Luck And Horror Story.

This is a story I just had to tell other stamp collectors who can feel and joy and pain.
First the Good. I recently bought two huge lots locally through Craig's List. The first was a woman's life time collection; started in the late 40's and was in 7 boxes about the size of a Xerox box but a little taller. Each was stuffed full of binders, packets, FDCs etc. The second lot was part of a collection and was in a 55-gallon tub and two 30-gallon tubs, again stuffed. Both are loaded with good material although I have just barely scratched the surface as I organize it. This will give me something to do for a month of Sundays. About half is Foreign which I do not collect so I will organize and sell or trade for US materials. Both lots came to less than $500.
Now for the horror story. The second lot was from a guy that works for a company that clears out old houses for banks, real estate investors, new owners, etc. This guy got there late and those three tubs were all me managed to save. The home owner had died. There were 2 bedrooms stuffed full of stamp "stuff" as he put it. The guy I bought from said he didn't even get 1/16th of what was there. The rest, and this is the part that will hurt... The rest went to the DUMP. This outfit dumps everything in a house they clear out in the landfill. Occasionally, the employees manage to save a little but I get the impression that it's really frowned upon and they make it miserable for them.
I found out about all this more than a month after the fact or I'd be out at the dump now. From the sheer volume and my observations, he must have been a dealer. There are several names on things and I'm not sure what his name was but I would have loved to get the entire haul.
I talked to the company and told them if they find anything like that again, even if it's much smaller. I promised that I would not impact their schedule but would be there to make them a deal and haul it. They said they will so only time will tell.
My heart is still on the floor when I think about it. Considering the amount of material we're talking about its mind boggling to think about what might have been there. I have seen some very nice items in the fraction that I managed to get.





Jeff

Thanks for the interesting post.
It is sad to hear about the stuff that was taken to the dump.
This happens more than we know.

I know fewer people collect stamps these days, but wouldn't you think people would know enough to consider that there might have been some value to this stuff? I wonder if they'd have done the same thing with an accumulation of numismatic material?

Maybe I'm wrong. My son is in his twenties and has mentioned in passing to some people his age where he works that his dad collects stamps. Usually he gets blank looks. It's like the majority of Millennials aren't even aware people like us exist. Tragic.

I'd be interested to see some of the items you found in there.

This is why people with significant holdings need both a will and a good executor to carry it out.

Aaargh! Blues fans, if there are any here, will be aware of a couple of stories about the Paramount label, which issued some of the finest - and now rarest - 78s, by Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James and many more, often not pressed to the highest standards.

The first was retailed by the (frankly odd) US collector, Joe Bussard, in the liner notes to the Down in the Basement CD. In the 1960s, a collector visited the house of Winston Holmes, formerly of Paramount, in St Louis. Holmes was out, but the collector found boxes and boxes of unplayed Paramount 78s - bear in mind that some of these exist now in only one, battered copy. Ill-advisedly, the collector returned to New York. On revisiting St Louis. few months later, he was told that Holmes had died, and that the records that filled whole rooms had been taken to the dump.

The second, which has a happy ending, concerns two Wisconsin journalists who, in the 1980s, noticed a pile of material being dumped by a newspaper. This proved to consist of Paramount artwork and promotional material from the 1920s. After being rescued, it ended up being used in the annual calendars/CDs published by Blues Images.

Always let people know you collect stamps, yea you hear weird comments but I have gotten collections free just by letting people know I collect. Last year I received 4 boxes from a co-worked whose grandpa collected and he knew I did so I got them for free otherwise they would have been trashed. It is unfortunate but people don't know what to do with old stamps if someone passes away.

txstamp: I'll see if I can post some photos in a couple days.

The reasonable and smart thing for us collectors to do is to specify where the stamps go, in our estate planning documents. My collections and modest library are all scheduled in my will and will go, in entirety, to a philatelic library. I would have done this regardless, but my attorney/executor made sure I covered the collections.

Sorry I don't believe a lot of these "gone to the dump stories " The people who own these house cleaning services are not stupid . They charge a good fee and everything goes into the dumpster and hauled away .

But it is haul to their own yard and then inspected and sold to resellers for cash . Their selling is strictly for cash and I do mean fast cash . What do you think ,they tell the I.R.S. they make $800.00 cleanup a house but don't say anything about the quick $800.00 made on the resell of the stuff . What the resellers don't want goes to the dump .

Floortrader... Donno... Maybe this outfit is that dumb. I talked to one of the guys that took them to the dump and they use straight trucks for everything. They don't rent roll-off dumpsters (maybe they're too cheap?). He said the owners were only interested in grandfather and mantle clocks everything else gets tossed. I saw their shop, very little in it for as busy as they are. If he had more, I have no doubt I would have seen them as he was thrilled to sell what he had.

Jeff

it is also possible what was junked was really junky - the guy could have been a hoarder that either mostly were tons of beginners albums and common kiloware, or he could have had ok stuff they he didn't take care of

or it could have been decent stuff

Can't be sure. He might have been and I have no idea what else was there. But from the portion that I got, it all seems to be organized and well cared for. At least this stuff is not junkie nor is it bottom end of the catalogs. Real mixture value wise so far but I've barely scratched the surface. On a quick rooting I don't see any "place holder" stamps. Well organized hoarder is a possibility but I'm leaning toward dealer. We'll more than likely never know unless I can find something that IDs him.

Jeff

Eyeonwall -- Just go to your local auction and you'll see that most non-stamp folk can't tell the difference between junk and good stuff. Their idea of a great collection is a carton full of modern FDCs. Even the stamp guy at my local auction, who prices any such lots up, is pretty clueless once he gets outside classic GB and Commonwealth.
So the idea that junk merchants would be stamp experts -- well, I'm sure there are exceptions.

On the other hand you get all kinds of shysters on ebay pretending they found stuff in an attic and know nothing about stamps, and just 'accidentally' face their giant lot with the only 12 pages that are worth anything...

I used to be like floortrader when it came to stories of stamps being thrown away. Not any more...

I think I relayed this story in another thread, so I'll just briefly revisit it here, as it is relevant to the topic.

I'm the President of the local stamp club, and as such, my number is out there in a newspaper article from a few years ago. It also shows up on an internet search in this area, so I get calls from people fairly frequently who have inherited a collection and don't know what to do with it.

I received a call like that a few years back and this is what the lady left on my messages "I don't know anyone who still collects this stuff, and I don't know if you might be interested in these old stamps. I guess I'm just looking for permission to throw them away. I guess if I don't hear back from you by Saturday, I'll just throw them in the dumpster..."

Most people would say trashcan, so that got my attention. I called her back shortly after she had called and arranged to meet with her that Saturday. When I got there she had a huge box filled with stamps, mint and used, and a banker's box stuffed with albums standing up.

I offered to take a look and advise her on what she had. Her response was to pull the top off the big box, grab a gallon size baggie filled with mint U.S. and tell me "I know what I've got and I don't want it." I tried to tell her she could still use the stamps and she got miffed, saying she did have any envelopes big enough to fit that many stamps on it. I asked her again what she would like me to do. Her response "Open the door and your car so I can get rid of these once and for all." If you don't want them, they are going in the dumpster today."

Needless to say, I opened the door...

It took the club and myself over a year to go through all that stuff. There were complete albums of Coronation and Jubilee issues, a Scott National which stopped in 1947 and an almost complete run of Staehle FDC's, just to name some of the material in there. There were also over 1,000 glassines with worldwide stamps, none of them after 1940...

If I had not returned that call, all that material would have gone into the dumpster.

All I can say is WOW. These are stories that are indeed horror stories when you hear that collections have been dumped like these. Then again, I wouldn't mind being on the receiving end of some of these unwanted horror stories.

Sometimes it works the other way. In my record-selling days, we sent a large quantity of duplicated, dross 45s to the local authority dump. Imagine our delight when, a week or so later, a couple of teenagers lumbered into the shop clutching heaps of ... guess what?