Stamps From A Recent Great Britain Purchase

I finally totaled everything up. There were about 1340 stamps in the two albums. All mint starting at Great Britain 111. Earlier items were Used, but actually very good condition with very good centering in most cases.

Per my computer, Scott Catalog value of $18,567.25.

Purchase price: $52.50

I'm pretty happy! I'll probably be selling a few to improve my Australian and Canadian collections.

Brilliant Partime

I'm going to ask, and I completely respect your wishes if you don't want to answer, but was this an online purchase or was it elsewhere?

An ebay purchase. Just lucky. The seller was just selling the albums and didn't know about the stamps. I don't expect another like this in my lifetime.

Thanks for being so candid Partime - what a bargain, that's the best ebay purchase story I've ever heard about!

Yes, that type of deal only comes around once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, it was probably someone who inherited some stamp books, and just wanted to get rid of them. The albums themselves were worth the price. I asked her if she had more countries. Nope!

I've not got to find a good auction house that deals with Great Britain. For some stamps, I should be able to get close to Scott Catalog, maybe.

I wonder if Spink would be worth investigating?

They surely would have an office in the USA that could get the stamps to the UK, which would be the best market surely?

You could contact a GB auction house - I suppose the £1 seahorse and the £1 PUC would make around £400 each - but you could doubtless get that in the US too.

Thanks. I'll keep an eye open in the States and go from there.

Partime, one might consider this abargain of a lifetime. Congratulations on the find! Thanks for posting, some very lovely pieces there.

I can't match that for sheer value to cost ratio, but about 5 years ago I made a great purchase on that got me back into stamp collecting after a several year hiatus, and into collecting Great Britain in particular. It was a collection from 1840 to about 2010 and was better than 95% complete, with, among the major, face-different stamps (ie ignoring watermark differences) all of the QV and KGV complete except for seven: the QV long brown 1 pound, the 1880 two shilling brown, the 1882-3 10 shilling, one pound brown-lilac and five pound orange, and the one pound KGV seahorses and one pound PUC. In the rest of the collection there were the odd missing things like a few of the 1960's commemorative phosphors, some Machins, some of the regional issues and about half of the postage dues. QEII commems were complete and mint NH from about 1970 onwards. The whole thing cost me $2000 plus about $30 shipping. They were housed in 5 hingeless Schaubek albums complete with slipcses, and, since the albums with pages and everything alone would have cost me around $1400, and with probably $500-$600 in face value in mint QEII, I figure everything else was pretty much free. I've since then filled in most of those empty spaces, and then some.

I can't match that for sheer value to cost ratio, but about 5 years ago I made a great purchase one that got me back into stamp collecting after a several year hiatus, and into collecting Great Britain in particular. It was a collection from 1840 to about 2010 and was better than 95% complete, with, among the major, face-different stamps (ie ignoring watermark differences) all of the QV and KGV complete except for seven: the QV long brown 1 pound, the 1880 two shilling brown, the 1882-3 10 shilling, one pound brown-lilac and five pound orange, and the one pound KGV seahorses and one pound PUC. In the rest of the collection there were the odd missing things like a few of the 1960's commemorative phosphors, some Machins, some of the regional issues and about half of the postage dues. QEII commems were complete and mint NH from about 1970 onwards. The whole thing cost me $2000 plus about $30 shipping. They were housed in 5 hingeless Schaubek albums complete with slipcses, and, since the albums with pages and everything alone would have cost me around $1400, and with probably $500-$600 in face value in mint QEII, I figure everything else was pretty much free. I've since then filled in most of those empty spaces, and then some.

Wow. Very good. Can you post a picture of the higher catalog values items? Love to see them.