Greetings From The CCF Coin Side!

So I was picking up a group of coins from one of the pawn shops I deal with. The owner comes in and asks me If I like stamps and pulls out a box full of stamp albums.

There were about 14 albums with no labels on the front covers expect 1. I also found 4 graded stamps in plastic bags with grade and value information on them. They looked old and a couple of them have a value of $20.

He had been sitting on them for 2 years. They all came from the same customer who pawned and lost them 2 years ago. I was pretty intimidated buy shear amount of them. Their world stamps, US, some I remember being from Newfoundland. Many of them looked old and I remember one of the albums was from 18 something to the early 1900's.
Just to see where he was at I threw out number and offered $100 for all of them. He sort of balked and said he had more into them than that.

So what are your opinions on deals like these? Ever have any luck with them? I have no experience with stamps.

Welcome coin forum 'brother'.
Many stamps, even very old ones, were printed in the millions (or even billions). And unlike coins, they are just pieces of paper with no metallurgy value.

Trying to place a value on what you describe is difficult; entire albums might be full of stamps worth 1 cent each or there might be single stamp with very high value. $100 sounded like a good place to start since the risk was pretty minimal. Going higher than $20 per album would make me a bit uneasy if I had no idea about the stamps.
This is just my opinion, other folks might have different opinions.
Don

Thanks for the reply! I could go back in and take pictures and upload them here if you guys are willing to take a look. It would take a long time but I'm off today.

Having 10-15 representative images would go a long way in helping understanding the value.
Don

Edit; Since you already have the 'collector' gene, you might consider picking this up as a new hobby! Philately offers an incredible diversity of collecting opportunities. Some folks collect by country, some folks collect 'topical' (i.e. ships on stamps, etc.), some folks collect postal history. The potential areas of interest are endless.

Ok so I went back and snapped these real quick. If any album had any identifiable labels I just took a pic of the label not the stamps. Albums with no label I just took a couple snaps of the first 1-4 pages. I also took pics of the coins that were individually holdered.

Very nice, this appears to be a significant collection worth far more then $100. In my opinion it is probably even north of a few hundred dollars (like coins, condition is everything). You might try to feel the fellow out on what he wants for it and go from there. I am sure other will weight in here with their value opinions.
Don

The old fella that owns the pawn shop is the one who pulled these out. I asked how much he wanted for them but he wouldn't give me a number. That's when I offered $100. Seems a little bizarre that a pawn shop wouldn't place a price on an item. He only wants offers.

Based upon the scans I would easily pay $300 and more if I examined it in person. As Don stated condition is everything but there are Admiral booklet panes, imperf horizontal coil pairs, dollar value commemoratives, earlies to be checked from Canada and Provinces along with worthwile BoB. Even if Canada is the strongest portion it is worth $300 when you factor in the additional material in the other albums. If any of the higher value items turn out to be MNH you will have made a great score but you should do well in any case.

I like that Canada & provinces collection - some good condition material. See the Jubilee label in the pics, but perhaps the stamps themselves have been removed?

...ummmmmmmm......where exactly is this pawn shop?

I took pictures of any identifying markets but I don't recall if there were stamps underneath that post-it note.

The other thing you have to take into consideration is that some of the blank albums were NOT completely full. Some only had the first 3 or 4 pages full.

I'm going back up there tomorrow to purchase some notes that are coming out of pawn.

This time I'm going to:

-Open the 'The Heritage collection of united states revenue stamps album' and see how full it is and maybe snap some pics.
-open the 'civil war postal issues of the Russian revolution' album, maybe snap some pics and see how full that album is.
-open the 'latin America & Caribbean' album and do the same.
-open the 'peace and victory complete british omnibus issue album' and do the same.

My guy was rolling his eyes at the owner when he spoke, and threw his hands up when I asked what the owner would take for them. So he sounds like pain in the you know what to deal with.

I've been skimming through ebay to get a better understanding of what stamps sell for. It seems like the high dollar examples from the states have a certain look with Washington or another president's portrait on them. I also read up on stamp collecting to get a general overview.

I'll update tomorrow and thanks for all the help fellas! Glad to see the stamp side is just as helpful and friendly as the coin side.

Best!
-Mike

Mike,
Be cautious, there are many varieties of the US Washington/Franklins stamps, it is very unusual to stumble across the rare ones. The original owner, while assembling some promising looking stamps, also purchased from Mystic. While Mystic is a well-known and long standing dealer, they are also well known for asking the very top dollar and often are used by folks first getting started in the hobby. I am not saying that this is a red warning flag, but might be used a negotiate with the shop owner. The pawn might have been somewhat based upon an over-valuation of what was originally paid from Mystic.
Bottom line here is that while this looks worth taking a shot on, there are many potential pitfalls which could lead in over-paying until someone goes through each album carefully. Time is money. Neither you nor the shop owner has a lot of experience so it will take even more time.
Don

Ok thanks and will do.

You do have some value there in the Canadian stamps as well

If that lot were listed by Kelleher or Rasdale with a few photos of the Canada stamps and a short paragraph write up it would fetch hundreds of dollars all day long. Let me in coach.

Hi, just curious. You're not a stamp collector so are you planning to buy these for resale or are you planning to start collecting?