Auction Catalogs - Siegel, Kelleher, Cherrystone, Harmer, Regency Etc.

I am in the process of disposing of my U.S. stamp collection, with almost all of the better material being bought at auction with the usual houses. Once the process is complete, I plan to also dispose of the auction catalogs from these houses accumulated over the last 7-8 years. Would anyone have any suggestions on what to do with them, other than to place them in my recycle bin? I assume that the APS already has copies of these. Thanks.

Worth sticking on ebay - I sometimes pick up catalogues of French material there. Not at the £10 a lot of UK sellers (don't) sell at, though!

I buy Auction Catalogues, when affordable.
As Geoff indicates, price them right, and they will fly off the shelf.

Or if you want, offer them here first. Perhaps indicate roughly where you live, and somebody reasonably local might want to just pick them up, since they're a high weight/value item.

It wouldn't hurt to run your inventory through the APRL to see if they need a missing or replacement issue here or there.

Being a long day's drive from Bellefonte, I collect philatelic literature including runs of these houses too. Not all of them have online archives. The challenge in selling them (even the name-sales) is the cost of shipping, which typically exceeds the retail value. To get much return, they need to be local pick-up.

As an example, I have 2 and a half paper cases containing duplicates of about 100 Robert A Siegel sales between numbers 880-1126. They are printed on dense paper and they are HEAVY! The shipping is more than these are worth. I would be happy to have $100 for them, but couldn't ship them.



They need to go away, but I won't dump them at a recycler. I will probably take them to the free literature table at a show instead.

Oracle, sorry to hear you are going to sell your nice collection. How do you intend to sell your US stamps? Auction house? Dealer? Private sale? Online venue? Other?

One can ship a 25 pound box of catalogs for about $16, media mail, anywhere in the US

Consider donating to one of the regional philatelic libraries. The Rocky Mountain Philatelic Library is in Denver. Western Philatelic Library is between San Francisco and San Jose. The quarterly APRL journal gives reports from other libraries.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I had been keeping them for reference w/r to the procurement history for my own stamps as well as for seeing what other stamps had been on sale when. I will check with the various philatelic libraries to see if there are any that would be helpful for them. I have just had concerns about going to the trouble of selling them, given that I assume they wouldn't sell for much and their weight would make mailing costs prohibitive. However. some of the Siegel catalogs are almost works of art, or at least represent interesting philatelic history, so still going back and forth about those. The rest of the catalogs presumably aren't worth much.

Rhett - I am consigning the collection to one of the auction houses through which I acquired a fair number of the stamps in the first place.

If anyone else has any suggestions, please do post - I greatly appreciate them.

If you consider library donations make sure you contact them first, many already have extensive inventory of auction catalogs and end up just disposing the extras.
Don

Yes, I would check with them before sending off any material. Thanks.