Best Place To Auction Off A Large Collection Of Chinese Stamps?

@GeoffHa - Yes I think having an UK lawyer would be more ideal in this situation.

@Noocassel - Having absolutely no prior knowledge in auctions, I reached out to the most well-known auction houses, Christie's and Sotheby's. While they refused to give a value to our stamps, Sotheby's referred us to Warwick & Warwick. After some email exchanges and also a few phone calls with them, they seemed knowledgeable and reliable, however one can never take too many precautions. In addition, we feel that some of the estimates seem low, judging by what similar stamps in the past have auctioned for. Of course there are many variables that affect the valuations, but we believe it wouldn't hurt to at least get a second opinion.

Just thinking out loud here, but perhaps you could contact the China Stamp Society (US-based), present your situation, and see which firm(s) they might recommend.

They are at: https://www.chinastampsociety.org/

The reason I suggest this is that, several years ago, several substantial Japan collections were sold off by experts in that field, and they used what they considered the best go-to firm at that time, Kelleher (which was mentioned earlier in this thread). The auctions were held in Hong Kong.

FYI - Kelleher & Rogers, Kelleher Auctions Hong Kong based subsidiary, held their last auction of China/Asia material this Summer. The sale was held in Danbury CT due to pandemic and political/societal issues in Hong Kong. A quick viewing of the Contract T&Cs showed that the jurisdiction in the event of a dispute was CT.

I've emailed Kelleher twice in the last 6 days with no response. Looks like I should give them a call tomorrow. Has anyone had issues trying to reach them?

You should stick with your first choice Warwick & Warwick .You are swaying back and forth:not sure,Now everybody in the stamp world knows about it. Big mistake IMO.

This is getting a little off kilter. If you really got this collection , get on a airplane and book a hotel around New York City and go to Seigal ,Cherrystone and drive over to see Michael Rogers at Kelleher .Have them all look at it and give you both a cash offer and a estimate if you put it up for auction .

The saddest thing I seen in collecting stamps is people being cheap about getting a apprisal of what they have ,they rather get on line and talk to a few nickel and dime collectors for advice ,than spend the money and fly over to a expert on the subject .

This board and other stamp boards over the years had dozens if not hundreds of people who claim they has a valuable collection to sell ,but can't tell us too much details and want and expect to get good advice ......my advice is hire a expert who knows the market and not wait for a stamp collector here to know how to sell a few hundred thousand dollar collection . HIRE SOMEONE ,first thing they are going to tell you after they think it is real is get cert's on the better stuff.

Floortrader - You make a lot of assumptions about the level of experience of people on this forum and in my case your assumptions are BS.

As far as your advice goes you are telling somebody to hop on an airplane in the COVID era, book a NYC hotel, arrange appointments with several auction houses and "drive around". You tender that advise without seeing one stamp.

Talk about "off kilter".

Yes ,I do think something is out of kilter here ......does he have the stamps or not .......From what he says he got some valuable early China but is it real ? Maybe he lives within driving distance of New York , I said he needs to talk to experts who deal with early China and knows the market and get his stuff expertized ,not talk to a chat board .

Ray is located in a far Western state. Probably no stamp shows and no one traveling to look at collections right now.

perf12: We have a few hundred stamps in our collection, and so far only Warwick & Warwick has seen the entire set. For the others I've contacted I've only shown a few stamps. I'm not sure why having multiple auction houses know about the existence of our stamps would be a bad idea. We are new to the stamps scene and to the auction world as well so please enlighten me.

floortrader: With the ongoing pandemic, travel is easier said than done. I'm in Los Angeles; traveling from one heavily impacted metropolitan area to another heavily impacted metropolitan area is ill advised. Without even the initial e-mail contact I don't feel comfortable visiting even a relative, let alone an auction house.

Hiring an expert is a good idea, but like I said I'm new to the stamps scene and definitely has never auctioned anything of such value. Getting them certified would be nice too, and I didn't even know that's possible with Chinese stamps. I will look into that. In my first post I've included a photo of 1 page out of our collection if you want to check the validity. You can run a google image search or something, won't find it anywhere.

Interesting nobody mentioned John Bull, they specialise in rare China stamps.

https://jbull.com/en/home

I would advise going to a a major Chinese auction company specialising in China stamps as that is where Chinese collectors with deep pockets will flock to.

John Bull was mentioned by redwoodrandy in one of the first messages.

Sorry, I missed that post.

As perf12 pointed out in an earlier post, it's a big mistake that everyone in the the stamp world knows about what we have. Can someone please explain to me why having multiple auction houses know about the existence of our stamps would be a bad idea. Isn't it in the best interest of the seller to gauge the competence of each auction house, as well as their ability to ensure the maximum gains for their clients, and make a decision as to which auction house to go with, based on those factors? Thanks in advance.