Self-Made Philatelic Inventory: How Useful Upon Liquidation?

Wow - a lot of 'interesting' comments in this topic. I wonder if I live in another world after reading some of them. Brings up the similar discussions of a stamp collection as an investment.

I started collecting on a 'serious' basis again about 40 years ago and bought various lots from dealers and auction houses around the world since that time.

As many of these were big lots it really was difficult to assign a 'value' to each and every stamp or series of stamps. I have a simple system that I use for these lots though.

Back then a dealer 'friend' suggested that anything bought for less than $50 a stamp would make it hard to get your your money back if and when you wanted to sell it. Guess he was wrong about Chinese stamps, but pretty much correct when looking at other areas.

Time has been very kind in that regard too.

The good stuff has more than offset the value of the 'crap' in the collection!!

I'm getting the stage of life (with health problems) where I need to spend some serious time doing an inventory and value list for my 'better stuff' and make up instructions for the family too.

The 'fun' stuff in the collection such as postmarks would be hard to value and likely have no extra interest or value to a general collector or dealer though. In any event they probably don't have the knowledge necessary to value these items either.

Ever seen a dealer with a copy of Klein's Handbook of Austria postmarks in their shop? Or Wooders' book on New Zealand Postmarks?


"Now for an independent appraisal, the inventory will help that person know what to skip as anything valued under $50 or $100 is not worth paying an appraiser for the time to appraise such low value items."

Guess we live in another world where a "$50 or $100" item is not worth looking at. I wonder how many general collectors have numerous '$50 or $100" items sitting around in their collection?

How many have a $1000, $2000, or even a $10,000 item in their collection?

So I guess that would mean that a general collection is not even worth looking at. In the 20 plus years that I have been member of the local club I have never seen a collection brought in with such items.

At the bigger club in town, yes, I see a few decent collections now and then, but again most are disorganized heaps of stuff thrown together. I missed out on one of the best collections ever brought in as I didn't have enough cash on me at that auction.

In fact after the auction I told the people at the club that they did a real disservice to the vendor who should have been told to send it overseas. They probably could have got 4 or 5 times what it sold for.


"Unless the dealer knows you very well, they will not trust that you have properly ID'ed your stamps or properly graded them or noted all the faults or alterations. If they have to go strictly off a list they will assume the worst or near the worst."

I'll turn that around and state that unless a collector knows a dealer really well they should not trust that dealer one bit. There are in fact too many dishonest, corrupt people that call themselves 'dealers'.

They make low ball offers to people that don't know the value of the items. There have been numerous stories of stamps being stolen or switched during appraisals too. And dealers are just as bad at describing the stamps they have for sale. How many times have people sent back items for 'not being as described'?

"Your inventory is a waste of time ,most dealers could careless.

See above comment.

"As always, the best person to oversee the sale of a collection is the collector.

And:

"Nothing could be farther from the truth."

IMO it depends on the collection. World class collections with huge values and special items, yes. Everything else: the collector can probably do a better job and get a better return.

This speaks volumes to me. If a collector thinks that anybody has given enough attention to their collection by spending 36 seconds "reviewing" each album they should just sell it by the pound. Even if it was all "face" the amount would need to be known in order to make a fair offer. No, this is exactly what I am talking about in regards to being prepared to sell and know what you have. Dr. Bob would not be on my list of buyers if the above statement is actually true.

Don't cheat yourself, there are plenty of people willing to do it for you.

rogdcam, you missed my point. The collector knows what he or she has and where as well as how it was purchased. It is the responsibility of the collector when selling to choose the correct or best venue in which to sell, be it auction, consignment, outright purchase or piecemeal to certain specialist collectors. It makes no sense for Climber Steve to send his Portuguese India collection Cat $13,000.00 to a top US 19th Century Postal History Auctioneer or consign to a dealer of US postal history. The collector knows their collection and needs to direct it into the best areas of the market.

Likewise, no dealer or auction firm knows everything. Pointing out you have copy two and three of the three known examples of blah-blah and when blah-blah copy one sold in 1978 it went for $34,850 in a South African auction and none have been sold publicly since is important information.

Now you may have put thousands of hours into assembling your collection, but no dealer has even 10% of those hours to learn your material. A knowledgeable seller helps the dealer, auctioneer or who ever understand what is being sold so a fair offer can me made.

Now Climber Steve had as small issue with my "informs the family" comment about the inventory. If one is alive to oversee the distribution of one's collection then there is nothing for which the family needs be informed. If the entire holding is being bequeathed in a will to some organization or other, then the executor packs it up and ships it off. But when those examples are not the reality, and the family is left holding the decision bag, knowing we are looking at a catalog or retail value of $500, $50,000 or $500,000 helps when the second guy in says here I'll get this headache off your hands for $1500 cash.

As to the dealers who can look at 30 binders and give a firm offer, it just comes from experience. How many time must one tally up the face value of all mint US issues from 1925 to 2010? How many times do you need to tally up 95% complete from 1901? There it is less about what the seller has and more about learning which 5% (likely the usual) which is not present. It is in the sellers best interest with Bob when he is examining your 30 binders to help with the comment such as the mint sheets of the 1892 and 1898 Columbians and Trans-Mississippi sheets are in binder 12. The inverts are in binders 23-26. Binders 27-31 are my 21st Century bird topical of the world.

Now if the 30 binders are all photo page sheets, that too quickly helps the professional evaluating the collection to make quick determinations.

Now the true story:

My good friend died relatively suddenly in his 50s. But he always knew his wife did not know about stamps. The most she knew was helping make up the pages of his exhibit on the computer. So he always made sure she understood who to call to move his vast amount of stamps. He was getting to the point his exhibit had hit the wall as do most exhibits after a few APS/WSP Grands and he was putting out feelers to sell. Then he died. It was all scooped up and spirited away. The wife need to do nothing but open the doors after she made the phone call. Then over a period of time the holding was sold. Tens of thousands of US face, high end and sought after US, solid world wide $5-$50 material and for the exhibit and related material, a name sale. Few professionals could handle such diversity, but he knew his material and he knew the dealers. And he knew the wife would eventually get a fair market, six figure check. He had no inventory, but he had the material explained where it was, in albums, stock books, 102 file boxes, exhibit pages, etc. He also knew if he had high end certain other areas, then that material could be better handled elsewhere and he would have so pointed.

Alas, most of us do not have a collection worthy of a name sale let alone a collection which would sell as one or a couple of bulk or collection lots in a prominent auction firm's offerings. Most of our collections would have few items cherry picked and then the balance sold by the album.

It costs serious money to hire a knowledgeable appraiser (I've heard $100-$150 quoted) and $50 CV items will not generate $50 (unless they are well centered", so depending on the rate of the appraiser, the speed they work at, and the quality of your stamps, there is definitely a CV threshold below which it is not worth having an appraiser work on.




Yes, there are some unethical dealers and auction houses. It is up to you to choose a good one. But when you come to them with an inventory list and they have not chosen you, they have no clue how good that list is. They have to see the stamps.

There are indeed dealers and auction lot describers who can get in the ballpark on typical collections fairly quickly, but the dealer is going to err on the side of caution and come in on the low side after just a quickie look.

When the auction describer or auction house gets into the ballpark that is adequate. The true value is not determined until the hammer falls with the cry of "sold" and alas, not all lots sell the first time. The bidders and buyer will determine the value for that day. Thus there is a safety net.

Retail dealers need to be convinced that your MNH 98J Blah-blah is just that and then you hope the dealer is aware of the yellow edge pages in the Scott US Specialized listing 98J MNH blah-blahs, honors them and has customers who buy them. If the dealers don't then you are looking at VF pricing as a starting place when that dealer calculates an offer.

Consigning is nice as you and the dealer will agree first on the asking price and then on the dealer's percentage for the sale. Dealers don't want to carry around over priced material which will not sell or carry material underpriced as they lose commission money on that $50 item which they could sell at $125. So again there is a bit of check and balance but a less determined period of time waiting for a check.

As a buyer of many collections .....the first question is always ----Can I see your purchase receipts ,second question ......can I see your cert's ........If the answer is negative . Then I know we are dealing with a lower level collection .

What I see in this hobby is albums that look beautiful ,with heavy stock pages of acid proof paper which are worth more than the stamps inside . I see albums with clear plastic mounts that are more expensive than the stamps inside ,no joke I just purchased a country album where all the hinged stamps were mounted in protective mounts with the MNH stuff ,it tooks hours to check out each stamp and make notes of damaged stamps in mounts , heavy hinged in mounts .....what kind of garbage was that for a few hours ,that work came right off the top of the value ,so nothing extra for MNH because no dealer is going to spend hours sorting everything out .

I agree with Floortrader on his observations. I have purchased quite a few multi-carton lots that had an amazing number of very expensive hingeless albums holding common stamps or scattered stamps because the owner had grand plans that never materialized. A couple that come to mind were sets of Lindner albums for the Channel Islands and a complete set of same for Australia and States from the first issues through the 90's. Also UN and Israel (all missing tabs). Many thousands of dollars in albums for collections that needed to be "balance lotted away". The real killer is the shipping cost.

Floortrader makes some good points. I use mounts for higher valued stamps and will put pencil notes stating if it's hinged or MNH. Of course, somebody purchasing should check since I "can't be trusted." Seriously, why should I be "trustworthy" for a dealer who has been burned other times? Of course, I keep my certs, but seldom keep receipts.

As a disclosure regarding my plans, I have no relatives with 500 miles of me and none of them are collectors. None of my close friends collect. Solution is three fold: 1) have a well structured estate plan, 2) have a good lawyer to serve as executor, 3) all the albums, literature and what-not goes to the local philatelic library. They can figure it out.

I try not to keep receipts for anything beyond a few days after buying something. I spend a bit of money on stamps, but I believe how much I paid is useless. When you look at the prices things went for 25 years ago, this has 0 relevance on markets today. Plus a receipt from a deceased dealer and a forever stamp will only get you an envelope mailed.

I don't keep a list, except to prevent buying of dupes. And I still buy dupes looking for undiscovered anomalies even with certs saying otherwise.

I see what you are all saying, and with the differing views, but I believe it's all because we have different perspectives based on our collections and collecting experiences.

I believe anyone who thinks they can value my collection in a short period of time, will not be able to ballpark it, except maybe a handful of people who touch this material on a regular basis. For example, collecting modern errors will require you to lookup every single stamp individually to get even a close valuation and ultimately the market will decide. You just won't know if you are looking at a $1500 imperf, or a $700 imperf. Many people pay above full cat on items in this space depending on the stamp. The big dealers of this material markup their material up 3-5x even what the catalog says at retail. Also with a bunch of unlisted stamps in my collection, auctions will ultimately govern their real worth.

Bill Langs sale... How much of his error sale was dictated by his own pricing impacts on the market, the opening bids, suggested bids, and Scott and the overall circular momentum of these prices in the marketplace? His estate IS flipping material at auction he bought months ago for multiples.


On the topic of why you see so many collections with great albums but crappy stamps - This is entirely a blame the dealer situation for many lower level collections. Through the years the stamp supplies business was more profitable than the stamps themselves to source and consistently sell. So when a collector came to a dealer they initially trusted, instead of selling them a $20 Liberty Album to meet the initial needs of a beginner collector and recommend spending the other $180 on 9x$20 stamps, they sold them a $200 album and gave them a bin of common stamps to jump start their album. These are now the same dealers you are being asked to trust. Their motives aren't pure. My thoughts on dealers overall are well known here.

Blaming dealers for folks having low value collections in expensive albums is pretty goofy. More simply, its likely the collector thought they would be more interested in stamps than they turned out to be - akin to someone buying expensive golf clubs and then only using them a couple times a year if at all.

More generally, I don't get this disdain for people having nice albums full of low value stamps. Who cares? This should be a welcoming hobby to all styles of collecting. Let people collect the way they want - for some, the aesthetics of a collection may be far more important than the $ value of the stamps in it. For others, the reverse.

Agreed gmot,
I do not understand why would some folks be arrogant and judgmental about how others collect. As long as people try to exercise good stewardship, who gives a rat's ass how other people collect?

For years my wife had very little interest in this hobby. She was always prepared to help and support me but it was almost exclusively 'my' hobby with one exception. Once a year I would buy a full set of current stamps from the USPS, buy some album pages, and buy some mounts. We would set aside one evening and sit together mounting the stamps. The time we shared doing this over the years is priceless to us.

Will I ever get any kind of significant financial return on these stamps and pages? No.
Do I care that some dealer one day will pass judgment on this part of my material? No.
Will I get respect of some of the people in this thread for collecting like this? No.

But for my wife and I the value and blessing of these annual evenings is far greater than me sitting alone in my stamp room pouring over some specialize material.
Don

As far as my comments go they were observational, not judgmental. Heck, if you want to mount your popsicle stick collection on a sheet of solid gold and lock it up in a Waterford box that is your prerogative.

There are a million approaches to and ideas about collecting. I find it interesting that the vessel sometimes is worth many multiples of the contents. Whatever.

It does tie-in to judging albums by their covers so to speak. Some of my best discoveries have been made in the bottom of cigar boxes which leads me back to knowing what you have and not losing track. Easy to do sometimes.

No judgement here, don't care how people collect.


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I'll disagree. If my son who walked into a pro golfing store and walked out with a $1000 golf club having never drove a golf ball before, I would say, yes son you overbought and it's on you, but I would call out that "pro shop" as a "faux shop" who can't match a set of clubs with a golfer. A good dealer will align the club, or album with the user. Then ya'll go 'round saying these people are experts. Experts at retail exploitation...

As a kid, a good dealer would have tried to pique my young collector curiosity, encourage me to buy items he thought would help a real collection, and aid with my hobby. It's not cheap vs. expensive in this case. It's the focus. I was spending my hard earned allowance money at dealers hawking 7c stamps from 1956 telling me they will appreciate as I held onto them and put them into expensive mounts. This is why people gave up on their collecting, not because they didn't like it, but because they were hoodwinked and trust was broken. This is well before internets and new fangled electronic addictions.



Sure caveat emptor reigns, but we as a society should do better than that, try to welcome beginners not try to take advantage of them.

"great albums, but crappy stamps...." Depends on how one defines "crappy." If one is pursuing complete sets, one will have low values and high values.