Some Questions Regarding Certification Of Stamp Collection In UK

I am willing to get some of my stamps are being certificated by experts in the UK, however, I have never seen any US stamp had been certified true copy stamps by UK expert community,

Question is, should I get my US stamps are checked and confirmed within the UK, will they be recognized by the rest of the world and surely by US collectors?

whenever I see a certificate comes with the stamp it is always US-based,

I would not want to pay for Certificates that are not being accepted by collectors,

Thanks

the best is send them to the US, that's what I do from the Netherlands

there is no good certification service for US material in Europe (my opinion)

I have not searched deep down but there might be a connection between UK and US stamp societies, for example, after some google search this has come up "Royal Philatelic Society London"could not they examine US stamps?

US collectors demand US-based certification. Unless you are going for numerical grading, then the Philatelic Foundation is likely the clear choice. Everyone's details and submission forms are online.

Bear in mind the cost including registered shipping back and forth. To many, this means knowing the actual value of a stamp in order to make it worth submitting.

You could contact the RPSL and ask about its service, and its expertise in US stamps

https://rpsl.limited/

This whole thing about expertising is a can of worms and can be argued 10 different ways . It comes down to one basic thing ----Do you trust the person's opinion .

Expertise comes in levels ,some are better than others . Nobody is right 100% of the time and nobody knows everything . That is why some Philatelic Societies have committees to give their join opinion on the real hard stuff because no one person knows for sure .

The reason why people use and trust Country/area centric expertizing bodies is because they have reference material specific to the material being examined and have doubtless seen it before. It just makes sense. You seldom see Russian stamps with PF certs for good reason and Greene is synonymous with Canada.

A US based cert for a US stamp will get more respect (but shipping will cost you more).

Expertizing bodies ----That is collectors who build their own reference collection getting together .

Reference material -----That is collectors who purchased the previous written works on the subject ,they also purchased and build their own collection included owning previous certified real stamps and purchasing many bad cert's . Expendures runs into the thousands of dollars .

The RPSL has access to one of the biggest GB and Commonwealth collections of the world: H.M. the Queen's collection. They also have access to the British Library collection.

The biggest fault that continues on chatboards is that you only get experts in the home country .

I met some of the finest experts on European stamps growing up in Chicago . People like Dr. Matekja and Budd Henning who would be invited to major stamp shows in Europe to TRAIN people how to expertize stamps . Guys like John Ross were the final word on stamps of Europe in Chicago .

Also people like Stan Richards of Kelleher Auction in Boston is the much respected expert on Swiss stamps even in Switzerland , his collection and reference library is the best in the world .

"US collectors demand US based certification....." I think that statement is misleading (a collector of US vs. a collector living in the US). Yes, some collectors of classic US stamps will want certs from the Philatelic Foundation or American Philatelic Society. But what about US based collectors who collect other stuff?

I agree with comments by Roger (rogdcam) and Floortrader. Also, I have a number of certs from various experts in Portugal with my collection of Portugal & Colonies, in addition to certs from the Intl. Society for Portuguese Philately in the US. Sr. Jose Miranda da Mota, a leading Portuguese expertizer, is also the current editor of the Mundifil catalogs for stamps of Portugal and the former colonies.

I have certs from MEPSI for Mexico items. And for those who collect Poland and its related areas, there are a number of well thought of experts. I have several Poland certs from the late Dr. Stanley Kronenberg, who was US based. There are other Polish expertizers from Europe.

While I have no plans to sell my remaining specialty collections, I will make an effort to identify why these specialty certs should be viewed with high credibility.

I disagree totally with Floortrader. His statements may be true if you live in the US, where we have quite a large amount of overseas specialty clubs and thus experts, but the same is not true if you are in Europe or at least to a much lesser extent. The OP that is asking is European


Peter

Sure Pete you can disagree but the fact remains that there is a lot of people in Europe who can expertize U.S. stamps ......expertize to see if it was reperfed,see if it was regummed ,expertize it if a cancel was removed these are areas that they have expertize ,I would NOT use them on Grilled stamps ,nor on Washington -Franklin coils or to judge a stamp used on cover being correct .

Sorry, Climber Steve, I did not mean to include all US-based collectors of non-US stamps. I would get BPP signatures for German area stamps, Sadri signatures for Iran even though he does certificates, etc.

I must side with floortrader's comments above. Add to the mix postal history, where the knowledge base is greater in the US. However, you guys do know many experts consult with each other?

Yes, I realize the OP is in the UK. Is the average waiting time for a RPSL certificate still well over a year? That would be a reason to use US expert groups for US stamps.

@hy-brasil: no worries; it's all good.

"you guys do know how many experts consult with each other...." Indeed, good point. That point gets brought up periodically in expertizing columns in the American Philatelist. I have heard the same for the BPP expertizers for German items and would suspect the same is true for the RPSL and other European expertizing groups.