Recently Acquired Stamp Collection! Please Advise

Hi everyone!

I have been collecting stamps for probably 2 months and I really love it. I managed to get this enormous collection from a local fellow and have a few questions on how to sift through it. He seemed to know it was worth something but is moving out of state and did not want to carry his grandfather and father's combined collection with him.

I read through some of the postcard correspondence of his grandfather from the 1940s and, having been extremely close to my grandfather until he passed recently at 102 years old, would never have parted with this. But hey, maybe I am too sentimental.

In one binder it looks like it has a complete mint set of the 1893 columbians, which I will ask more about in the general forum. It has binders and binders of old stamps, a lot of international ones that are mine, lots of large unopened purple envelopes that contain official first day issues with the information sheets, old correspondence (usa and international) from the WWII era, and gallons on gallons of ziplocks of used stamps.

The international stamps are from all over, it is truly an enormous collection.

My main question is: what reference material (example: catalog brands) would be best for the international stamps? I am also curious about websites but would like a hard copy I can physically go through and ear mark. My focus since I am new to philately is US stamps so I have no idea where to start looking for catalog values for international stamps.

What would, in your opinion, be the best way yo start tackling this collection?

I am so excited to now own and treasure this collection. I am grateful to the two individuals who put so much work into this collection.

Thank you in advance for any advance you may have!

It would be helpful to post some good scans of items you know are potentially valuable such as the mint columbians and anything else that jumps out at you. Your omnibus pic shows UN stamps, modern covers and multiple copies of common stamps along with a cigar box of bundleware. In other words you need to decide "wheres the beef" before dumping money into catalogs. The library may however have Scott catalogs and older copies can be had on ebay. Firstly though you need to estimate a ROM and decide if you just want sell, keep or both.

Hi rodgcam, I appreciate your reply. I am not interested in selling, this is for my own enjoyment. I did not think of the library as a catalog source and will check them out.

Hello. What you have there is what is often called an "accumulation", i.e. a large quantity of stamps and albums acquired over time, but not sorted out. Somewhere in the mix there's likely to be a more formal collection, with material coherently arranged in albums. Where to start? Perhaps look for the albums that the owner actually worked up, and putthem on one side. Then separate the "junior" albums - basically schoolboy/girl collections. Then the unsorted, loose stamps. With the loose stuff, you can then begin to work through the groups, perhaps by sorting into countries. I usually start with large categories - British Empire, continents etc - then narrow them down into individual countries. I hope you have lots of space.

I guess I would start by sorting them as best you can by country and then by issue. The printed album pages can also help you identify the issue in some cases giving the catalog number. At the very least the year and issue subject.

After you have sorted what you can and familiarized yourself a bit with them, check out the issues via the StampSmarter website and by all means go check out Scott's catalogs at the library, Volume 1A is the US Specialized volume. Other volumes hold the other countries so you'll need to find out what you have.

After you have a handled on what's there, I'd suggest giving thought to what you want to do or collect.

There are a lot of good people here and other boards that are happy to help as you explore the options.

That looks like a lot of fun! If you think you'll continue collecting the worldwide, a used set of Scott's catalog would be very useful. Try ebay... The older the version, the cheaper. Although the prices do change year to year, for a beginner/intermediate collector, an older catalog is fine. I still use my 2008 version.

Overwhelming! Sort by country as jconey suggests. Stampsmarter (now called the Swedish Tiger) is a big help for USA stamps.

Jack Kelley

Stampsmarter and the Swedish Tiger are different sites. To my knowledge, they share some intent and purpose but not the same content.