Inherited Collection With No Apparent Direction

Hello stamp world. I inherited a collection that to me, seems to have no direction. I have a little of everything including early US with several graded or authinticated, lots of first day mail, other countries (including Red Chinese monkey stamp), old filled stamp books, all sorts of supplies and who knows what else. I'm a husband and dad of four who has no idea where to start or when I would have the time. If you were in this predicament where would you start? Thanks so much for any direction given.

One of the best ways to answer your questions is to find a local stamp club. They usually have some person who is willing to answer questions. Go to https://stamps.org where you find the addresses of stamp clubs in your area


Peter

Posting pictures here my help as there is bound to be someone who knows about the stamps you show us all . Especially useful if you cannot find local help to look at the collection.

Stamp collecting is an extremely broad hobby. The frequent path for a beginner is to accumulate everything they can get their hands on, then gradually specialize as they realize they cannot collect everything, nor does everything catch their interest.

Each collector must find their own collecting niche. One collector's accumulation will seldom have much overlap to another collector. I would not stress-out too about the material you have inherited. Your obligation is to yourself to find your niche. Keep and advance the portions you find interesting and set the rest aside or pass it along to others. You have no obligation to "complete" someone else's collection if it does not directly interest you.

As for "no direction", I suspect we all have a box of unsorted material waiting for that rainy day!

To build on Triangle's post, are there a few specific items in this collection which caught your attention more than others?

great reply's. What caught my attention immediately are all the Stamps still in Fed-ex, UPS or Express mail that were never taken out of the package. They were open and apparently looked at but put in a container. Almost all these Stamps have been authenticated and the others in nice clear sleeves. They are all US Stamps besides two Chinese Stamps. Then there's the rest of the collection. Its very interesting but seems more of a hoard rather than a collections. This collection literally came in 10 or 12 large plastic bins like you see at Home Depot. I inherited it from my uncle. He and I have talked many times about this collection but I had no idea. He was a career Marine Corps Colonial who had been sick for quite awhile. It could be he kept ordering through his long illness. I think finding a local stamp club is great advice. I really appreciate the direction.

The first question is what has been done to date? Here are some others:
- Have the stamps been sorted by country?
- Have they been identified or catalogued?
- Has there been any evaluation such as centering, color, postmark, etc.

We need to know where you are starting from, so we can give you some suggestions.

Questions asked- Not much to date as I just received a few days ago.
Stamps, for the most part are separated by US then everything else.
Some have been identified and authenticated with paperwork but the majority has not.
Most of the identified Stamps have been graded but again, majority has not. I confess I'm not up to speed on color variations, postmarks, watermarks etc.

I obviously have my hands full. A direction is really what I need most.

If some of the material in those Express Mail or UPS or FEDEX packages still have invoices present, you might look through and find some examples of material with some respectable dollar values associated with them. Then scan some of those stamps or covers, and especially any certificates included from Experts like the APEX or Philatelic Foundation, but do not scan the invoices for now. You might also identify who some of the dealers were that sold him the materials, such as auction houses like Robert A Siegel or Schuyler Rumsey or H R Harmers. This can provide insight as to the level of quality in the collection.

If you can give some idea of where you are located, perhaps one of the people here can recommend a specific stamp club or dealer in your area.

Mike

I believe it has already been said but pictures are a must of at least a representative group of the US to start. It will give a good sense of how to proceed and in what direction.

Don't get overwhelmed. Good people here will help you figure things out.

I have a feeling that "authenticated" may mean some type of document rather than a true cert. It may be worth your time just to take a picture/scan or just describe who the authenticating party is and what is generally said on such a document. Pick one with the oldest stamp that you can find and let us know.

I would agree to Mr. John Becker's advice.
Very sound.
Work on what interests you now, and keep the rest for at least 3 years.
You will experience high regret, should you pass on what later becomes interest.

You are extremely fortunate to have a great Uncle passing on his passion.

I'll get some pics together and post within the next day or so. Again, thanks very much for the help.

Be careful how you handle them if you're not a collector. Try not to physically touch them when photographing, if they might be worth money, especially the ones which haven't been used. The red China stamp for example, could be worth quite a bit if it's genuine. If you have any idea how much was spent on them that will also give you an idea of whether the collection has much monetary value.

As the previous poster said, handle all your stamps carefully, and USE STAMP TONGS.

DO NOT handle stamps with your fingers. If your Uncle was a serious collector, there should be stamp tongs in his collection. Look for them.

You might want to read up on how to use stamp tongs to handle stamps from their packaging or album before you try and make photographs of them to avoid damage. Here is an earlier thread on stamp tongs.

https://goscf.com/t/29862

In a perfect world, you should scan the stamps you want to show us, and then show them in the largest size practical (there is a forum limit), and with one stamp per image.

If your only option is to use a camera or phone, hold the phone parallel to the surface with the stamp, and get a clear, not a fuzzy photograph.

If you are going to use a camera, read through some of the other posts on this forum to see what sort of photograph quality you should have in order to get the most detailed responses. Many stamps are shown here which simply cannot be identified because the image quality is poor.

Take your time. There is no rush, and everyone here wants to see your stamps, and give you the best advice possible.

Mike

If using a cell, zoom in all the way then back up the phone till the image is clear and then crop.
I used to use a stack of books, I found it helped
But a scanner is way easier and better, not really expensive (great investment)

Edit for clarification

My suggestion(s) would be this, it's divide-and-conquer:
1) pull out each stockbook or album, and number them with a sticky note on the cover
2) spend about 2 minutes going through each one, and on a notepad, describe what it contains. No need to to too specific, anything along the lines of "old used USA stamps," or "used envelopes from Europe" will do.
3) combine like terms, as we learned in grade school math. Put all the envelope stuff together, all the albums with only Asian stamps in their own group, etc.
4) pick a group, and start working your way through it. That is, start paying attention to how each stockbook/album is organized, if at all. It should be pretty apparent one way or the other; for example, it doesn't matter why there are 45 copies of an old bluish stamp with Benjamin Franklin's head on it in one of the stockbooks, just note that there are.

The stamps aren't going anywhere, 1-2 stockbooks a day is good constant progress, and that's the key: always be moving forward, even if it's only an inch a day. Once your survey's done, you'll have a much better idea of your next steps, whether that means reorganizing for your own collection, or potentially disposing of some or all of it.