A Very New Member That Needs Guidance

I have an old stamp book that I inherited from my grandfather. My uncle collected stamps in the the 30s (52 countries pre World War 2) including South America and Europe and a variety of other countries. There are 52 stamps from Germany including many Deutches Reich stamps and I believe one red Deutches Reich 10 pf. The only reason I know this I because I looked up some of the German stamps before posting. Some have overmarks and many do not? My question is...What do I do and how do I evaluate all the different stamps in this collection? How do I go about it? I know nothing about stamps other than what I learned in the past hour? I would appreciate any help...thank you in advance.

Hi PRB, and welcome. There are a couple things you can do. First and uppermost, you could post some pictures of the ones you think are most interesting. You can also go to www.stampworld.com and see if you can find of the stamps there.


Peter

This is how I would do it.
Buy a cheap Postage Stamp Catalogue (worldwide)
(I use Scott)
You can pick them up for $5 upwards, they do not need to be the latest
10 years old is OK.

Sort your stamps into countries, or go page by page from the album
and look up the stamps.

If you get the feel, you want to continue, then progress from there.

There is endless enjoyment of collecting and learning, the journey is
the enjoyment.

I am only a part time GERMANY collector, and I just checked,
I have 8,760 German stamps, incl of Postmarks, sheets souvenir sheets, perfins, catalogues, papers, rip sheets, Cinderellas, Poster Stamps, Revenues.....

The enjoyment is endless.
Good Luck

Perhaps the first thing you should do is forget "evaluation". The stamps are likely to be worth pennies. But they are a way into an educational leisure interest, if you're looking for one.

Welcome!

Dale

PRB,

The true value of your collection is to your family and its future members. Please consider keeping it as a part of your family's heritage.

Collecting for the enjoyment of collecting, whatever that might be, is the name of the game. Don't hesitate to ask questions especially if you need basic information and especially more advanced sources of information for any possible topic. You should be able to find folks on this board a little further along on their collecting journey glad to share experiences. Russ

Really? The interest in a collection resides with the collector. In most cases, his/her heirs won't share that interest. Keeping a mountain of possessions of no interest or relevance to you is hoarding, not "heritage".

Thank all of you for your help. The stamps are in an old album (1935). I am a retired Geologist and mineral collector so this album just adds to my collection. I am 72 years old and my wife and I don't have any relatives that want any of our "stuff." We retired to Ecuador and some of our friends here will get the bulk of our estate. So I guess I will take the advice and go through the book at my leisure and see what I have. What caught my attention was the swastika stamp, which I don't really want but I find intersting. My uncle proabably sent away for all the different stamps? He joined the Navy at 17 during war so he would have been quite young when he was collecting these stamps. There is no way of asking him. Some of the countries listed in the album now have different names, especially the African countries. Again thank you all. I'm sure I will be posting again....

GeoffHa and all,

The difference between heritage and hoarding may well lie in the eyes of the beholder; but, what would we have left to collect today if we were not blessed with many past hoarders of philatelic treasures? Let us pass our philatelic treasures on to future generations giving them the chance to make this decision.