Need Help Authenticating A 1914~1920 Australian 1-P Red King George V Stamp

Hello Collectors,

Our family just inherited volume 1 of the Scott International postage stamp album (A thru F) and came across a few seemingly rare collectibles. Nearly every available square is filled with the appropriate stamp making it much easier to navigate the collection. My passion and experience are largely limited to vintage baseball so I'm reaching out to those who are considerably more knowledgeable than I am for some worthwhile advice. Some of the other finds include the 1919 Belgian Perron of Liege, the 1929 Egyptian 9th Birthday of the Crown Prince Farouk (4 stamp collection) and the 1868 Canadian 2 cent Large Queen on laid paper stamp.

I was curious how one might go about evaluating the collection both safely and expeditiously.

1. If you post scans of the older pages for US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, and, maybe, Germany. Other members can tell you about the general appearance of the stamps and whether there are any key stamps. The countries I mention are those where, normally, people with sufficient knowledge are active here.

2. See if there is a local stamp club where you can show the album and members can give you an impression.

3. If you want to sell it, look for a reputable auction house nearby and consider asking for an appraisal. It would not hurt to look for a second opinion.

If you want to keep it and get an impression of the value: look for a worldwide catalogue in the library or buy an older edition cheap on e.g. ebay. Considering the album Scott may be the one you are looking for. Otherwise, there is the website Stampworld.com.

For catalogue values, consider they are retail values and for almost perfect examples. Most stamps will make a fraction of that value if you sell.
Be realistic about condition and appearance. Many people see an old stamp catalogued at 100s of dollars, pounds, or euros but have a damage, smudged stamp with a terrible cancellation mark. Such space fillers may be worth less than 1% of catalogue value. Ignore cheap stamps. Nice for completion, but they are not adding monetary value to a collection. They do bring a lot of enjoyment.

Hello and welcome to the forum. NSK has given you the normal response we give to new users on how to get more information. Since you live in Southern California (so do I), you will find that there are several stamp shows in the area. In fact, Arcadia is going to have one this upcoming weekend. You can bring in your "better" items and get a quick review and evaluation from some of the people there, if interested. Keep posting, and you'll soon get to your 50 posts in order to receive and send emails to users in this forum.

Another way to get advice: Go to the APS website www.stamps.org . They list stampclubs in your area on their website. You can contact them and get info on evaluating your collection


Peter

There is also a larger stamp show called SESCAL 2022 in Glendale this upcoming October 28-30th. There will be 30+ dealers in attendance, so you can get an even better idea at that time. Good luck.

Regarding the 1c red Australian stamp you show, the scan is much too small to tell which of the many, many varieties it might be. Most are quite inexpensive and very common, so the chances it's a rare one are ... rare. Try scanning (not a photo) at 600 DPI or higher and post with just the stamp and as little of the area around it as possible. That design and color were in use for several years, and Australia in the early 20th century was pretty literate, so a lot of them were printed and used.

I really appreciate all the feedback and look forward to taking advantage of your suggestions.

As for scanning the images, it was a bit frustrating reformatting and uploading that one image above from my iPod given the size restrictions. Another downside is that, while the pages are removable from the old binder, it's not a traditional 3-ring. Further, the pages are extraordinarily delicate and I'd prefer to avoid tearing the paper while trying to remove and replace the sheets. I promise that once I identify any rarities, I'll remove them from the book and upload the crispest images possible.

Again, I greatly appreciate the information above.

You can use the site's free image optimiser to reduce the size of your file. I often use my phone camera for details I cannot show on a scan, or where the scan is not very adequate. The free image optimiser easily reduces a couple of Mb to the maximum allowed size.

Most of the scans I post are a couple of Mb. I use a free dedicated site for sharing stamp images and embed the link to the full image here.