Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

The speciality auctions are finished for this week . I am surprised how well these better stamps did . Lots of stuff you normal don't see ,so my guess is there is a lot of money sitting on the side lines waiting for the good material which is needed to have a "wow " collection . Guess the big money knows what to buy and when to show up .

Suriname ---two Fournier forgeries of stamps of the 1873-88 issue .The perforations are incorrect on both the first is 11 1/2 X 13 1/2 and second 12 X12 .

Morocco ,still in the clear mounts that I used back in the 1970's , maybe later today will remove them and place in black mounts . They are still all MNH .

Building a worldwide collection takes you deeper into the rabbit hole of specialized collecting .Than you ever wanted to go .

floortrader excellent description on Honduras set. Yes, this is a heavily forged set. Genuine stamps are more scarce than people think. Many collectors have the forgeries in their collections.

Greendragon ---- There are so many areas of worldwide philately that a collector could study and expand their collection too. I enjoy the time to expand my albums into dozens if not hundreds of different directions over a life time of collecting .

With more purchases made by pictures off a computer screen it is not a surprise the demand for fakes and forgeries has grown .

More and more sellers both on websites and stamp auction firms have establish a policy of NO RETURN'S on large lots . So your seeing more damaged and fakes and forgeries appearing in their offerings with a statement of NO RETURNS in their terms of sale .

The reason for this is to boast bidding for their listed item ,you see small pictures thinking OK this lot has some better stuff "I will outbid others" . I even got burned a few times at stamp shows and stamp bourses when I first started to spend money on better collections .

My big learning lesson was a purchase from Dr. BOB ,he had a Scott International 8 volume set . At a stamp bourse I purchased his offer for $800.00 The collection was great for the price but learned too late after getting it home every stamp with a catalog over $10.00 was damaged or of poor quality . The collection to me was like it was created as a dumping ground for a major collector who needed a place to get rid of their damaged stamps and make a decent return on all their better stamps that were defects .

That is a dirty trick by the auction houses. They should have to label the stamps they know for sure are forgeries.

At least on ebay you can leave detailed, negative feedback if a seller is shipping out a lot of duds, forgeries or otherwise. I suppose with the auction houses and some of the other dealers, 'no returns' means buyer beware.

Only occasionally have I seen them list specific items that are not genuine. Like "C13-C15 are reprints" or "some of the early items are cut out pictures from auction catalogs".

In a big collection it would be hard for them to list all the known forgeries, and then perhaps they would have some liability if they didn't list all of them. If they listed 10 stamps that were forgeries but didn't mention 5 other questionable items, does that imply that those 5 are genuine?

I have sometimes seen an auction listing "includes some reference items" which to newcomers does not mean books and philatelic literature, this means fakes and forgeries for your reference collection. Probably all auctions fine print includes a similar statement that collections are sold as-is with no guarantee to the quality or genuineness of any specific stamps. It would be too much of a burden (legal and timewise) for anything otherwise. The burden is on the buyer to thoroughly inspect before placing a bid.

Album page updated with better mounts ,these are the same stamps as above in clear mounts .

Those black mounts sure look better. Interesting mention of "created collections" for sale. I know collectors that have done this and it sure seems like a lot of work! I've found for me the best way to go through a world collection is to take the stamps that I don't need and put them in a ziploc bag. Damaged stamps would go into the circular file. Back in the day that when there was a stamp store I would get about $23 credit a pound, maybe 4 or 5 dollars less in cash. Of course I would use the credits to buy more stamps. :) The added benefit for me was that I would know for sure that I don't need to check any of those stamps for my albums once they are in the bag. People really seem to like digging in worldwide bags too.

Hi floortrader,

I see that the following stamp did not make the transition from the clear to black mounts!

What is the reason for its omission with the black mounts?

STAMPORATOR ---Simple answer ,I was transferring those stamps from a S.G. page to a Scott Catalog system page design by Steiner Pages {about 3 pages away } . Here it is ,as you can see here on a page by itself .

Landoquakes ----Thanks for the positive . I get alot of better stamps so I run them back to the stamp auction firms . I found if I mount them in a set of Scott International ,I get a better return .