Question About What I Have Here....please Help

I need help with any info and value on these Please. I have a Whole lot of stamps and cover I got from my grandfather, but know nothing about them. These are just four that were by themselves. I have ALOT MORE though! I mean Boxes and boxes! Plus prob 12 complete books of First Day Covers that date Far back and stop in the 1970s or so. I may try to sell them or at least some of them, not sure what to do with them yet. They take up my entire pool tabel plus alot of floor space! Thanks for your help!

Im sorry, I didnt even sign my name, my name is Mike. Me and a friend have just started going through the thousands and thousands of stamps and covers here....We dont even know where to start! Anyway thanks for the help. Ill prob be here alot for awhile trying to figure out what is here, value and decide wether to sell, and/or what and how to sell..Thanks again, Mike

Welcome to Stamp Community Family, Mike!

What a great gift from your grandfather! The ones you showed are very nice. I'm not a cover collector, but even I can tell the ones you showed are not junk covers.

Top pic is blurry, but maiden voyage covers, tin can mail covers, and a nice Zeppelin cover -- all well-known and very collectible. It won't make you a millionaire, but those covers should have some decent value to the right collector. Based on the quality and type of covers you have shown, I have no doubt there are many covers in the collection that are worth $10+, maybe a few $100+ covers(?).

May I suggest you spend some time learning the history behind some of those covers -- and maybe/hopefully, you will experience the joy your grandfather got in collecting them, and perhaps you will continue to build upon his collection!

Thanks for sharing the pics! More if possible, please!


Kim

Hi and welcome Mrfish Mike.

Nice covers. Any from non-US countries?

You could spend some time looking at ebay (remember to click on the Worldwide choice on the left) and also look at the 'completed listings' to see what sold and what p[rice they got. The completed listings just show for two weeks or so so a person would have to look at ebay a lot to get an idea of what sells.

Some of those you have shown are rare enough that they may not show up on ebay at all for a while.

khj has made good suggestions above.

To get a nice clear idea of what a stamp or cover is like, for members on here, you really need to scan them at a good resolution and then crop the picture and reduce it so it will fit on here 90kb max. Or list the pics on imageshack or photo- something or another I forget I don;t use them myself. The idea is to host the larger sized pictures elsewhere and just put the link here .

Sometimes, with specialized items such as you have, the hard thing is to find the right collector and buyer so you can get the best price. I think pretty well anyone interested in covers would buy your shown covers for $5 a piece say, but to get a better price you must know somewhat about the items yourself, their condition, their rarity, their appeal, etc etc and set your price depending on how fast you wish to sell the item.

Nice stuff sells. Junk really doesn't most of the time.

A lot of the value in an item is in it's sentimental value and the history of it. A cover may have been sent to someone special or from someone or on a special date or event or via a special carrier, like the Hindenburg cover.

The more you know the more details and interesting side paths and histories and facts you encounter and if you like item that's a lot better as you will appreciate it all the more. But that will help you in selling the items (if you decide to) as the more you know about something the better you know how to sell it and let other people know why they should appreciate it.

Don't mind me and my long-windedness. I do tend to write more that is necessary perhaps.

On your Tonga tin can mail cover, look at the tree stamp,
if the tree branch on the RHS does not poke into the bubble
of the frame, you have a rarity called the "pruned tree branch"
issue at position 47 of the sheet.

good luck. nice covers.

Hmm on second thoughts, being a two pass printing
it depends where the tree registration occurs,
this scan shows the different tree branches RHS

"I have inherited a stamp collection"

This has always resonated with me, perhaps you would like to
read it before pursuing a sale.
Author : "allan" from stampers choice.

Hello Dan,
As a long time collector and stamp fair dealer, let me answer your question by relating
an experience I've had repeated many times over the years.

A middle-aged lady, or gentleman, or couple, comes up to my tables with what look
like dollar signs in their eyes, and clutching an album or box. They've got a bit of
wariness about them as they think of handing over this family treasure to a stranger
who might try to cheat them.
This is grandpa's, or dad's or uncle's stamp collection, they say. We'd like to sell it and
wonder what you'd give for it.

And so I look through page after full page of mint and CTO propaganda laced stamps,
all from Romania, or Bulgaria, or Hungary, or others of the Soviet sphere of influence,
and typically all issued in that 40 year period, 1948-1988 . From experience I know
that just about all of these will have Scott values of 20¢.

And so I say to these people. Grandpa had a lot of fun putting all this together. What
we have here is the product of his time and effort. The best you can do for grandpa is
to have someone carry on with this collection, or, at least, put it in a place of honour,
where you can, from time to time, admire it. Surely that's better than receiving a few
dollars for it and having it pass out of your lives?

A word about the 20¢ valuation in Scott. Somewhere in the foreward is written words
to the effect that the 20¢ does not represents an actual value, the stamps so designated
being too common to have a value. The 20¢ represents the dealers' handling fee.

Well Dan, I'm sure this is not the answer you were looking for. But it is honest, and it
is straight forward. Take it for what it's worth.
Allan stamperschoice

Hi Mike. Welcome to the forum. The cover in the first picture has stamps from the 1936 Olympics. The year Nazi Germany hosted the games. The last one is from Germany in the same era maybe a little newer...like 1940-41 sometime. When you get to your 50 posts I would be interested in any covers from WWII you want to sell. My main collection is from WWII and I also collect mint U.S.

Actually Mr Fish, if most of your covers are like as shown, you may have quite a good find.

The fourth cover was flown on the Hindenburg so it dates to 1937 or a couple of years earlier. Can your read which airship the first cover was flown on? It also looks like a Zeppelin cover as it has the label and red handstamp.
Will

Hello Mike,

You have some very nice covers there! I don't know about the Queen Mary one but the others are at least $50-$100 ea. depending on the dates. Some Zep covers command a premium for specific flights. "Tin Can Mail" covers are also highly sought after. You also might want to do some reading on the Tin Can Mail System it is quite interesting. If the rest are the same quality you may be sitting on A LOT of money. When you reach 50 posts email me and I can direct you to someone that can give you a fair and HONEST appraisal.

Thank You all for all the info, I've been doing alot of reading and research....and I gotta say I think its all very cool! Im kinda getting into it. To try to answer some of your questions....The First Cover-The (8) 1936 Olympic Cover has the Hindenburg handstamp and the date - 5.8.36 and after the date the number 6 . The 2nd Cover -Queen Mary -has a london handstamp (overtop the red stamp) with the date 23 of May 1936. The third cover-Tin Can- has a handstamp of 1938 and the the TOGA stamp(2nd from left on top) is NOT the "pruned" version of the stamp. The Last Cover - Hindenburg- has a handstamp that says - AACHEN with the date 14.5.1936 and then the number 13 after the date.... One more question I have is - What is the Number after the Date? Does that number tell what flight it was on? Also I will try to post some pictures of others when I get a chance. ***Edited by Staff - Please review the rules that you agreed to when you registered.

Many countries include the hour of day in which the cancellation was applied - in Europe, that is almost always done using a 24 hr clock ("13" = 1:00 PM). Here's a famous image of the rare Audrey Hepburn stamp, showing an "18" as its time of cancellation.

Ryan

....and one example with "20"

Those are some nice covers, Mike.

I really like the second one