Seeking Advice On A Worldwide Classics Collection

Hi. My dad was a pretty serious collector. He lived in California but he regularly bought large lots at auction from Sandafayre in the UK (and others) multiple times a year over the last couple decades of his life. I'm still trying to find the receipts but I know his investment was well into the tens of thousands of dollars. His focus was non-U.S. classic stamps. He eventually branched out into Latin America and Asia, but the deepest parts of his collection are from Europe and Great Britain.

His best stuff is not in albums, but self-organized in binders of stock sheets. If it helps to understand the scale of his collection, he has about 13 1-inch binders for Great Britain and British empire, 6 binders of Germany (plus occupied territories, colonies, states), 8 binders of France and its colonies, and so on. About 50-60 binders total. The binders were just for his "good" stamps, there are also large quantities of excess lower-grade inventory he kept separately in glassine envelopes.

My sister and I have now inherited this. Unfortunately neither one of us has the inclination to keep and enjoy his collection so we are researching how best to sell it. I've done a little looking into the various avenues out there and I'm aware we won't be getting catalog value when we sell. But I'd be interested to get this forum's opinions on which modes of selling make the most sense given the nature of this particular collection.

I'm posting a few pics as an example of the quality and depth of what he had. They are the first six pages of his Germany collection, along with one page from his accompanying handwritten index which shows his personal assessments of condition and value of the pictured stamps. I'm still learning how to read the abbreviations and such, but I figured they may make more sense to experienced collectors.

Please let me know if there are additional pics or info I could provide, or things I need to figure out, in order to make a decent assessment of what we have and how best to sell it. I'm wondering is this likely the type of collection an auction house would want to buy or take on consignment, and if so is that an advisable way to go, and which dealers or companies are worth approaching?

Thanks in advance for taking the time to look at this!

Ian

We need more pics. German stamp collections are unfortunately is in a massive bear market save the high-end stuff.

Send pictures of early Latin America and Asia. And then send Page 1 or 2 of the large European countries.

Sandafayre is quite expensive. That is why many of their lots keep re-appearing. What they sell, most of the time, is of good quality. On the other hand, you should always check their lots, as what they sell is not always what is described. It is fair to say they cannot check each stamp and do refund if the lot is not as described. I would expect your dad to have checked his buys when he put the stamps in his binders. So, there is a good chance you have some good quality stamps that will have value. But do not expect the price paid to be indicative for the price to be received. And unless they are specialised items sold individually, discount even more for being a mixed lot.

That said, the pages you uploaded show much duplication. Duplication is an indicator for low value. There are exceptions when there are varieties that do not show easily in such images.

The cancels in your images, generally, are far above average. This is good. A considerable part of the stamps, however, have condition issues. This, especially, appears to be the case for the mint stamps. I see the sheet with notes almost exclusively assess the stamps as fine, or better. I think, for a considerable part, that is not realistic. The stamps with the brown stains, essentially, are spacefillers. They, only may hold value for the cancel, or when they are extremely rare (that is unlikely when you see so many of them on a single album page).

You may want to contact an auction house or visit a valuation event to be advised on value and the best way to dispose of the collection. Duplication has its drawbacks. People who use pre-printed album pages do not have spaces for duplicates. Specialists and collectors interested in cancels may be interested. Specialists, however, may only be interested in a single country or issue. Breaking up the collection costs time that auction houses may not want to spend on it. Selling through ebay will cost you time and require you to check what you are selling or offer everything at a sharp discount to the lowest catalogue value for a basic stamp.

I am not telling you there is no value in your stamps. Based on what you have written and what you are showing, there will be value in the collection. But you should not expect to get anywhere near what your dad paid for it.

It would be interesting to see some more. Early British, French, German can give an impression of what quality the collection has.

This is probably best sold at auction (depending on the house, they may break into some groups by country). You indicated your father was in California. Where is the collection now?

Thank you all for your helpful feedback. The collection is still in California. I'm going to take some more pictures of it today and try to post the first page or two from several other major countries tonight.

I like those cancels too. It would be fun to see the first couple pages of the UK collection. It might tell a lot.

As promised I took some additional pics and will now post them divided in two replies to show more of Europe and Latin America. (Note that it turned out his China binder was not shelved where it should have been and I don't have any Asian stamps to share yet at this point.)

This reply contains the first 2 pages of France, Great Britain (3 pages), Austria, Hungary, and Italy.

Here is my additional picture reply 2 of 2 for tonight. This contains the first 2 pages of Argentina and Brazil, and 3 pages of Mexico. (Mexico was unique in what I've seen so far in that he kept quite a few pages like the third page you see, intact from the albums of a prior collector. I don't know the significance of this but thought it might be interesting.)

It's always nice to see the classics

The main problem with early GB & France is finding imperf stamps with four margins, especially the one shilling greens from GB, which are terrors due to the layout of the impressions on the plate.

Anything less reduces value, but of course a rare postmark may counter this somewhat.

A lot of decent catalog value there. Of course in the typical condition of those early stamps, it will receive a small fraction of the catalog value, but this looks better than the average collection we see posted here from family members looking for advice.

I agree with what the others have said. Looking at the quantities of duplicates, there is good interest for cancel collectors and other varieties to be found by a specialist.

In my limited opinion, this looks like a good project for Dutch Country Auctions. They are a smaller outfit and might give it more attention, listing each country individually to reach as many specialists as possible. I'm sure Kelleher would be happy to take it on consignment as well, but they might split the collection into a smaller number of larger lots (e.g. "South America") which would limit the audience. A collector of Brazil may not want to pay a lot for a bunch of extra Guatemala and Nicaragua and other countries they do not collect. Kelleher might be better at providing more complete pictures/videos of the lots rather than DCA though.

If you are in Northern California, Schuyler Rumsey in San Francisco would be a good auction house to contact. (The shipping costs to an auction house back East would eat up a big portion of your profits). If you are in Southern California, you should visit the San Diego Stamp Show 2024, Feb 23-25 ( https://sandiegostampshow.net ). I don't see a listing yet of who will be attending, but often some of the big auction houses will be at these regional shows for appraisals. Along with a couple dozen dealers, some of whom may want to buy portions of the collection outright. Hard to know if you are receiving a fair offer though; there may be a dealer that wants to buy the France collection, but only that one dealer in the room wants the France so you can't comparison shop.

I think an auction house is your best option and let the chips fall where they may. On the other hand, a dealer would likely offer you cash-in-hand, while with an auction house, it may be months before the collection appears in the auction, and then more months to wait before you get paid (minus their commission). There are ups and downs with either option.

I expect others here will offer their opinions as well. Thanks for posting the additional photos, that helps to get a flavor of what is there.

Kelleher provides free shipping & insurance along with a 20% sellers fee and 20% buyers fee.

"A lot of decent catalog value there. Of course in the typical condition of those early stamps, it will receive a small fraction of the catalog value, but this looks better than the average collection we see posted here from family members looking for advice."

I agree.

The state of the market is such that apart from China, the major countries are out of favor, but their colonies are more popular. Even though he might have had fewer stamps, do you have any oages for any of the British, French or Portuguese colonies?

As a n00b, this collection seems incredibly impressive to me (definitely way better than my own collection)--I'm seeing full run of Brazil bullseyes and other Brazil classics, 7x Penny Blacks, a couple twopence Blues and pretty much full run of early Britain, full runs of France Ceres (with multiple duplicates), very impressive early Mexico..... I'm surprised at the lukewarm reception...I feel more explanation is needed what is wrong with this collection and why it would not command a very healthy sum at auction.

This is very interesting info, thanks. He had 14 binders of British colonies roughly split between Middle East/Africa and Asia. Plus a handful of binders with French and Italian colonies, and I'll have to look to see if there are Portuguese ones.

I haven't taken photos of any of those books yet but I will try to get some pics from these and upload a new reply or two over the weekend. If anyone sees this and can suggest any especially popular territories to look for, please let me know. Thanks!

I agree with the thoughts that this is a way-better-than-average collection when compared to the usual "I just inherited this...".

It's in the lane of how I arrange things. A casual observer of my pages might think, "that's a bunch of duplicates." It isn't. (Not promising that in your case, it isn't, but first verify...)

That said, it would take time to maximize the value. If you want to learn how this works and move it over time, I'm sure you can triple your return (without accounting for your time). If you just want to flip it, the ideas above are on point.

Thank you Woodsy lots of fun looking at those! I thought the first page of Great Britain would not disappoint! If he saved any receipts from the auction houses that he got these from or any certification he did that would be good to have.