Inherited Massive Collection. I Know Nothing About Stamps.

I just received probably what appears to be at least 100,000+ (maybe more like 200,000) stamps, from the United States and around the world. I have no idea what they are worth, but it's a lot, well catalogued, in books and in small filing cabinets. Many date back as far as the 1940s. US, Russia, Vienna, Ukraine, It would be impossible for me to take pictures of all of it. So I just googled a stamp forum, and throwing this post out into the world to see what happens. If anyone is interested in helping me to determine what it is I now have, please let me know! Here's a few pictures of it. I live in Long Island, NY. so if anyone has suggestions for what to do next, please let me know.

Don't cross-post. Just one thread, this one or the other (https://goscf.com/t/85827&whichpage=1#795590). Not both.

As you will learn stamps from 1940 onward are not worth very much. Catalog valve is very deceiving. It needs to be to be put in stamp collecting perspective. As for it's worth a lot, I think not. Ease your $$ expectations. Stamp collecting is a fun hobby and in this case it was not about the money.

Welcome.
Looks like a great start on a new hobby!
From an investment or market value standpoint, you might get around 10% or less of catalog value if you try to sell it. The value is probably mostly as a family heirloom. There is always a chance that there might be a few more valuable items hiding in the group, but by the time you learn enough to be able to find them you will end up being a stamp collector!
Don

In essence, the floor price for the modern US stamps in the Lighthouse album will be a percentage of their face value - this reflects the fact that they can still be used for postage. A safe assumption would be 40-50% of face if sold in the US. Hard to comment more generally without seeing the non-US material.

So, the question is of there are stamps from before 1940. If so, post some scans (not pictures) of those. Considering the populatity of some countries and the interests of active members, you may get a helpful response posting pictures of early stamps from the USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, and, maybe, South America. There, also. are many members from Canada and Australia that can tell you if you have interesting stamps.

Above are signs of an expensive collection. Stamps are mint and in a hingless album? and at least one was a high denomination stamp. If all stamps are 1940 and above unfortunately, you likely won't get more than was paid. But you will be able to recover some of what was paid. good luck.

It strikes me that perhaps a frequent contributor to SCM might create a small library of US stamp images that can be posted quickly as a response when someone posts about inheriting a collection. Since I don't collect US, I am a poor choice but I am sure that either a moderator or contributor already has images that could be used for this purpose. This would give new members an idea of what to look for.

Here us a dupe of my response to your same post on Delphi ...

57418.2 in reply to 57418.1

Here are a couple of links to help; just remember, whoever built the collection took years to do so; you won't figure it out in a month or two. Also, as a hint - look at the oldest material first (but the 1940s is not considered old for stamps).

https://stamps.org/services/inherited-a-collection

http://www.inheritedstampcollection.com/

There are more out there ... search internet with your question.

Hmm. I am not sure that would be helpful.

Why not? At least new posters would have examples to compare before posting long ranges of 1940-2012 US commemoratives. Then if they have things like Washington Franklins or earlier commemoratives they can post images that are more well-considered. What they do with the information the forum provides, more efficiently, is then up to the OP.

The post was not completely serious.

However, people who do not know what to look for will find what to look for, even if the design, value and issuing entitis are wrong.

I posted an image of Scott number 613. Scott numbers 596 and 613 are among the most frequently found stamps collectors should look for. So far, none has popped up.

We often suggest that poster select what they feel is 10-15 representative images of the group. I think that typically works out fairly well enough to get decent feedback from the folks here.
Don

Mattrol,

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.

My personal bias is a used stamp loses the story of its journey in the postal service when it is removed from the cover it transported to its destination. Collecting postal history adds a whole new aspect to your journey in our hobby.

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

Choices:

1.Start collecting stamps. If you do, take your own sweet time about it and learn gradually as you go along. You can add stamps to the collection as you wish.

Or --

2. Contact a stamp wholesaler or stamp auction house and describe what you have (with lots of pictures) and ask if they'd be interested in selling it for you. You might get a representative to come to your house and spend some time looking through everything you have -- or they might ask you to box it up and ship it to them.

Or combine the two, sell most of it, keep the album(s) you like best and add to them over the years.

Good luck.

When I see one of these "I inherited a huge collection, how much is it worth?" questions the 1st thing I'd like to see is a picture of the entire collection. The layman has no idea what constitutes a large collection or a huge collection, often a huge collection is couple hundred stamps. A picture or 2 of the entire collection would let us see if there are albums, how many and what kind of albums. This would go a long way towards helping us give an evaluation.