I Inherited A Huge Stamp Collection.

Hey everyone.

My father, my grandfather, and my grandfather's brother all collected stamps. My grandad and his brother started when they were young boys in the 1920s. I never knew my great uncle as he died in France during WWII. In fact, the only time I ever really learned anything about my Grandfather's brother is while going through the stamp collection I found a paper my Grandfather wrote when he was in High School about how sharing a stamp collecting hobby with his brother had enriched his life, taught him about history, investing, and how important time spent with family is.

My father started collecting much later in life, as he started only after retiring, but he bought large quantities of stamps and spent many hours with his father logging them, organizing them, cataloging them, etc. When Grandpa died, Dad inherited his collection. My father then bought 3 more collections after folks he had met in Philately clubs had passed.

My dad passed on November 1st and I now have the following:

• My Dad's International Stamp Collection - Over 100 3 inch binders all full of sheets with each sheet more than half full of stamps


• My Grandfather's US Stamp Collection - About a dozen large binders and a few smaller binders


• One collection consisting of Oriental stamps - Fairly well organized and in about a dozen binders along with some poster sized sheets of stamps


• One very random collection - A mix of US and International Stamps


• Five boxes (18x18x18) full of stamps purchased at events but not yet catalogued. (Luckily all of these are well kept in envelopes, identified with labels on the envelopes, etc. but basically thousands of loose stamps!

For the past several months I have been educating myself about Philately as much as I can on Google and YouTube. My dad had his collection catalogued in Lotus 123 spreadsheets. Unfortunately, the laptop on which Lotus 123 and those spreadsheets (he had one for each continent) were located died an unrecoverable death.

After much research I have decided to use a software and its suite of helper programs to catalogue and value this massive collection. (Apparently naming that piece of software is prohibited...) I won't be keeping the collection as both of my boys have indicated they do not want it. So, I will lay my eyes on and scan every stamp collected by my father as I log and organize them and then I will begin selling off the collection.

Personally my hobbies are much faster in nature than stamp collecting... I am currently building an open wheel race car and I love getting behind the wheel and attacking a good road race course. I am a member of several car related forums and I have learned everything I know about fixing, tuning, and building cars from YouTube and interaction with others on forums. The knowledge gained on forums has been invaluable in my racing hobby and I hope that proves true here as well.

But I want to honor my Grandfather and my Father's commitment to this hobby. I promised Dad I wouldn't just sell it in its entirety without looking at everything and properly valuing it, and understanding it, so that is what I am going to do.

Great to be here. Hope to learn something and maybe even get to a point where I can give back some knowledge gleaned along the way.

This might sound blunt, but don't use youtube to learn about stamps. Worst possible place to get real information on stamps.Use it to watch classic rock videos instead.

Not blunt at all... In fact, I agree. Which is why I sought out an active forum.

Welcome.
Sounds like a great family heirloom, even if kids are not interested right now they often change on this when they get into their 40s-50s.

In general, stamps are not a good investment no matter how old or how many stamps there might be; even old stamp were issued in the millions (sometime billions). So we often end up having to try to lower expectations on market values here. One fairly good way to understand the approximate value is to consider what the original owners paid for their hobby and their level of wealth. In other words, if your family members were wealthy and spent significant amounts on the hobby, then chances are good that the material has good market value today.

if you would like further input on the scope/market value of your collections, please consider posting 10-12 representative images and the experienced folks here can provide more feedback.
Don

Welcome, I'm new to this as well. It's great that you have this as a tangible connection to your dad (and beyond!). It'll be a labor of love sorting through all that.

When my dad passed in 2020, I inherited his giant movie collection. Thousands of movies, shows, concerts, etc, lovingly curated on...VHS.......

StampJag,

Please give it time for the colecting bug to hit the kids and future generations of yout family. Keep you dad's and grandad's albums intact to the very end. The other stuff wil give you more than enough learning time selling them off. Usually, the real value in any family inheritance collection is the fact it is family.

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

Welcome aboard.

A friend of mine went through selling off his brother-in-law's collection, He ended up visiting many different dealers, as they all said something different. The problem he said, was each dealer had a different specialty, or type they were looking for. Also as was said before, there is more value to the ones that do the hobby, than ones that think it is money making.

I've seen the same thing in hockey cards. Everyone values their collections, but it all comes down to want and demand.

Anyway. keep pushing ahead