Which Are The "Hottest" Pre-1940 Countries In Terms Of Sales?

I'm thinking in terms of ebay auctions. I'm also wondering if "Pre-1940" is a good starting label for sales--I don't see all that many listing with that title. Many years ago that seemed to yield a lot of searches.

I suggest you search the completed listing on ebay in the areas which strike you interest. This will give you 90 days of sale information as well as at what price items are trading and trending.

Perhaps the word "classic" might help.

I intended to add "classic".. Thanks for reinforcing my decision.

Where is the answer ?

The answer is those stamps that fit the Scott International vol. 1 is the most popular .

top of the list would be the Syrian overprint , then countries like Tripoltaniana and Cape Juby and other Italian Colonies would be near the top of the list .

In the U.S. this is the most popular ,overseas it is totally different then it is all the Colonies

It is ebay item number:116133448692 Too many pictures to even bother to post any.

It has a current bid of under $200. Contains tens of thousands of classic stamp in one International Vol. 1.

It is a hot auction at the moment.

Of course, if you are looking to sell your material, the price is not something you want to see. But if you wish to take to time to list the stamps and sets, you will have a goosd starting stock.

PARCEL --- Be surprised that collection holds thousands maybe one thousand clearly not thousands .

It's not especially stunning. France and GB are pretty useless, for example. And, as it's a Big Blue, the high values in sets are missing.

The price of that pre-1940 Scott International continues to rise ,auction still has a few hours left . Interesting to see on ebay how strong the bidding is , as posted above there is very little of value but it continues to get attention ,

Sold $285 WITH $18+ s&h.

Well there were 540 illustrations of either one or two pages in each along with a quick average (low balled) of at least 10 stamps per page; that alone gets closer to ten rather than one thousand. Fell free to count the stamps actually shown.

Thousands of Illustrations ? My I-Phone had 24 pages only .
Looks like a duplicate album where someone was putting extras .Good way to unload duplicates .

Here's a Scott Part I with a little over 10,000 stamps. I said 9,400 but the buyer contacted me and said his count was about 800 higher than mine.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/364715812032?itm

Actually I was disappointed with the price.

The OP's original question is hard to answer, how do you define "hottest" ? I'm pretty sure you can't get the answer from ebay because now they give you very little post sale information. A few years ago you could sort by "Most Bids" but that's gone as are a lot of other details.

Recently I've been surprised by bids on Eastern Europe, Middle East, Korea and the European Colonies particularly Portugal.

Seems to me like the buyer got a good deal. Any such actions out there, please alert me

If I may take a different path to offer an insight -

Buying at auction is more difficult than selling. Collectors evolve, and their feeding patterns come and go. I don't concern myself with "hot or not" too much. I stick with material I know, but quality usually trumps age or country in the long run. I bid on collections that, broken down for sale, allow me to honestly use words like "original", "sound", "quality", "fresh" in the title header. You only have eighty words, and some of them you need to identify the item (country, catalogue info, mint/used etc.).

And, if an item has faults, I put it in the title rather than bury it in the description, that way I am respecting someone's hobby time and setting up a positive customer experience.

Quality outlives so much and getting focused to understand what you like and want to invest in. I think it easier to understand what is a good deal if you have been following particular items of interest. Versus trying to quickly estimate an unfamiliar topic.

kyw