Stamp Help Needed As I Am Overwhelmed North East

My Uncle collected stamps and prior to him so I have stamps used and new from many countries and the USA.

I dont know where to begin with what I have. I am out of Philadelphia. Would anyone have time to tell me what to do with this?


I am open to a phone call , video call or something to help me with this.

There should be a stamp club not too far from you. Try to find it, go to a meeting and seek help. You will get it.

To help you, you could help us by posting a few simple pictures of your acquired holdings. separate out your stamps, covers into small like groups, showing albums, stock sheets, equipment you have, accessories etc. Try not to just lump them into 1-2 pictures, get some separation between items. Describe the countries, approximate years of issue & condition, (mint, used, on cover, on paper), we cannot send emails to you until you have 50 posts (&vice versa), so start simple on site, answer as best you can the questions from members, maybe someone in the area will reach out for a meet-up. (Members be patient as the feeling of over whelming can be stress trigger, especially in an field unfamiliar, which can just be defeating from the start) Start slow, use Google to find references to start and take it one step at a time. Good luck!!

By the rule of this Forum, you cannot send or receive messages until you have 50 posts, nor can you post your contact information in your posts.

Beyond that, it would be helpful to get some understanding of your intention with this collection, whether
1. to keep it all and expand it,
2. to retain some interesting, sentimental, or valuable portions, or
3. to dispose of it all.
The advice will be quite different in each situation. AND if you visit a club, they will want to know the same in order to provide any meaningful guidance.

dwilber51,

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. Sounds like you are a perfect candidate to become a postal history collector?

Wishing you many enjoyable future days in our hobby. Russ

The great thing is there are boxes of letters from the early 1900's with the stamps on them if you want to see the history.

Great photos so far. No great rarities observed, but I can see why you are overwhelmed with it all. Someone will have fun going through all those covers (letters/envelopes) as much for the history than for the stamps.

On the back shelf of one of your photos it looks like you have a set of Scott's International Postage Stamp Albums, aka "Big Blue". If so, how about a photo of the first page of stamps from Great Britain, France, and Germany. That may help give us a general idea for the depth and completeness of the collection.

The US pages that you pictured are a little bit better than a beginner's collection, with mostly fairly common stamps, the best ones up to maybe $5-$10 each retail. Hard to tell if this was his main US collection, or possibly a "feeder" collection that he bought to fill spaces in his main album. Seeing some random pages from the other albums may help scope out what you have, and where to go next.

If there is enough value, the easiest way to sell it would be at a public stamp auction, and there are a few options in the Northeast we can recommend. However, shipping and commissions can eat up most of the $$ if all the albums are sparsely filled with low value stamps.

An auction house probably won't want any of the supplies (books, catalogs, mounts, stock cards, glassine envelopes, watermark fluid, etc.) but a local stamp club probably would be appreciative of a donation. Search the internet for stamp clubs near you, here is a sample list:
https://www.linns.com/community/loc...ylvania.html
Keep in mind that most clubs shut down during Covid and some have not returned, so try to email or call them first to make sure the club is still active.