A Vast Collection From My Grandparents

Hello all,

I have obtained quite a vast collection of stamps and old letters from my grandparents. I have already read a lot of articles about philately and I am getting slowly familiarized with all the albums and getting some general experience and knowledge.

I use stamp catalogues to recognize the stamps and I am also trying to roughly estimate their value, so I know what I actually possess.

I would also like to know an opinion from more experienced collectors. I uploaded it to google drive, but the forum does not let me post the link to google drive here. Is there any other way how to do it? Posting individual pictures here would flood the forum, I am afraid.

Thank you and have a nice day!

No need to flood us with pictures. We love helping new collectors figure out what they may have. Usually, they assume large $$ because the stamps are old, and you have lots of them. Since they were from your grandparents, did they ever mention huge value, or that they purchased them at auctions? If not, we're probably not talking a lot of value here.

BUT, who knows? The best course of action would be for you to post pictures of just a few items (1-20), and then let us comment. Pick out the ones you feel could be of value or importance, regardless of age or country.

Good luck.

Would love to see your Google- stored images. Curious, though, what "vast" means for you. How many albums or boxes?

There is a thread on here about having 100,000 stamps in a collection, so "vast" can have very different meaning to different people. Start with a photo of the collection all together and if you have an album, a few pics of the earliest pages of different countries with stamps on them. This will give us an idea of what you have.

You will need this before contacting someone to come and give you an estimate for it, which if you have real value is where you would be going next.

An album count or photos are a good way to start. Age does not equate to value.. Catalogs are a start but meany rare items have common lookalikes to the untrained eye. A local area club might be able to guide you. The APS is another good source of info as is the stampssmrter feature of this forum. Take time to learn a bit before making any decisions.

Welcome to the forum - maybe start with a few photos of the oldest materials you have. Are the stamps loose or mounted on album pages? Are they concentrated on a particular country or countries? If Album pages, maybe share the oldest pages from the US, Canada and Great Britain.

DavidStamps,

What a wonderful way to start your journey into our hobby. Enjoy the adventure. It sounds like it may be a little overwhelming to you at times. Hopefully, as you press forward things will start to make more sense to you. Please post notes as you need to ask questions seeking information. Best regards, Russ

Hello, thank you for the replies.

It is approximately 40 different albums ranging from US, UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia to other countries in the world. These albums are what I have uploaded to Google drive so far. There are also multiple boxes which I still did not have time to explore more. Some of the albums have loose stamps, some are mounted.

My grandparents never actually mentioned anything about their value or whether they bought them in auction.

I will select some photos and upload it here, hopefully tomorrow. And if someone wants me to send them the google drive link, e.g. to an e-mail, I can do it too.

Sorry, but new users cannot receive or send messages to others in our internal email system until they reach 50 quality posts. You also cannot post your email address in any thread, as that is just a way for bots to come cause havoc. I suggest just posting some of the oldest / best (in your opinion) items, and we can comment further.

Hello, I have chosen one page from each of the albums, so I am posting it below.

Excellent work on the photos. Most of what I see here would be called "stock books" rather than "albums", which is a way for a collector to organize and store duplicates (notice multiple copies of the same stamp in many cases). Also I see a few "approval books" at the end which are ways for collectors or dealers to trade copies of extra stamps. The album pages seem random, the Austria and Czechoslovakia album pages look nice and organized, the Argentina page not as much. I have a feeling that all of this might be a "feeder" album or collections that were bought to feed the collector's main albums. Every collector who has been at it for a long time accumulates a lot of these partial collections and remainders. Much of what I see here would be put out on a dealer's table for 5 cents a stamp. Those Austria and Czechoslovakia albums, if well-filled from front to back, could have some better complete sets and might be enough to put into a Kelleher or Dutch Country Auction. If you have a stamp club within driving distance, you could get some good advice by bringing a handful of albums each month to review and have them point out if anything valuable sticks out. From the looks of it, your grandfather had a great time collecting stamps for a long time, but may have not invested a lot of $$ into it (and hence there is not a lot of $$ remaining in it for today's marketplace). Just my opinion, I trust others will chime in with their opinions.

If you decide to continue the collection you have a good start with Czechoslovakia. They issued a lot of engraved stamps which are always attractive.

You have two interesting stamps, though not rarities. The first is the Austrian 3g stamp from the set of Women's Costumes. This is an elusive stamp missing from most collections.

The second is a Czech space souvenir sheet (3rd photo). If I am not mistaken, this is the issue that has 8 or 12 different varieties with small differences in the placement of the stars and lines in the border area.

The Republic of Guinea stamp in the bottom left of 10th photo from the end is a massive mistake! World Cup stamp that shows a player called 'Best' playing for England! Don't think so!
Regards
DavidR