Italy! Why Are You So Expensive?

After decades of collecting Australian, Egyptian, German and Russian stamps I finally got into collecting Italian classical stamps, purely due to their beauty! But I'm shocked at how high their prices are on Delcampe, Hipstamps, ebay and other sites, usually how I start a collection is that I buy a reasonably ok set (maybe 30% complete) then build on it but Italian sets like this are very expensive ... I only collect hinged or NH, I try to avoid used stamps because the cancellation detracts from their beauty ..

I find that nearly every year there's at least one set thats expensive, are Italian stamps really that expensive in comparison to German or Russian stamps or am I looking in the wrong places?

I hadn't noticed Italy is any exception to the largely low prices for collections of larger European countries. The best approach is generally to buy a decent collection at auction and build from there. Probably there are simply less around in Australia.

Which ones, more specifically?

Just added some postage dues to my collection that had a catalogue price in the dozens of dollars; I paid under a dollar for each. That might have been a particularly good price, but I've noticed a ton of bargains in classic Italy, much to my delight.

Although I should point out here that I'm the opposite of you in that I only collect used, so perhaps mint is a whole different game.

Italy has traditionally been one of the Countries trading in the U.S. for low percentages of catalog value. I regularly see quite amazing collections of Italy go for 10% of catalog. As Geoff said, auctions are the place to go. Your location may be a problem though.

I think that the Italian classics and the Netherlands classics are two groups of European stamps that are very beautiful and also quite expensive... I collect them used, although you lose beauty, they are cheaper, full of life and more entertaining to look for good copies grading their condition.

An example from a recent Kelleher auction:

CV (Sassone): $237,600
Estimate: $12,000 - 15,000
Sold for: $11,500.00

It was sold for 5% of CV.
I wonder if it would have had a higher price in Italy?

Sassone CV runs about twice that of Scott, so that collection sold for around 10% of Scott CV. That seems typical in US/Canada auctions for Italian collections from what I've seen. Colonies/offices can go a little higher.

Amazing info, come to think of it actually maybe it's not as bad as I thought, perhaps because I collected it practically one stamp at a time across all those websites (and had to pay shipping and platform fees etc) it "felt" like it was a lot more than it actually was.

I just calculated the entire collection (including pneumatic, express, airmail, semipostals, official, dues etc) plus the Lighthouse album with Italy pages unhinged until 1960, I think my collection is about 85-90% complete mint and hinged and the total cost is just under $3,000 USD.

So my next question is:
Is there a decent website out there where I can see the value of each individual stamp and it will automatically calculate for me the total value of my collection based on what I select? Ideally if I can also add how much I bought each stamp for and when that would be awesome. I much prefer a website to software since its far more portable ..

I use this one https://www.ibolli.it/index.php
It has variants, colors and specializations available... the distinction between those printed in Italy or in London is interesting, the value is very different...