Too Many Stamps . I'm Not Sure What To Do With Them

As a first step, once the OP has mastered the basic terms, he could have a go at sorting any unused from the used and, if present, sell on ebay as postage.

If you had paid some attention and did not just jump to conclusions, you would have known this is OP's second thread. In the first thread, OP posted a used stamp. OP expressed that the gum must have dried out or something similar. When told the stamp was used and, therefore, lacked gum, OP pushed back questioning that we were telling OP he had 400,000 used stamps. No one had said anything about other stamps or value.

Next OP starts this thread. Again OP claims his hoard appears mint and had the gum dry out. The likelier scenario, of course, is they are used. And sure enough, the stamps posted are cancelled once again. It, then, was OP who first brought up the value and the possibility they were not worth much.

Here in California essayk the minimum wage for pushing buttons on a burger cash register is $20 per hour plus benefits. An experienced stamp reviewer should make that or more to spend the hours needed to review the hundreds of thousand stamps for one or two sleepers. And sleepers of what value? !0 bucks, 50 bucks? or are you expecting some compound perf variety at a thousand. .

OP has already voiced concerns of throwing good money after bad. How do you essayk justify him to spend much more money on now? What is the reality that to do so, spending extra money with no return is not going to happen?

Realistically the value in the material found is the time invested into organizing the material, not the material itself.


[q]A large number of stamps like this could also be very desired by artists who use these common stamps to create pieces. Just not sure how and where to post an advertisement that would be seen by such folks.[q/]

That is one avenue used with Stamps for the Wounded.

[q]My stamp club has a monthly bourse that includes a service called "Grandma's attic" in which volunteers look over stamp collections brought in by non-members.[q/]

And how much time do your volunteers spend with a pallet of stamps fork-lifted in? How many of the volunteer reviewed collections are sent off to a high level auction as compared to the go old, "is there a child you could give this to?" or other suggestions for donation. Most common stamp collections and stamp hoards have little value for resale and even when they do much of that value is eaten by the costs of selling.

One pound of nothing of value does not become suddenly valuable when it is 10, 100 or 1000 pounds of stuff without value.

"And how much time do your volunteers spend with a pallet of stamps fork-lifted in? How many of the volunteer reviewed collections are sent off to a high level auction as compared to the go old, "is there a child you could give this to?" or other suggestions for donation. Most common stamp collections and stamp hoards have little value for resale and even when they do much of that value is eaten by the costs of selling."

Fair questions - there is a limit to how much time we will spend reviewing collections, but we are wise enough to know when to stop and would never willy-nilly send material off to "high level auctions", we hold our own auctions for this kind of thing.

"If you had paid some attention and did not just jump to conclusions, you would have known this is OP's second thread. In the first thread, OP posted a used stamp. OP expressed that the gum must have dried out or something similar. When told the stamp was used and, therefore, lacked gum, OP pushed back questioning that we were telling OP he had 400,000 used stamps. No one had said anything about other stamps or value."


It is absurd to expect members to seek out comments in cross-posted threads. What essayk and I replied to are the responses in THIS thread.


"One pound of nothing of value does not become suddenly valuable when it is 10, 100 or 1000 pounds of stuff without value."

Again, you've made an assumption, regardless of how likely it is to being right, that is dismissive, if not rude. Telling the OP to "recycle" the collection is terrible advice. I know many retirees that would gladly dig into that collection.

Brian

Lesson:

There is no right answer unless YOU have it.

This was a great thread - everyone's comments were very informative, if not entertaining. I, for one, appreciate every ones insight and viewpoints regarding the in's and out's of stamp collecting.

The OP is asking a business profit question NOT a time killing enjoyable hobby question. A business cannot waste resources on a worthless or negative value process (throwing good money after bad). The result is bankruptcy in time. For a hobbyist one spends money and time without regard to financial return but for experiences. In business time is money and money is time; cutting losses helps save businesses. Does that upset a hobbyist who has placed no value on their time? Yes.

In your example Rileysan, even you admit the volunteers will not check all of the material nor do you considered the financial cost to the OP in the time and effort required to bring the material to your (a) club. That act alone will increase the loss being suffered by the OP. Likewise dumping the lot into recycling (or selling as recycling paper) add the smallest additional cost to a losing transaction.


[q] I know many retirees that would gladly dig into that collection.[q/]

I trust those folks do not value their time in the manner the OP does when looking at the material to make a monetary profit. Killing time looking at stamps for those one in a thousand, one in ten thousand, one in one hundred thousand, one in a million, one in a billion to a hobbyist is time enjoyable spent. It takes that finding the one in a billion and more rarer stamps to begin to get a catalog value approaching a dollar, let alone one that could sell for $500 or more. You have better odds buying one lottery ticket and winning the big prize. I trust you are aware that hundreds of billions of stamps have been produced most with no value except the cost of labor to sell it.

[q]Again, you've made an assumption, regardless of how likely it is to being right, that is dismissive, if not rude.[q/]

That belief system "regardless of how likely it is to be right" is the driving advertising force to get folks to play the lottery. The comment often is added that "someone will win" so why not me? Well not you because you have about one chance in three hundred million or so.


Perhaps this is a winning lot for the OP, as it will contain envelopes of used #1s and #2s as well as four envelopes, one of each Zeppelin denomination. Hobbyist know what to dream for; enjoy yours Rileysan.

Edited for English.

Well said sir. Well said.

Jeremy

If you auction them on E-Bay, somebody might buy them. The prospect of owning half a million stamps might appeal to somebody, and if you're lucky it might appeal to two or more people who might bid against each other. I don't see how else you can get a "return on your investment" without a lot of hard work learning about stamps in general and about each and every one of your stamps in particular. But if you don't want to auction them, give them to your favourite charity.

NSK, when you give advice on jumping to conclusions, I should listen up because I am hearing from an expert on the subject. Case in point, I DID read everything the OP wrote prior to making comment. My comments stand as made.

Some of you are pretending to talk about value as if you have seen this hoard. You freely admit that your comments are not based on actual direct experience, but rather a "law of averages" mentality. That may be fine when you have been given a thumbnail by an experienced philatelist. I.e. someone who knows what to look for and can give an informed report. But that is not the scenario here.

The OP emphasized out of the gate that he knows nothing about the stamps he acquired in his Storage Locker purchase. That seemed clear enough when he demonstrated no discernment between mint and used material. The OP did not say HE had assembled the material, but that it was found as is in a massive blind purchase. Taking that remark at face, I feel a need to be wary of any description being given. In a holding of hundreds of thousands of stamps assembled by parties unknown, now in the hands of an uninformed non-collector, what makes us so sure that there is so little of possible value there that we would recommend trashing it en masse and moving on?

Rileysan and I are coming from the same place. Until you have looked you cannot know.


If we assume that the OP followed your advice, please tell us two things:
what did he destroy?
and
how do you KNOW that?

@ESSAYK,

Not only was theree only one poster other than OP who suggested something relating to the value of the hoard, also you are posting BS.. I never posted what you are suggesting I did:




The only one who used the word destroy above was you.
Nor did I give OP any advice.

NSK you are getting your nose out of joint over a misinterpretation of what I wrote. Only the first paragraph of my reply applied to you in response to:



The rest was a general reply to the thread as a whole. Your comments were not a target for my criticism, since it was clear you wanted to inform the OP.

But the single remark (not yours) that DID particularly set me off was this :




No one else sounded so strong as that, but to my recollection not even you suggested that the OP should let/get a seasoned philatelist look over the horde. A seasoned expert (collector or dealer) could tell in a few minutes what kind of horde/holding this was, without going through the tedious extremes some of you conjured up. But encouraging a philatelic outsider on the destruction of the mass needs to be countered by anyone who really cares about the hobby. Now I have quoted where that was said, and it was both explicit and unambiguous. Unfortunately, the OP appears to have tuned out, so who knows what his "take away" is going to be?

When dealing with non-collectors asking for advice, we must be straightforward and unambiguous in terms they can understand. "Let a real philatelist look over your material before you do anything with it or to it." That's where you start. What comes next depends on how they respond to that advice.

Instead of fighting each other over this, can't we pool our knowledge to craft a bit of advice for permanent post by the list owner somewhere on the side to use as starting advice in situations like this?

Zogo, I have seen hoards like this before. The most likely scenario is that this was someone who had access to a large volume of commercial mail, soaked the stamps off the paper and put them in envelopes by the stamp. Dealers long ago used to offer to buy stamps of the same type and people would "bundle" 100 stamps together. Google "bundleware" and you will see what I am talking about. I would love to see a photo of the entire hoard for fun. I'm not sure there are any dealers left that purchase these and the era from the 20s to the 60s *assuming USA stamps) are likely very common. They were worth something back in the 1980s when there were still millions of collectors to sell to, and still many dealers too.

You can send to me. I'll help you sift through them