F'rinstance, I knew who "Salem Poor" was long before it became chic to put people on a pedestal soley because of their race.
Mr. Poor actually deserved to be there and I doubt that even 1% of the gimmedat generation could even recognize his name.
Posted on 01/30/2015 9:47:40 AM PST by kjam22
I've inherited this good size stamp collection, and I'm trying to figure out what its worth and how to sell it without getting taken to the cleaners.
Do any freepers have any experience with this sort of stuff?
F'rinstance, I knew who "Salem Poor" was long before it became chic to put people on a pedestal soley because of their race.
Mr. Poor actually deserved to be there and I doubt that even 1% of the gimmedat generation could even recognize his name.
I am familiar with the concept of the Greater Fool Value, but just have never heard it called that. Some examples are the 16th century tulip bulb mania in the Netherlands and the Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s where people were paying thousands of dollars for “retired” Beanie Babies.
I guess I should have called it the free market value of the stamps.
Well, I would contact the Alan Blair auction house out of Virginia if you are looking to sell. Not entirely certain you are and I have seen people who have inherited stamps just sell or give them away.
The Blair outfit is a stamp auction house only. I have been satisfied with my consignments with them and think very highly of them.
I have no connection to them at all other than having sold through them.
Last show I attended was a huge New Eng;and show with an auction, lectures, displays of collections and so on. A ton of dealers.
98% of the buyers and dealers were older white gentleman. I am not young bit I was one of the youngest people there.
There was one section devoted to young ( kids, teens ) collectors and it was a ghost town.
Very, very sad.
But that being said I have read that in other countries stamp collecting is thriving. I suspect its nothing like it was many years ago when so many men collected stamps. But still, a bigger deal in other countries than ours.
I think kids don’t relate to them as they don’t use stamps. Stamps are a foreign concept. Coins on the other hand are not. They use them, know full well what currency is and I have seen kids aplenty at numismatic shows.
What is really curious is I find most of the coin collectors / dealers I know are very conservative. many of the stamp dealers / collectors I have worked with are flaming liberals.
Really odd.
Ask this guy. He's an expert right?
To #31. You actually understood the significance of stamp collecting, i.e., learning about the world, history, flora & fauna, the history of the space flight programs, presidents, etc.
US stamps have included the 1940’s presidential series, WW II events, the space program from Echo to John Glen/Mercury to the joint US-Soviet Apollo/Soyuz flights, the moon landing, etc.
The nature series was one of the best scenic and printing jobs around. The long forgotten “Champions of Freedom” is well worth looking at as is the Revolutionary War/formation of America series, followed by the two Civil War series.
Stamps (and even the old Scoops/Isolation Booth series) are very educational for young children.
As for value, the oldest stamps are worth the most. Stamps that were hinged to stamp books are less valuable than clean, mint ones.
First Day Covers are pretty neat in that they honor an event or person and are of limited production (the earlier ones had less collectors than the later ones when the hobby grew during the 1950’s as money for hobbies became more available to children). I earned stamp money by doing gardens and shoveling snow.
Autographed First Day Cover (FDC) are worth more than unsigned ones.
In the end, there are so many stamp collections out there that their value has been depressed for years and probably won’t rise back to the mid-century values.
Therefore, keep them for the grandchildren to enjoy. Sell off duplicates or unwanted items, even if for a modest price above face value. They are dead money is just sitting around.
A late cousin of mine used to use 1940’s presidential stamps on his mail just to freak out the recipients (in the 1970’s/80’s) because he had a massive stamp sheet collection and could spare using some of them for postage.
However, if you have a British One Penny Black of either the 1840 or 1848 series, keep them as an investment because they have a saleable value.
If you have the famous British Guiana 1840’s stamp, sell and buy yourself an island.
#72: Nazi-occupation overprints on captive countries might have some historical value, as would the early stamps of the states that later made up Italy, Germany and Austria.
The same for the British colonial stamps such as the Gold Coast which became Ghana. When they gained their independence, a lot of countries including Ghana, overprinted their day of freedom on the old Gold Coast stamps. These might have an historical value too.
Confederate stamps, while often not worth too much, do have an historical value regarding the Civil War and American history (as does real Confederate money, newspapers, etc).
It all depends on what a person is interested in.
Paging Gov. John Sununu.
THANK YOU!!! FOR validating my post about stamps NOT being the pot at the end of a rainbow..
Speaking of stamps, did you all know that the government destroys the specialty stamps after they run their course in circulation, even though they are all “forever” stamps? Then they print a new batch of themed stamps so that the GPO has something to do.
Thanks for the info.
That is hilarious. “DISGUSTING!” (But it sounds suspiciously flirtatious, too...)
“So what are you wanting to do with them. Do you want to pawn them or sell them?”
“My good friend had an extensive stamp collection. It was sold by the weight. And not much”
Unfortunately both stamps and coins sank to such lows after the 1970/80s; they experienced a brief heyday when other investments weren’t performing, and never recovered from that. Our local coin/stamp shop branched off into baseball cards, “pogs”, just about anything that would be considered collectible. Before the owner died, he was reduced to having kids come in to play some kind of card game (like “Magic the Gathering” but more recent). I watched someone come in with a large box of baseball cards, and the owner offered him $10; when the prospective seller protested, the owner pointed to similar boxes around the perimeter and said nobody was interested in buying them.
At this point it is best to deal with collectors online (in blogs/forums); I can’t think of a better way to connect a seller with the ideal buyer.
I have Greek stamps overlaid with the eagle & swastika; I was told they were worth less because they WEREN’T canceled.
I got sold off binders of coins years ago to put together a down payment on a house; they were recent issue, very common. I held onto pre-1945 stuff, as well as more recent ones if the countries no longer existed (Rhodesia, Upper Volta, etc.). Great way to learn geography/history as a kid.
I have dozens of uncanceled Nazi stamps, but I don’t think they are rare; one in particular probably is (Hitler & Mussolini facing each other from the sides, with the German phrase “One people, one struggle” on it.
I have a couple of “kriegsgeld” (war money) from Germany (WWI); I don’t think it was legal tender outside of military facilities. I have some French Foreign Legion pieces as well; I sold the US militry scrip because it was hard to find rare ones.
The German Weimar money makes you feel rich; coins with a face value of 10,000 marks. Some of the money from that time was called “notgeld”, which I believe means “emergency money” - it had a lot of variety, as I believe different provinces made their own. Very colorful.
While the general disinterest of today’s young people in anything educational certainly hasn’t helped market prices, I would hesitate to recommend starting stamp/coin collections to anyone who is focused on profiting from them financially. I held onto many of my coins/stamps (that I myself had gotten for good prices at flea markets and such) because the offered prices were so low as the markets slid (and never recovered). Someday they may be worth something to my grandchildren, but they’ll probably be selling them to collectors from Red China or India.
You’ll have to search the internet re the value of German occupation stamps today but when I was collecting seriously, (started in 1952-60s), they were regarded as historically valuable and probably in short supply re destruction and/or lost during WW2 period.
There are collectors of German/Nazi memorabilia so they might be a source of potential customers. These stamps are also valuable as teaching items, showing today’s kids what life/history was like during the 1930’s/WW2 40’s and “why” they were marked as occupation stamps. There is a whole history lesson behind them re Danzig, Czechoslovakia, etc.
They like to see things up close and even to touch them esp. if they have a historical context.
If I remember correctly, even normal German stamps were reused after WW2 during the Allied occupation, marked by occupying power/zone (American, British and Soviet).
Some regular stamps, such as the British, often had a black band around them to signify a royal death, marking a historical event. I believe other countries also had this practice.
For very early stamps, the postmark, very often handwritten, can make a certain stamp valuable. The same for perforation holes.
Other stamps such as the Persian airmails of the 1950’s or early 60’s (with the Shah’s head on them) were exquisitely colorful, while the Vatican and/or Spanish “Catacombs” large-sized stamps were printing works of art. Ecuador had a masterful stamp series of their president and I think, George Washington, Lincoln and/or FDR on them. Mexico had something similar.
The skill of lithography printing has been lost on this computer-generated reproductions generation who don’t appreciate the work that went into printing not only stamps but book plates and even documents.
I am constantly finding fascinating documents at the National Archives, even from the early-mid 1900’s, where the printing and the writing were absolutely beautiful. For the educated, they are items to be admired. Stamps, in their own way, are worth looking at as more than just a piece of paper.
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