Chapter 05
Evaluating What You've Got

This chapter will give you some general guidelines so you can evaluate the collection you inherited. By knowing what you’ve got, you will be able to better determine what to do with it. Everyone should read this chapter.

I need to cover a couple of “rules” before you do anything:

1. If you have acquired material from a collector who has just died, there may be recent correspondence from stamp dealers. You will need to look at this carefully and quickly as time is important. Some collectors receive material from dealers on approval. They select the items they want and return the rest to the dealer. You are under no obligation to keep any of this material. If you do not want to buy it, send it back to the dealer at once. On recently purchased material, dealers will sometimes be willing to take the material back. Usually the items must still be in their original packaging. If in doubt, ask the dealer if the material may be returned for credit.

2. If you find any circuit books from the APS or other organizations, call the organization to find out what to do with the books.

3. At this point in time, do not remove anything from albums.

4. If you have album sets, make sure each is numbered with a volume number. If not already numbered, use a sticky-note and label each volume in the order you find it on the shelf: volume 1, volume 2, etc. If there are clearly two or more album sets, use numbers like A1, A2, A3...B1, B2, B3, etc. Place the sticky-note on the inside-front cover if it will stick there or on the first page of the album if it won’t stick to the cover. Do not put the label on the outside as it will get lost quickly. Do not put the label on top of any actual stamps; it may damage them. If at all possible, the inside cover is the best choice. Some older stamp albums have pages which are easily damaged when a sticky-note is removed. The purpose of all of this is that you will probably be moving the albums to another location. You may later find it is very difficult to get them back in the proper order unless you have labeled them properly before hand.

5. If you do not know how to handle stamps properly without damaging them, please read chapter 19 now.

6. If the stamp collector had time to fill in the questionnaire in chapter 27, you can skip most of the inventory steps below. By reading what he/she wrote, you’ll probably know what’s in the collection. You may, however, wish to spend an hour or so to ensure you can find all the parts of the collection.

You’ll need to take a quick survey of what you’ve got. In general, you will find one or more of the following things:

1. An album of USA stamps.
2. An album set of world-wide stamps.
3. A book that contains entire sheets of USA stamps.
4. An album that contains first-day covers.
5. An album that contains USA plate blocks.
6. An album that contains a topical collection.
7. A box that contains more sheets of USA stamps.
8. A box that contains recent MNH USA stamps, coils of stamps or booklets.
9. A box that contains recent foreign MNH stamps.
10. A box that contains used USA stamps and a few MH or MNH ones.
11. A box that contains used foreign stamps and a few MH or MNH stamps.
12. A box or album that contains USA postal cards or stamped envelopes.
13. A box or album that contains commemorative panels or StampFolios or souvenir pages.
14. A box of covers.
15. Stock books of USA stamps.
16. Stock books of foreign stamps.
17. Stamps in a safety-deposit box or in a safe.
18. An album with only one country in it.
19. Other “stuff.” May be in boxes, drawers, or whatever. May include all kinds of material such as stamps on album pages without a binder, stamp supplies, books about stamps, catalogs, magazines, etc.

By “box” I mean a cardboard box of some sort. Shoe boxes are very popular with stamp collectors. Inside the box, the stamps may be loose; or they may be in glassine envelopes, file folders, sheet protectors, whatever.

If you have enough room, try to segregate all of this into the above 19 categories. Hopefully, you will not have stamps in all 19 categories! (I did though!)

5.1 A quick inventory

The next thing you need to do is to make a quick inventory of each category of item you found above. Use the list below and answer all of the questions. Put a check mark beside all the statements that match what you see.

1. An album of USA stamps.
(    ) A lot of stamps are before 1900.
(    ) Most appear to be F-VF.
(    ) Most appear to be lesser quality.
(    ) Most of the sets appear to be complete.
(    ) Most of the stamps are after 1940.
(    ) The stamps are pretty much mint.
(    ) The stamps are pretty much used.
(    ) The stamps are part mint and part used.
(    ) Many of the mint stamps are mounted to the album with hinges.
(    ) Most of the mint stamps are in mounts.
Name of the album ___________________________ (from front cover).

2. An album set of world-wide stamps.
Name of the company that printed the album ___________________ .
Total number of volumes ______________ .
(    ) Organized A-Z.
(    ) Organized in date/country order.
(    ) There are a lot of stamps before 1940.
(    ) The stamps are pretty much mint.
(    ) The stamps are pretty much used.
(    ) The stamps are part mint and part used.
(    ) Many of the mint stamps are mounted to the album with hinges.
(    ) Most of the mint stamps are in mounts.

3. A book that contains entire sheets of USA stamps.
(    ) Most of the stamps are after 1940 (face value runs from 3c to $5.00 or more).
Wild guess as to the total face value of all the sheets ______________ .

4. An album that contains first-day covers.
(    ) A lot of the postmark dates are before 1940.
(    ) Most of the postmark dates are after 1940.
Wild guess as to the number of covers before 1940 __________ .
Wild guess as to the number of covers after 1940 ___________ .
What percentage of the covers have addresses on them ________ .

5. An album that contains USA plate blocks.
(    ) Most of the stamps are after 1940 (3c to 44c values, sometimes higher).
(    ) Most are mounted to the album with hinges.
(    ) Most are in mounts.
(    ) Some are mounted with hinges; some with stamp mounts.
Wild guess as to the face value of all the stamps _______________ .

6. An album that contains a topical collection.
What is the subject of the collection? ______________________ .
(    ) Most of the stamps are in mounts.
(    ) Most of the stamps are used.
(    ) Some are used, and some are mint.

7. A box that contains more sheets of USA stamps.
(    ) Most of the stamps are after 1940 (face value runs from 3c up).
Wild guess as to the total face value of all the sheets ______________ .

8. A box that contains recent MNH USA stamps, coils of stamps or booklets.
Wild guess as to the face value of all the stamps ________ .

9. A box that contains recent foreign MNH stamps.
Skip this for now.

10. A box that contains used USA stamps and a few MH or MNH ones.
Skip this for now.

11. A box that contains used foreign stamps and a few MH or MNH stamps.
Skip this for now.

12. A box or album that contains USA postal cards or stamped envelopes.
(    ) Most are fairly recent (1940 or after).
Wild guess as to the face value of everything ___________ .

13. A box or album that contains commemorative panels, StampFolios or souvenir pages.
Wild guess as to the number of each _________ .

14. A box of covers.
(    ) The covers are recent.
(    ) The covers are from the early 1930s and have lots of airmail stamps.
(    ) The covers are from the late 1800s.
(    ) The covers are from the mid 1800s.
(    ) Some of the covers have no stamps, but have some sort of hand-stamped marking (stampless covers).

15. Stock books of USA stamps.
Skip these for now.

16. Stock books of foreign stamps.
Skip these for now.

17. Stamps in a safety-deposit box or in a safe.
Stamps in a safety-deposit box are probably the most valuable stamps. Try to inventory each one individually. If they are marked with a catalog number, write that down. Otherwise, write down color, denomination and a description of what the stamp pictures or depicts. Stamps in a safe normally imply high value also, although not as much as stamps in a safe-deposit box.

A word of caution is in order. Some collectors put stamps in a safety-deposit box merely as an act of self delusion. The owner believed these stamps had the most value in his/her collection, which may in fact not be much. You will need to examine each individually or have them appraised to be sure.

18. An album with only one country in it.
Name of country _______________________ .
(    ) Stamps are mostly after 1940.
(    ) There are a lot of stamps before 1940.
(    ) Most of the stamps are used.
(    ) Most of the stamps are mint.
(    ) The mint stamps are in stamp mounts.
(    ) All of the stamps are mounted using hinges.

19. Other “stuff.”
May be in boxes, drawers, or whatever. May include all kinds of stuff such as stamps on album pages without a binder, stamp supplies, books, magazines, etc. Segregate any catalogs, magnifying glasses, stamp tongs and that sort of thing that you find. These may come in handy later. That’s all you need to do with this material now.

5.2 Overall value of your collection

Do not forget that at any time you can simply have the collection you’ve inherited appraised by an expert. There may be a charge for this, or it may be free. See chapter 18 for more details.

Probably, however, you don’t want to do that yet. You are curious as to whether you are going to get to pay off the house mortgage with the stamps you inherited. This may be a little dangerous right now as you are still so new to stamp collecting. However, I will try to give you some tips that may give you a rough idea of what you’ve got. After you get through with the rest of the book, you will want to come back and reevaluate your stamps.

Inherited stamps generally fall into three different categories: high value (you can sell for over $3,000), medium value (you can sell for $1,000 to $3,000) or low value (you can sell for $0 to $1,000). The reason for the $3,000 number is that’s the minimum sale an auction house usually wants to handle. The $1,000 is usually the minimum a large mail-order dealer wants to handle. Obviously, you will have more options in how to sell a high-value collection than you will have with a low-value one

Another option has emerged in the last 10 years: online auctions.   Sites such as eBay now allow sellers to sell just about any kind of stamp they might have, from low-value stamps to high-value stamps.  This is covered in Chapter 15.
 

5.3 High, medium or low?

You need to form a mental picture of whether you have a high-, medium- or low-value collection. Here are some quick clues:

1. Do you know how the collector obtained his/her stamps? Did he/she buy at auction houses in person or through the mail? (Indicates high-value collection.) Did he/she buy stamps at local dealers occasionally or while on trips overseas? (Indicates medium-value collection.) Did he/she get most of the stamps by soaking them off incoming mail? (Indicates low-value collection.) Did the person ever make stamp exhibits for stamp shows or was he/she a frequent speaker at stamp clubs or shows? (Tends to indicate high-value collections.)

2. Can you find an inventory of the collection or an insurance policy listing a replacement value for the stamps? If you can, a rough guess is that your stamps can be sold for 25% of the insured value. Therefore, if the insured value is $12,000 or over, you probably have a high-value collection. If the stamps weren’t insured, you probably have a low- or medium-value collection. I want to reemphasize the word probably here. There are people with high value collections who never bothered to obtain insurance. There are also people with collections valued at, say, $60,000 that a dealer would have no interest in. What I am talking about here are clues that might tell you something.

3. If you found any stamps in a safety-deposit box, and presuming the collector was not deluding himself/herself as to the stamps’ true value, you can pretty much assume you have a high-value collection. You will want to look up the stamps in a Scott catalog to verify this. How to read a Scott catalog is covered in chapter 22. You may have a Scott catalog among the material you inherited. Without doing some research in the catalog, or getting an appraisal, it’s pretty difficult to say if you have stamps worth $3,000 or $300,000.

A word of caution.

Suppose you knew the collector well, and he/she was never known for buying really high-value stamps. Later on, after you’ve learned to use a Scott Catalog and are poking around the album, you run into a $900 stamp. Before you pack your bags for a vacation in the Caribbean, take a look at chapter 23. There’s a good possibility you have found a fake stamp or a look-alike stamp. There are many stamps that look more-or-less the same, but the difference is value is huge. Even expert collectors are sometimes fooled by these stamps.

4. Did the person leave you any clues, written or verbal, as to what the collection is worth? Many collectors have a general feeling about the value of their collection, and they may have mentioned it to you. If you heard that the collection is worth $40,000, and you heard that after 1988, a guess is that you might be able to sell the collection for $10,000. If you heard the same thing before 1988, a better guess would be $5000. Note that this can be dangerous. Many collectors tend to brag about their collections, especially to relatives. It is not uncommon for a collector to overinflate the value of his/her collection.

5. Do you know if the collector collected stamps as an investment? If so, you may have a high-value collection.

6. Did the person collect stamps primarily because he/she liked to examine the stamps and paste them into albums? Was the person happy when someone gave them a big envelope of stamps saved from incoming mail or a souvenir packet of stamps obtained on a vacation? If yes, this indicates you probably have a low-to-medium value collection. The more stamps there are in the collection, the more of a chance that it’s a medium-value collection.

7. If you have albums, go back and look at the first two or three pages of some countries.
a. Are the pages almost empty? (Indicates low-value collection.)
b. Are the pages about half full? (Indicates low-to-medium value.)
c. Are the pages almost full? (Indicates medium-to-high value.)
d. Are the pages almost full of mint stamps? (Indicates high-value collection.)
e. Are the pages almost full of very nice-looking, used stamps? (Indicates medium-to-high value.)
f. Are there a lot of stamps stuck in on the sides of pages, on blank parts of a page or on blank sheets? (Indicates medium-to-high value. Most albums assume you will never get the really high-value stamps, and they don’t leave a space to put them. If a collector does get a high-value stamp, he/she may not have a space for it in the album and will usually stick it on the side of a page. If you are checking stamps in a Scott catalog, always check the stamps that are not in spaces in the album.)

8. If none of this information is available, or it is not applicable to your stamps, keep reading!

5.4 General rules of thumb about stamp prices

Listed below are some very general rules of thumb about selling stamps, and how much money you can expect to get for them when you sell. These should be used only as a guideline and should not be taken as gospel. At this point in time, you should only be looking for very ballpark-type estimates of what you’ve got. As you get further along in the book, you will find out how to get appraisals from experts, how to get “free” appraisals, how to read a Scott catalog, etc.

To re-emphasize, this chapter will only give you a gut feel as to what your collection is worth. If you find clues that you have a high-value collection, then you will need to either look up individual stamps in a catalog and/or have a formal appraisal made.

1. Stamps found in a safety-deposit box (e.g., Zepps or Inverted Jennies) are your most valuable stamps. Find them in a Scott catalog. Your best bet for the really high-value stamps is to sell them at a stamp auction house, on the Internet, or directly to a collector.

2. You can usually get more money selling a stamp to a collector rather than to a dealer. A collector may be happy to pay 50% of SCV because he/she is getting the stamp at 50% off. A dealer cannot afford to buy the stamp for more than about 25% or 30% of SCV because a) he/she has to mark up the stamp to make a profit to stay in business, and b) he/she probably has to give a discount off of full SCV to be able to sell the stamp.

3. Finding a collector who wants to buy all your stamps may be difficult if not impossible.

4. Stamps sold at auction [an auction house or an online auction] generally bring more than stamps sold to a dealer.

5. Most auction houses will not sell your stamps at auction unless they will sell for over $3,000.   Online auctions, however, are a possibility for selling stamps, and you certainly don't need to meet the $3,000 limit.

6. An auction house will charge a commission of 10% to 20% of what the stamps sell for.

7. MNH-USA, issued-after-1940 stamps can usually be sold in bulk for 80% or so of face value. These stamps may be used as postage for 100% of face value.

8. Some MNH USA stamps are worth more than face value, however. Especially if you have sheets of stamps, you should determine which ones are “premium.” More on this in chapter 14. Note: your most likely bets for premium USA stamps will be se-tenants that are very colorful.

9. Used USA stamps issued after 1940 are generally worthless. Sorry.

10. Used USA stamps with a face value of $2 or more can be an exception. Keep an eye out for the $5 stamps, Priority Mail and Express Mail stamps.

11. MH USA stamps issued after 1940 should generally be used for postage.

12. If you have a lot of stamps from around the 1850s, you should have a formal appraisal done. Early stamps are very difficult to identify, even with a catalog. There are too many subtle differences. If you spot a lot of stamps from 1850 to 1900, and especially if they are great looking stamps with face values of 5 cents and up, by all means seek an expert opinion.

13. If you have covers from the 1800s, or stampless covers, you should have a formal appraisal done.

14. Covers from the early 1920s and 1930s should be appraised as this was the beginning of airmail service, and some may be valuable. This is especially true on covers mailed internationally, covers with airmail stamps and covers marked “Registered” (sometimes marked just with the letter “R”followed by a few numbers). Registered marks are normally red or purple.

15. Used foreign stamps issued after 1940 are generally low value. There are exceptions to this as high-denomination stamps may have a significant value.

16. MNH foreign stamps issued after 1978 are usually worth 25% of SCV.

17. Stamps from China, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong have gone up recently.

18. Stamps from Latin America, Central America, the Middle East and Africa are generally low value.

19. Some British Empire countries in these areas may be a little stronger.

20. Cacheted first-day covers after 1940 sell in bulk for 20- to 30-cents each if there is no address printed on the front. These include the “mass-produced” covers manufactured by companies such as Artcraft, Artmaster, Farnum or Fleetwood. (You can usually find the company name somewhere in the artwork.) FDCs with unusual cachets, such as those with original hand painted designs by world-famous cachet artist Chuck Beery, may sell for much more. Non-cacheted, non-addressed first-day covers may sell in the 10- to 15-cent range.

21. Cacheted first-day covers after 1940 sell in bulk for around 10 cents each if there is an address printed on the front.

22. Christmas Seals issued after 1920 are generally worthless.

23. Revenue stamps and postage-due stamps are usually low value as so many were printed. (There are exceptions of course.)

24. Note: This is a very, very general statement. A world-wide album set with a reasonable number of stamps in it, a good assortment of earlier stamps (1/2 to 3/4 of the earlier pages full), no super-high-value stamps in it, mixed used and MH in earlier stamps and MNH after around 1960, and in reasonably good shape (not a lot of humidity damage, brown spots, etc.) will usually sell at auction for around $75 per volume.

25. Here is another very, very general statement: If you have a mixed MNH, MH and used collection with a good number of filled spaces, count the number of stamps and multiply by 5 cents. (If you don’t want to count all the stamps, guess the average on a typical page, then count the pages in one album. Multiply those two numbers together, and multiply by the number of albums.) This might give you a ballpark value of the collection.

26. Souvenir pages, StampFolios and commemorative panels are fairly new. Souvenir pages and commemorative panels are listed in The Postal Service Guide to U.S. Stamps and the Scott Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps. Souvenir pages and commemorative panels generally sell for 10% of SCV to a dealer, or higher if you can find a collector who wants them. These items are very hard for dealers to sell. There are also collectors who seek these items on the Internet. From talking with dealers, it appears that StampFolios are not being received too well. You may have to sell these items at a lower price.

27. You may actually end up with more value by donating your stamps to a charitable organization and taking a tax deduction. See chapter 7.

Okay, so what does all of this mean? When you took your inventory a few pages ago, you answered a bunch of questions. Suppose you found an album of full sheets of USA stamps and guessed the face value was $1,000. Based on the rules above, you can expect to get $800 minimum for the album. That’s an estimate. If you have a lot of sheets that collectors (and therefore dealers) want, you can make more than this. How to do this will be covered in the rest of the book.

Another example: You found a box of 100 first-day covers from the 1960s to 1980s. They had addresses printed or typed on the front. As long as they are in reasonably good shape, you can expect to get about $10 total for the lot. Of course, if you can find a collector who wants to buy it, you might get more. Again, this is the sort of option that’s covered elsewhere in the book.

Another example: You found a USA album that has all used stamps and 95% of them are from after 1940. That album has virtually no resale value at all. However, there are still nice options available to you (need a tax deduction?) as to what you can do with it. These are covered in the next chapter.

5.5 The “Ignore-these-for-now” items

When you were taking an inventory earlier, you may have noticed that I marked several items as “ignore these for now.” What are you going to do with them? It depends on several factors:

1. If you have a high-value collection, you might choose to just send everything to an auction house, and let them deal with it. They may make several lots out of what you send, auction some off or buy some directly from you. There is also the chance they may want to return material they do not consider auctionable. More than likely some material will simply be put into a “grab bag” collection and sold for a low-dollar amount.

2. If you have time, you can try to sort these items into one or more of the other categories. For example, you can pull all the MNH USA stamps out of a box of mixed used and mint stamps. This is what I call “stamp mining,” digging around for nuggets of gold!

3. If you have recent MNH foreign stamps in a box, it’s probably because the album supplements have not arrived from the album publisher, and there was no place to put the stamps. You can sell the stamps in glassine envelopes or wait for the pages to arrive and mount the stamps in their proper places. Note, however, it may take a year or two (or more) to finally get the page that has a spot for your stamp on it.

4. Here is a “rule” you need to be aware of: Don’t spend a lot of money on albums and supplies trying to organize a collection. Dealers and collectors pay for the stamps, not the albums. For example, if you have a box of common stamps, don’t spend $30 to buy an album to mount the stamps. Not only will you not get any more money for the stamps in the album, you’ll be out $30. A simple box of glassine envelopes should take care of 95% of your organization problems.

5. If you have a stack of album pages, treat it as an album. It does not matter that it doesn’t have a binder. A 10- x 13-in. manila envelope makes an excellent binder.

6. If you have a low-to-medium-value collection, you can spend time trying to organize the material. Or you can find a buyer for it “as is.” All material in boxes and envelopes is saleable at some price. The price, however, may not be more than a few dollars depending on the overall condition. It’s a question of how much time it will take to organize and whether the effort is worth it.