Stamp
Collecting Basics
A fascinating and
fun hobby appealing to people of all
walks of life and ages.
This page includes both Collecting Basics
and How much is stamp collection Worth?
Click on the links below.
Stamp
Collecting in General
This is hard to
write! Why do people collect
stamps, and why should you join our
number?
One of the great
things about stamp collecting is that it
truly can be enjoyed by many different
people, with many different interests,
varying amounts of spare time, and
varying amounts of money, too! You
don't need to have anything special, and
you don't need to be anyone special, to
be a stamp collector - it really is a
universal hobby.
Plus it is one of
the few hobbies out there that actually
can involve its members in both buying
and selling - indeed it seems that some
people get more fun out of the trading
than they do out of the collecting side
of things. (Note that I say
"fun" - many people enjoy
trading, but few people get very wealthy
at it!). And, for younger people,
stamp trading teaches them valuable
lessons in terms of the best use of their
money, and how best to buy and sell, and
so on.
Collecting stamps
is educational - but not boring!
Indeed, the educational aspect of stamp
collecting - the almost imperceptible
slow learning about foreign countries and
cultures as you collect their stamps and
notice their native plants, animals,
ethnic customs, festivals and holidays,
famous people, etc.
Many people find
that their interest in stamps evolves to
an interest in the countries that issued
the stamps they collect, and stamp
collecting provides an excellent way to
encourage younger people to develop a
broader interest in and awareness of the
wider world around them.
Collecting stamps
can be a family pasttime, and even a
family business. It can be a great
common interest shared by the whole
family, and can form a basis for
mini-vacations when the family travels to
exhibit and trade at stamp shows around
the country (and even around the world,
too).
Collecting stamps
can be as affordable as you choose, or as
expensive as you wish! Whether your
budget is $2 a week or $2000 a week,
you'll find plenty of ways to spend it,
and will get plenty of pleasure in
return.
Collecting stamps
can tie in with other (thematic)
interests. If you are a dog lover,
maybe you will collect dog themed
stamps. If you really are a rocket
scientist, then maybe you'll collect
space themed stamps. If you like
old cars, then guess what - you'll find
lots of old car stamps also to
collect. Adding a philatelic
extension to your other hobbies can be a
fun way to enjoy your other interests
more fully, and at low cost - for
example, it is much cheaper to collect
old cars on stamps than as real cars!
Stamp collecting
is an excellent antidote to high-stress
modern life. I was/am, myself, your
typical "Type A" aggressive
workaholic and spent way too much of
every day hard at work, and way too
little time relaxing and calming down
from the tense demands of high pressure
work. Stamp collecting is the
complete opposite to such horrible things
- it is hard to get too stressed over a
stamp, isn't it! And the quiet slow
careful sorting through of stamps,
identifying them, mounting them in
albums; all of this is a wonderful way of
relaxing and enjoying life at a much
calmer pace.
Welcome
to the hobby!
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The short answer
- "It depends"
The slightly longer answer - "Not
very much"
Usually when
people want to know how much their stamp
collection is worth, there is an implied
issue that they don't want to spend a lot
of time or trouble to find out the answer
themselves. The interesting reality
is that the more time you invest in
valuing your stamps, the higher the value
you can establish for them.
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What
Value are you Looking For?
When you want to
know how much your stamps are
"worth", that depends on
whether you want to know replacement cost
- how much it would cost you to replace
the stamps - that is, an insurance
valuation, or the resale value of the
stamps - how much you could get if you
sold them. But, before we get to
the details of the valuing process, here
first is a quick rule of thumb approach
to give you at least a first indication
of what you might have.
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Quick
Rule of Thumb
Some people seem
to think that old stamps become more
valuable as they get older, and I get
lots of emails from excited people
talking about having just inherited an
old collection of stamps, perhaps from a
grandparent. Time for two reality
checks :
Firstly, stamps
don't automatically become more valuable
as they get older. Valuable stamps
- that is, stamps that have always had a
high value - may tend to increase in
value, but ordinary stamps of low to no
value will stay, sadly, at low value
points, probably for ever! So just
because you have a collection of old
stamps does not mean your collection is
automatically valuable.
Secondly, and it
is really a repeat of the first rule,
only collections of stamps that have
always been valuable will be valuable
today. In other words, if the
original collector was buying stamps,
while actively collecting, that were
'expensive' and 'valuable', then you are
in luck, but if that collector was buying
cheap inexpensive stamps, they are
probably still cheap and inexpensive
today. Now, for a 'trick' - you can
often times tell what type of stamps are
in the collection just by quickly looking
at how the collection is presented.
The more care that that collector put
into displaying his (her) collection,
then the more likely that some of the
stamps are to be valuable. So if
you have a few ordinary commercial albums
of stamps with lots of gaps missing on
the pages, you probably don't have a
valuable collection, but if you have
lovely albums with crafted pages and lots
of complete sets and duplicates with
minor variations, etc etc, then you're
more likely to have some good valuable
stamps in among them.
Now, let's look
in some more detail at the valuation
process, starting first with the
replacement or insurance value
determination for the collection.
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Replacement/Insurance
Value
If you are not
thinking of selling the stamps, but just
want to get a value for insurance
purposes, then that is fairly easy.
You can use any catalog as a basis to
establish the value of the stamps, simply
by adding up the catalog values of all
the stamps you have. After you have
done that, you may possibly want to
adjust this final total figure downwards
to reflect the general marketplace
reality that most stamps can be
conveniently purchased for less than full
catalog price. Generally if you add
up the catalog values and then reduce by
perhaps 20%, you'll probably have
established a fair replacement value
figure. If you have specially
valuable stamps, you might want to list
these separately and calculate their
values one by one (some might even be
worth more than catalog price).
For insurance
purposes (note I have no specific
experience here, so if this is an
important consideration for you I
strongly suggest you speak with your
insurance broker) you will probably find
that your regular householder's insurance
policy has very limited coverage for
stamps, and you will need either to buy a
special extra policy for your stamps or
get a specific "rider" added to
your main policy. In my case, I
found the insurance offered through APS
to be much better value than adding a
rider to my regular insurance policy.
If you have a
fairly high value of stamps, so as to
make sure you have no insurance problems
if you have a claim, I'd recommend you to
videotape some of your collection - film
yourself slowly turning through the pages
of your albums, and you can speak out
loud and point to specific stamps as you
do so - saying things like "this is
a rare stamp, Scott number 9999. which is
worth $55" and so on and so
on. That way you have at least
generally established the size and nature
of your collection; of course, if you
have a very valuable collection with lots
of individual high value stamps, you
probably should get a photographic record
of these individual stamps.
Whatever you do to document your
collection, be sure that you don't store
the documentation with the stamps!
That way, if your stamps are
stolen/destroyed, your documentation to
support your insurance claim will
hopefully be safe somewhere else.
Don't forget to
include the value of your albums as well
in any such calculation - the cost of
albums, pages, mounts, etc, can sometimes
end up being nearly as much as the low
value stamps within them!
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Resale
Value - Sold as a single lot
Maybe you
inherited a collection of stamps and have
no interest in them and know nothing
about them and just want to sell
them. What is your collection worth
in such a case?
The sad answer to
that is "very little, and a lot less
than you would think". Most
stamps (certainly Russian stamps, and
probably true for most stamps of most
countries) are worth very little, whether
they are new or used. Indeed, you
can buy very old mint, unused, US postage
stamps for less than their face
value! Used stamps are usually
worth even less than new ones (although
nice clear postmarks on very old stamps
can sometimes add to their value).
The value of
stamps in a collection when sold all at
once can sometimes also depend on how
they are currently stored and
displayed. If they are all neatly
in albums with each stamp clearly given a
catalog number, then it is easy for
someone who buys the collection to know
what they have and to either resell it or
mix it into their own collection.
If the stamps are just loose, and with
some of them still on pieces of
envelopes, then they are worth a very
great deal less.
In general terms,
a collection of 1000+ stamps can be
expected to have a value somewhere
between 2c-10c a stamp when sold in
bulk. If the collection is
predominantly newer and used stamps (ie
stamps from about 1960 onwards) then you
can expect a value of probably between
1c-4c (for a sale on eBay); if the stamps
are nicely displayed or organised, and if
there are more older ones, then you can
expect a value to be closer to 5c-10c
each.
You probably can
best sell such a collection on
eBay. Describe it in as much detail
as you can, show images of lots of the
pages of the stamps, and explain that you
know nothing about stamps and just
inherited or whatever the collection and
that it hasn't been "picked
over" (ie an expert hasn't gone
through it and pulled out the occasional
really valuable stamp already).
This method will take very little of your
time, and may bring a good return.
Good luck!
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Resale
Value - Partially Broken Down
If you have a bit
more time, you could sell the collection
in a series of smaller lots. For
example, you could sell one part as all
Tsarist era Imperial Russia, another part
as, perhaps, pre-World War 2, another
part as WW2-1960, another part as
1960-1991 (the end of the Soviet Union)
and another part as newly independent
Russia and the other CIS countries.
This may increase the total value that
you get from selling the stamps, because
it means that people can bid specifically
on the types of stamps they most want,
and also, by breaking down what might be
a very large collection into a series of
smaller lots, you make it more affordable
for more people to bid on various parts
of it.
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Resale
Value - More Fully Broken Down
The ultimate in
breaking down stamps is to sell them set
by set. This is probably not
sensible for low value sets - the cost of
an eBay listing fee, the postage costs,
and everything else, mean that for a set
worth 50c you would end up getting next
to nothing net back to you, and the buyer
would end up potentially paying 50c + 34c
postage to you + 34c your postage fee to
send the stamps to him - he would end up
paying twice what they are worth.
But for higher value sets, this makes
sense, and also even some of the lower
value sets can be grouped into two sets
per lot or whatever.
This can get you
up to 25%-50% of the catalog value of the
stamps, depending on the particular
stamps, how well you display them,
etc. But the time it all takes is
massive, and your hourly rate actually
will go down compated to the earlier two
sales strategies! If your time has
little value (eg if you are retired) then
this makes sense, but otherwise, if you
are busy, it probably does not.
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Time
Costs of Valuing - Is it Worth It?
Which leads to
the strange circumstance - the stamps are
probably worth less than the cost of
determining exactly what they are
worth! How much is your time worth
per hour? The chances are it will
"cost" you more hours of your
time trying to maximise the value and
sales value of your stamps than you
"earn" in extra return from
selling in a more detailed manner.
Especially if you
are unfamiliar with the stamps to start
with, and have to buy a catalog and then
carefully research each stamp, you'll be
spending huge amounts of time to make
trivially small amounts of money over and
above what you'd get if you simply sold
the entire collection in one single lot
on eBay.
I hope this
rather brutal assessment is - while not
what you hoped for - at least of some
assistance.
HAPPY
COLLECTING!!!!
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