Stamp collections come to us the same way every time. Somebody has died, there are eight albums and a shoebox of loose material in the spare room, and nobody left in the family collects. The honest questions are always the same two: is any of this worth money, and how do I find out without being taken advantage of. This page answers both.
The honest answer about what most collections are worth
We would rather tell you this at the top than at the end. Most general worldwide albums assembled between the 1950s and the 1980s are worth modest money. Millions of people collected in those years, the stamps were printed in enormous numbers, and there are far more sellers than buyers today. That is not a reflection on the person who built the album. It is just supply.
What does carry real money is narrower than people expect. Early United States material, particularly anything before 1900. Early airmails. Classic issues of the German states, the British colonies and the early European countries. Good postal history. Errors and varieties. Complete unbroken runs in top condition. And anything genuinely scarce, which is usually scarce because so few survived rather than because so few were printed.
A collection can hold both at once. It is very common for an album that is worth a hundred dollars overall to contain one page that is worth several thousand, and finding that page is the whole point of having somebody look properly.
Catalogue value is not the same as what a collection sells for
This is where most disappointment comes from. A catalogue such as Scott lists a price for every stamp, and people add those figures up and arrive at a very large number. But a catalogue price is closer to what a dealer would ask for one perfect example that somebody actively wants, not what a mixed accumulation changes hands for.
Real collections sell for a percentage of catalogue, and the percentage depends almost entirely on condition and on how much of the material anybody is looking for. Better material earns a higher percentage. Common material earns very little regardless of what the book says. Anyone who values your collection at full catalogue is either not being straight with you or is not going to pay it.
The things that quietly destroy value
Paper is unforgiving and nothing that happens to it can be undone later, so this is worth reading before you touch anything.
Never soak a stamp off its envelope. In a great many cases the envelope is worth considerably more than the stamp sitting on it, because the postmark, the route and the date are the part collectors want. Soaking turns a piece of postal history into a common stamp.
Don’t lift stamps out of the album to send them loose, and don’t rearrange the collection to make it look tidier. The way somebody built a collection tells us how they collected and what they were chasing, and that helps us value it.
Don’t use tape, glue or modern self-adhesive mounts on old material. Don’t try to remove old hinges. And keep the albums out of sunlight, out of the attic and out of the basement, because heat, damp and light between them have ruined more collections than any dealer ever has.
What we actually look at
Condition first, because with paper it decides nearly everything. Centering, whether the perforations are complete, the colour, and whether there are thins, tears, creases or pinholes. On unused stamps we look at the gum and whether the stamp has been hinged, since a never hinged example of a scarce stamp can be worth several times a hinged one.
Then what the material is. Country, period, whether it is a complete set or a broken one, whether there are blocks, sheets, booklets or plate numbers, and whether the collection specialises in something. A focused collection of one country built by somebody who knew what they were doing is worth far more than the same money spread across the whole world.
And we look at covers separately. First day covers from the mass market era are common and worth little, but genuine postal history, wartime mail, ship and airmail routes, censored mail and early usages can be the best thing in the whole estate.
How to tell us what you have
You don’t need to know anything about stamps to do this well. Photograph the outside of each album and the spine, then photograph a dozen pages from different parts of it, including the earliest pages, which are usually at the front of each country. Photograph anything that is kept apart from the rest, because material somebody separated out is usually the good material.
Tell us roughly how many albums and boxes there are, whether it is worldwide or one country, and anything you know about who built it and when they stopped. If there are old dealer receipts, insurance valuations or auction catalogues with the collection, send those too.
Getting a real number
One of our specialists goes through what you send and comes back with a written opinion and a price. The appraisal is free and there is no obligation to sell anything afterwards. If we think a collection belongs at specialist auction rather than with us, we will say so.
If you go ahead, shipping is prepaid and fully insured, two of our people open and record the shipment, and you are paid within 48 hours of accepting the offer. If you decide against it, everything goes back insured and at our cost.
Stamps almost never arrive on their own. If the same room held coins, medals or jewelry, look at our pages on coin collections, military items and ring collections, or the full list on our what we buy page. You can start any time on our sell online page.