Advice / opinions please

dallasactuary

I imagine you have seen this question before on this board but here goes:

I have a large Scott's album 50%-75% full of stamps. The album is from circa 1970 and the most recent stamps in it are from the early 1970's; how far back they go from there I don't know. It is an international album with pages in alpha order by the country represented, a page or two for the tiny countries, several for Canada, U.K., etc.

I have no interest in the collection (my heartfelt apology to anyone I just offended) but I have no idea if the contents of this album are worth $10, $100, $1,000 or whatever. I could sell it on ebay but I don't know which pages to scan and I obviously can't scan all of them. Is there any way, short of looking up each and every stamp in a price guide (what would one of those cost?, by the way) to tell if I have anything worthwhile or just a bunch of junk? If there are shops that could look it over, does anyone know af any in the Dallas area?

If I just roll the dice and put the album on ebay and describe it as well as I can without naming any individual stamps, what kind of price do you guess I would get (ballpark)?

Any and all advice or opinions are welcome and appreciated.

-Steve

dougwtx

Ebay could probably fetch you anywhere from $30 to maybe $100; depending on whose looking. If the album is in great shape and at least half full of stamps, then I would be looking toward the $100 end. The first page should say which volume you have as there are over 30 volumes to the International series. If the album is in near perfect condition, many people will pay $30 or more just for the album. If you look in the yellow pages under stamps, hopefully you can find a dealer near you. They will low-ball a price, so you should expect a little more off of eBay, but it will give you a rough estimate. If you ever get near the San Angelo area, I know a dealer there. One thing to remember if putting on eBay is to list how much shipping will be. Those things weigh quite a bit.

Doug

ZohVle

steve

yeah thast a big deal getting a whole collection and trying to one by one identify each issue and then all the cross referencing once you have. its almost finite, im going through similar.

however, i disagree with the other person who posted. taking some time out might be worth your while. just one stamp in there MIGHT be worth hundreds / thousands based on some subtle feature / error or what ever.

scott sells catalogues where you can get general information on each issue for each country. to buy a full set of catalogues though would cost several hundred. to find out all the subtle details for each stamp in the collection you would have to obtain specialized catalogues for each country, which would also be quite an investment.

you might want to visit the stanley gibbons web site http://www.stanleygibbons.com/home/index.asp. they are a world authority on stamps (in my opinion) and have avaialable endless publications to help you with your pursuit. also, you can go to stamp dealer web sites and see what they are selling stamps for and that will give you some reference (expect no more than 10% - 70% of dealer price if you sell to a dealer). some dealer web sites have images of the stamps. dont forget that they usually only list stamps in a kind of generic fashion, dont usually go into detail about which version of an issue etc a stamp is and so on. one site that has pretty thourough l,isting is arthur ryan in england, you can refer tyo their list then cqalculate what those prices would be in U.S.D. (and also deduct dealer buy price) arthure ryan site is http://www.gbstamps.co.uk/stamps.asp you can of course do your own dealer searches, maybe some one who sells stamps for the whole world like http://www.allstamps.co.uk/ (ityped in the phrase "world stamps for sale")

identifying, organizing, grading, etc is an endless maze that will be hard for you to hop in and hop out of. the other person is right in that a dealer will low ball you if you do not approach them with some background on the collection and if all you get is a hundred or two, is it really worth it when you could just stiick it in a good stoage container, put it away and leave it for someone else in your family later down the road, if you know what i mean. money is money and it just melts away. the stamps are miniature works of art, have them, keep them enjoy them, eventually you will be glad you did.

anyway, good luck

wayne