Should I have stamps certified???

mrcommem

I am new to the stamp forum and have a few U. S commemortive stamp that relate to my U. S. Classic Silver and Gold commemoratives. Most of them are from the early 1900's and were issue at or about the same time as the commemorative coin. When I acquired these stamps I issisted that they were mint, unused, original glue and never hinged and some were rather expensive at the time. The stamps include the 5 Louisiana Purchase stamps issued in 1903-4, the 4 Panama Pacific issues in 1915, some of the small valued Columbian stamps from 1892, Pilgrim stamps from 1920, Hugeunots stamps from 1920, U. S. sequicentennial stamps from 1926, and various state centennial stamps from the twenties and thirties. Would it be worth the time and expense to get these stamps graded by one of the third party services and if so which one is the best? My game is coins so I am a novice when it comes to stamps.

KentuckyJ

Yes. You appear to have some nice stamps in your collection. Have them certified to verify you actually received what you paid for. PSE would be my recommendation as the best philatelic TPG for this job.

StampAlarm

What's the centering like?

mrcommem

Here are some scans of some of the stamps. I will try to add more later.

mrcommem

Here are the Louisiana Purchase commems

KentuckyJ

You will get back few high grades, due to the centering and margins. I would now say certify only if the PSE fees are no problem for you.

edueku

I would not submit any of these even for a regular (ungraded) cert. Maybe the 10c Louisiana Purchase. The Pan Pac 10c has several flaws. Several of these(if you get a GRADED cert) will not even grade a VF-80.

LouisCamp

The 10c Pan-Pac is reperfed at top, the 10c Louisiana looks reperfed at right...

Lou

dougwtx

I hope you didn't get taken on these. You always hear about some dealers ripping off newbies or the uninformed. True, they could be nhog, but the perf problems, centering, reperf, etc..., would make them drastically less than Scott catalog value. Kind of like comparing an MS coin that has been whizzed, altered, or harshly cleaned; value is no where near MS grades.

mrcommem

I thank you all for your information. I maybe could have saved a few bucks if I had consulted this forum first. Since I mainly want to display these with my Silver Commemorative Coins that are encapsulated in PCSG holders, what would be a holder that would be good for these stamps so that I may display them with these coins?

KentuckyJ

> what would be a holder that would be good for these stamps


PSE offers TPG encapsulation. PSE slabs are thinner but otherwise almost identical in size and quality to PCGS. Both PCGS and PSE are divisions of CLCT. Look around the Steve Crippe website and you will find pics of PSE slabs.

gradedstamps.com