Stamp Appraisal: What a Stamp Collection Is Worth

The single most useful thing to understand before any appraisal: a catalogue value is a retail asking price for a stamp in Very Fine condition, not an offer for yours. Scott states plainly that its values are based on a grade of Very Fine unless otherwise noted, and that they reflect retail pricing derived from market analysis and reported sales from the previous year.

Two further details explain most disappointments. Scott applies a minimum value of 25 cents to most stamps, so a shoebox of four thousand common stamps "catalogues" at a thousand dollars or more while being worth a small fraction of that. And most stamps in most albums are not Very Fine: they are off-centre, hinged, toned or thinned, which moves them well below the listed figure.

A realistic way to read a catalogue is as a ranking rather than a price list. It tells you which stamps in your album are the ones worth looking at closely. What they will fetch is decided by condition, by how many other people are selling the same thing, and by how you sell.

These three things are different and get confused constantly.

• A verbal opinion is a dealer looking through material and telling you roughly what is there. It is usually free or cheap and is the right first step for an unknown collection.
• A written appraisal is a document stating an estimated value, used for insurance, probate, division of an estate or a charitable donation. The American Stamp Dealers Association describes an appraisal as an evaluation or estimate of the value of a collection and says that if you need a written one you should expect to pay the appraiser for their expertise, with the fee agreed before the work starts.
• An offer to buy is a dealer's own bid. It is not an appraisal, and a buyer has an obvious interest in the number being low.

A "free appraisal" advertised by a buyer is usually the third thing. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you know which one you are getting, and the protection is simple: get a second number from someone who is not buying.

The most expensive mistakes are made by owners trying to be helpful.

• Do not clean anything. Washing, erasing pencil marks or bleaching toned paper turns a saleable stamp into a damaged one.
• Do not repair anything. Tape over a tear, a trimmed edge or added gum all reduce value and are obvious to a specialist.
• Do not soak stamps off old envelopes. Nineteenth-century covers are usually worth more intact, and once the stamp is off the postmark, route and rate are gone with the paper.
• Do not remove stamps from album pages by pulling. Hinged stamps tear and thin. Leave the album as it is.
• Do sort roughly by country and keep the collection dry, flat and out of sunlight.

Then make a simple inventory: how many albums, roughly which countries, the earliest dates you can see, and photographs of anything that looks unusual. An appraiser can quote a fee far more accurately from that than from "a box of old stamps".

Each route trades speed against price.

Selling outright to a dealer is fastest and simplest. You get one payment, immediately, and the dealer's margin is built into the number because they carry the cost and risk of reselling. This suits mixed collections without standout items.

Auction consignment usually produces more for material with genuine rarities in it, because competing bidders set the price rather than one buyer. You pay a seller's commission, you wait for the right sale, and the result is uncertain. Auction houses generally want a certificate in place for anything expensive before they will take it.

Online marketplaces can work for individually identified stamps you are willing to list and post one at a time. They are poor value for bulk, and they put the whole burden of description and dispute handling on you.

One thing raises the result on every route: separating the handful of items that might be genuinely valuable and getting those certified, rather than selling the whole thing as an undifferentiated lot. Our guide to what makes a stamp valuable is the checklist for finding them.

For the great majority of stamps, a certificate costs more than the stamp is worth and is not needed. It becomes worth paying for when a stamp would be valuable if a specific claim about it is true: a scarce perforation, a watermark, a grill, an error, unused gum that has never been hinged, or a nineteenth-century classic.

In those cases the certificate is not a formality — it is the difference between a stamp you can sell at the higher figure and a stamp every buyer will discount because they have to take your word for it. Recognised expertising bodies include the Philatelic Foundation and the American Philatelic Expertizing Service in the United States.

Photograph a stamp and the app identifies it, which narrows down what you are holding before you decide whether anything in the collection justifies the fee. For a sense of what the top of the market actually pays, see most valuable stamps in the world.