What is the best way to sell stamps?

[TiasTreasures]

Unused blocks of four are very popular with some specialist collectors. May not make you a millionare, but worth listing.

[dardonboi]

I just ran across an album of stamps of the world. It is hard backed and dated 1956. There are quite a few stamps in it that have hinges. Several countries that I don't think exist anymore. Would it be worth listing?

[meebo1]

I have learned that anything is worth listing. It can take ages to find a buyer, but if you can afford to store it it'll be worth it in the end

[TiasTreasures]

I just ran across an album of stamps of the world. It is hard backed and dated 1956. There are quite a few stamps in it that have hinges. Several countries that I don't think exist anymore. Would it be worth listing?

I do remember an article, or maybe a post in a forum, when I was doing the research. Hinges were standard until sometime in the 1960's when the new slotted pages became available, so his advice to collectors was to accept that. If they wanted a stamp from before 1960 they might not be able to find it without hinge marks. So that alone shouldn't stop you.

As for whether they're worth listing, that depends on you. You could research the stamps individually to find their value. This is the most time-consuming part. You might hit the jackpot and find some that are valuable, but most of them will be very low-value. In my case, once I find the value, it's so easy to set up an auction I'm listing all of them. You'd better have a scanner, though!

If you don't feel up to the research, you could also offer the album intact, but that generally won't fetch a high price because the buyer doesn't know exactly what stamps it contains.

[HerMajesty]

There are people who don't care if stamps are hinged or unhinged. Like me. Maybe I am unhinged because of that, but the few stamps I collected over the years I got just for the beauty of the stamp, the interest in the country, the history of the stamp, or the fact that it was a quiet hobby. I also keep on the lookout for bulk stamps, postmarked or not, inexpensive, that I put in my artwork. So the audience for stamps can be as varied as the stamps for sale.

[dardonboi]

Thanks so much for your help. Granny

[somersethedge]

You could research the stamps individually to find their value. This is the most time-consuming part. You might hit the jackpot and find some that are valuable, but most of them will be very low-value.

If you don't feel up to the research, you could also offer the album intact, but that generally won't fetch a high price because the buyer doesn't know exactly what stamps it contains.

I can confirm both parts of the post....

I once bought an unsorted box of albums of stamps at an auction about two years ago (admittededly it cost me £45 for the box... but it contained around 20 albums) the first album I looked at had an old collection of UK stamps in it which I put back into (another) auction house a few months later and that one album made over £1200... but the original lot was really a "rummage box" which took 6 months to go through one stamp at a time.

[meebo1]

I know our loft holds a number of albums. So when we eventually get to them I'll have plenty to do

[DoubleHappinessRecords]

Wow, you sound like me! Inherited thousands of them. I joined a couple of stamp collector forums and asked a lot of questions.
1) If your stamps, like ours, were not mounted in albums, they won't have hinge marks and that's very, very good. Make sure you mention in every listing. NH or MNH in the title, "no hinge marks" in the description.
2) Collectors prefer single stamps or complete sets. If you have the first six in an issue of seven, it's unlikely anyone will buy the short set.
3) If the stamps you have are already identified with the catalog number, that's great. Otherwise, you're going to have to look them up and include them in the title because the country plus the catalog number is the unique identifier used in searches.
4) The prices listed in catalogs are about right for a brick-and-mortar stamp shop. Online sellers don't have as much overhead, so they should sell for less on the internet. I get prices from a variety of websites (there are a LOT of sites specializing in stamps), and then undercut them by a small bit (5 or 10 percent), and pretty much ignore the catalog value.
5) If you decide to give a shipping discount for multiple purchases, make it clear that the discounted shipping only applies if they wait for your invoice and make only one payment. If they pay for each one invidivually, using PayPal, you're going to get nailed for a 30 cent transaction fee for each stamp. Since many of them are very low-value, you lose money on any stamp selling for less than 30 cents.
6) I asked if I should bother listing the low priced stamps, and most collectors said I should because they often are missing one or two of the low-value ones, also they might buy a bunch in one order if there is a shipping discount. Some of them were beginners and said they preferred the cheaper stamps for now.

And good luck! It's actually kind of interesting doing the research, but you can go brain dead listing stamp after stamp from one country. I mix them up now so I stay awake.

Thanks for that, lots of useful stuff. Good point especially about the combined invoice, that hadn't occured to me.