ScottV Stamps

We were invited to a "yard sale" event at the San Diego Philatelic Library, and it was nice to see so much material on sale and so many of the regular collectors we've known for decades. Boy, they had some deeply discounted lots, including this batch of four to ten ounce off paper mixtures by country for only $1 or $2 a bag.  That's a surefire way to get things sold and to clear out a file cabinet of old stock.  At $10 a bag I would have skipped these, but there's no way to fail at $1-$2 a bag. There were a lot of folder lots, including one from Cambodia that said $325 CV for $20.  A first look saw just a lot of CTO topical sets, which actually list for LESS THAN the minimum catalog price of 25c each (a set of 7 for $1.50 for example).  But wait, the last 20 pages or so were all mint and most of the sets had the matching souvenir sheets.  Mint, the price is x2 or x3 or even x4 the CTO prices.  So yes, $20 is perfect.  We have already pulled most of the...

One binder caught my eye before I even bought the box, a big reason why I got it.  It started with about 10 pages of mostly USA Christmas seals, starting with 1917 to 1930 and some postal stationery versions I have never seen before.  Will go in a folder for $15. Then about 15 pages of Costa Rica with some good early issues: will go in a folder for $20. Then 15 pages of early Bulgaria.  Good selection but the prices are always disappointing.  Goes in a folder for $10. Finally, 20+ pages of Germany, mostly Berlin issues with pages of semipostals with 2-3 of almost every issue.  Starting with the transitional early issues with 5N, 6N, 8N numbers.  I pulled about $80 in sets/singles, moved the under-collection to some stock pages, and still have essentially full pages to go into a folder for $25.  And more stock pages to fill, probably $15 for those in the end. What's left?  About a 3-inch-thick stack of manila stockpages packed with common stuff....

Next we looked at a small stockbook.  All that was needed was to move the old Japan onto a stockpage (probably $6), and the old Korea onto a stockpage (probably $6), take the rest out for a general mixture, and the stock book might get $2. Then there was a cluttered stockbook of manila pages, with lots of old but common USA stamps.  For these, we always look for precancels, perfins, and any unlisted oddities.  There were a bunch, including some narcotics stamps, some Washington State revenues, a label for a 1934 Potlach, and some other odd items.  Also a tiny corner of one page that had a spread of the very earliest USA Christmas seals -- an instant lot to sell.  Easily $20 of revenues and labels, and half a page each of the perfins & precancels ($4 each) and $10 for the Christmas seals.  And the stockbooks still looks full.  Maybe $5 for that, or break it down more. The stockbook of DDR was just packed thick with on-paper commemoratives, 1960s-197...

We did the Sandipex stamp show again today (Sunday), but hardly any collectors came by, and half of them were grumpy.  Probably since they're almost all former military, and tomorrow is the inauguration from hell. Anyway, we made a few bucks over $100 and I bought a box of albums from a neighboring dealer for $100 as they were packing up.  That's always the best time for deals.  The box said $150, and they probably would have given it to me for $125 earlier in the day.  End of day?  $100. I looked at a few of their box lots.  This one had some binders with pages that caught my eye.  Packed stockbooks with old narcotics revenues poking out.  Postmarks, precancels, perfins, back of book stuff.  One binder had about 25 pages of Berlin issues with a lot of duplicates tucked under the others.  One binder had on-paper DDR just flopping out as I turned each page, but one pages had mint DDR souvenir sheets from the 1950s and I know those are $5-...

At the stamp show today, I got cornered by a random collector who had three stock books to sell.  One had some good early Canada, one had common Canada and a final page with some revenues, and the other was common 10c-each material.  He started off by complaining, literally that "all the other guys are colluding against me." You know what?  If you're going to start off by accusing people, you're going to have poor results.  He thought they were out to get him because they all gave different answers to "how much is my stuff worth?"  I had to explain that if Chuck said "$20" it means he's clearly not interested.  You're not asking "what is the universally accepted value?" you're asking "what is this worth to you today?" I had to explain that all the dealers here already have a big stock of early Canada.  They're not going to pay top dollar for things they already can't sell.  I tried all different scenarios, an...

The stamp catalogs seem to have a hard time with some modern issues, mostly from African nations where the postal service has been erratic, or places like Afghanistan where the postal service was non-existent for most of the 1990s-2000s.  Sometimes it's easy to find cancelled-to-order or mint examples from after 1990, but we very rarely see postally used stamps from some of these places.  Much less complete covers with stamps on them. While breaking up a collection of Malagasy Republic, it was good to see a page from after 2000.  Those are the hard-to-find items. Here are some examples of stamps that the 2023 Scott catalog could not put a value on ... there is just a dash for a price.  Here are the unpriced #1403A,f: Then there are some where the catalog does price them but at surprisingly high values.  Here are #C200B-C, that listed for $130. As if that's not enough to suggest how rare these stamps can be, and how difficult they ware to research or verify, here...

At the last stamp show where we had a table, one of the other dealers brought a box full of stock books of pre-1940 stamps from various countries.   The Austria books were some of the best stocks of classics I have ever seen. I ended up buying a book that was all Austria offices abroad and revenue stamps.  The offices in Turkey and Crete were fine but while those have had a lot of reprints and forgeries, this batch looked better than most.  Same with the page of Lombardy-Venetia.  I put together about two hundred lots of sets and singles, and a few bulk batches -- you hardly ever see these in batches of 50 or 100 or more. What really caught my eye were the eight pages packed with revenues.   Almost all were from the 1870 series so the variety was not nearly as wide as I thought at the time.   Trying to find a value for revenues is tricky, since the dependable catalogs can be 20-30 years or of date.   So if a stamp listed for $50 but...

In many African countries, stamps after 2000 are hard to find, especially used stamps that have done actual postal duty.   Either very few legitimate stamps were issued by the actual postal authorities, or there is rampant theft, fraud and forgery, or customers just use barcodes and labels. Theft and forgery are a difficult area.   When you see a post office issue stamps with overprints like "VALID" or "LEGAL", it's a good indication that whole shipments of stamps were either stolen or duplicated.  The idea would be that only stamps with this overprint would be accepted on the mail.  But couldn't the offenders just add their own overprint?  Sometimes, far from any industrial print shop, maybe that is too difficult and that little "LEGAL" print is enough of a deterrent. Here is a selection of stamps from Congo with LEGAL and AUTORISE (authorized) overprints: #1146,8,9 LEGAL overprints.  The catalog says that the underlying set of stamps "was ne...