Jan 25 Yard Sale at the Library

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 these sets, matched up the souvenir sheets, and got them ready to scan and sell.

There was one little binder I had passed over because it was a USA lot, and I really don't care for US stamps.  But Anne picked it up and saw it was a completely handmade little album about the issues of the 1930s with lots of hand drawings and carefully written text.  Sold for $2.  Later in the afternoon, as she was scanning it, she saw in the intro that it was all put together back in 1940.  Wow, a fine little history lesson.  At first I was bummed that it didn't go all the way to the $5 high value, but hey, the set kept running until 1953, so the author/artist covered every stamp that was issued at the time and a bunch of other commemoratives.  Nice.  For this one, we wanted to scan it to forever preserve the work that was done.  And then we will add it to our boxes full of folders for maybe $8.  Any serious collector would probably be happy to have these pages with all their personality, to make their collection stand out.

A stand-out lot was a stockbook saying "Over $600 CV - $50."  One look: it was a stock of early Thailand, just 4 stock pages, but up to 50 of each.  Sold.  You almost never see these in any quantity.  We were able to pull out a few $15 to $20 sets, some $5 to $10 singles , and 70% of it is in glassines for a rainy day, plus the empty stockbook can easily sell for $5.

The last item of note was this set of three thick binders full of someone's collection of USA postmarks from 1920s to 1950s, sorted by state.  It was only $7 and would be difficult to sell; our best shot would probably be to take out each state, put it in its own folder, and take them to the shows at a low price.  To sell them online we would have to take about 200 photos and then deal with shipping costs.

Another binder as stamps from Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Palau and some other countries.  You rarely see any supply of those come to market.  There were only about $200 of catalog value, but again, they're not found regularly.