selling unused stamps.
 

I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10? If
so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

Thanks for your advice.

Ken

selling unused stamps.
 

Convenience .. you need .41 but you only have .25 .. so you put on 2?
Might as well sold the lot for 75% of face. Most stamps after 1930
fit into this category .. they have scott value of 0.20 but thats for
indentified/sorted VF shape .. good news is a lot of people think like
you and every day I get philatelic mail that is covered. Order nutmeg
catalogs if you want to see beautiful uses of older stamps, they are
the best at discount postage.

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 01:24:28 -0800, "1787" wrote:

I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10? If
so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

Thanks for your advice.

Ken

(RCSD) selling unused stamps.
 

On Jan 13, 4:24 am, "1787" wrote:
I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10? If
so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

Thanks for your advice.

Ken


That is the point.

My not quite so local stamp shop sells mint postage to customers
at 90%. Thus they must buy at about 75 % to make a profit.

So the advice that we usually give sellers here is to use them for
postage, rather than sell them, where the stamps are modern mint,
issued in large quantity, with nothing much to warrant a premium.

Another factor to consider isa what volume of postage stamps
do you have to sell off and how quickly must you recover the
monetary value. It is easy to use up ten sheets of mint
postage but if you have to move 10,000 sheets - that is
another story.

Blair


Blair

..

selling unused stamps.
 

..... Order nutmeg catalogs if you want to see beautiful uses of older
stamps, ...

Nutmeg catalogs???
I thought I understood English pretty well, but what has this spice to to
with stamp catalogs?

Can you enlighten me?
Jan

selling unused stamps.
 

Perhaps
http://www.nutmegstamp.com/


"Jan Doggen" wrote in message
...
..... Order nutmeg catalogs if you want to see beautiful uses of older
stamps, ...

Nutmeg catalogs???
I thought I understood English pretty well, but what has this spice to to
with stamp catalogs?

Can you enlighten me?
Jan

selling unused stamps.
 

In a recent message "1787" wrote:

I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10? If
so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

You would probably use them for postage.

However, if you had 400 sheets of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvedge), then you might consider an offer of
$3500 (rather tha $4000) in a different light, as you may not be able to
use that many stamps in the rest of your life!

--
Tony Clayton
Coins of the UK : http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk
Sent using RISCOS on an Acorn Strong Arm RiscPC
.... Be *excellent* to each other

selling unused stamps.
 

The people who have replied are correct. Buy prices for modern U.S.
mint stamps are usually around the 75% when you sell to a dealer, and
frequently at that price they want the stamps sorted and bagged by
denomination. You can get slightly higher for full, undamaged sheets
if you look around (one dealer I know gives a little over 80% for this
material.)

You can find lower prices a little than 90% for buying discount
postage online (the previous respondent was citing the price at a
shop, where they have higher overhead). Do a Google search for
"discount postage", or contact me off-list for some suggestions of
places I've used successfully (I don't want to appear to be
shilling). One source I bought from was really nice: when first-class
U.S. domestic postage was 39c and each extra ounce was 24c, the dealer
supplied entirely 13c and and 8c stamps. Among the 13c stamps
supplied were the bicentennial issue with the drum-and-pipe band, the
design of which spanned three stamps horizontally. I got to use the
whole painting for first class mail, and got a discount on it.

Sometimes you can buy at 90% and get theoretically salable material,
too: I recently picked up a $200 face lot of plate and zip blocks for
$180 shipped.

I have a dealer that lets me "cherry-pick" his recent postage buys and
get what I want at face (rather than a discount from face.) I've
picked up whole dinosaur, space, and wildlife of North America panes
this way, as well as souvenir sheets.

And pretty much every time you buy stamps from a dealer in the U.S.,
or get a U.S. catalog, you're seeing older material (1940s - 1970s)
used and nicely canceled on your mail. From dealers in New York, it
used to be that you'd frequently get nice United Nations postage used
on material, before the U.N. building made it more troublesome to use
their postal counter.

Best,

Joshua McGee
http://www.mcgees.org

On Jan 13, 1:24 am, "1787" wrote:
I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10? If
so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

Thanks for your advice.

Ken

selling unused stamps.
 

In a recent message Alan wrote:

Tony Clayton wrote:
In a recent message "1787" wrote:

I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10? If
so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

You would probably use them for postage.

However, if you had 400 sheets of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvedge), then you might consider an offer of
$3500 (rather tha $4000) in a different light, as you may not be able to
use that many stamps in the rest of your life!

Wouldn't it be better to use them as postage, 50c insted of 41c, you
would lose less and as the mail increased over the next few years you
would be losing even less ?

I agree, if the quantities are relatively small and there is no need to
raise money in a hurry.

Lets consider the next stage. If you has foolishly(?!) acquired
the entire issue of US stamps since the war 10 sheets at a time, it
is unlikely that you could use them all for postage in the relatively few
years left to you, and you might have to pay for that emergency operation...

Sale of those sheets at 75% face might be tempting in that scenario.

Actually that is not quite as unlikely as it sounds. In the early days
of the present Queen's reign the printing processes produced regular flaws
(flyspeck philately, as it is sometimes known). It was not uncommon
to buy entire sheets, examine them for flaws, and sell off the rest.

--
Tony Clayton
Coins of the UK : http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk
Sent using RISCOS on an Acorn Strong Arm RiscPC
.... Misspelled? Impossible. My modem is error correcting.

selling unused stamps.
 

"1787" wrote in message
...
I have seen several reports of people selling stamps to a dealer for a
surprisingly small percentage of cat.

Let's say I want to sell a major dealer a sheet of 40 common, unused (NH)
25c US stamps (with selvage). Am I to expect an offer of less than $10?
If so, why wouldn't I just use them for postage?

Thanks for your advice.

Ken

kind responses snipped

Thank you ALL, very much for the good information and the great advice. I
really appreciate you all helping me out.

I can see that I have several options since I don't have more than a couple
hundred sheets all totaled of various denominations. I think I will use the
more mundane and recent ones for postage and keep the rest, because deep
down I really enjoy the stamps (which I think I had forgotten somehow) and
many of them are nice examples of the engraver's and artist's work. I think
the most unusual ones I have are sheets of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 cent postage
due stamps. I remember thinking how odd it was that you could buy a stamp,
the purpose of which meant you owed the post office that much money. Thanks
again.

Ken