Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Do you use a cat. and keep records every year for the total cat. value?
Do you take the cat. value and reduce it by 50%?
Do you some other method to guess what your stamp collection is worth?
1898
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I do not keep a record of value of my collection.
I collect for my pleasure and my pleasure only.
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Yeah I don't keep a record of the value either. My biggest collections are postal history and there are no catalog values for most postal history.
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I have no use for catalog values and in my opinion actual market value is only meaningful when someone is dispositioning material.
In general, stamps and postal history are horrible financial investments unless you are a real (food on your table depends upon your philatelic sales) dealer. If you are a dealer, knowing market value is critical since you actually make your money when you BUY, not when you sell. Market values are ephemeral and are constantly changing over time. But since I rarely sell anything and am not currently planning on selling anything, calculating the market value for the tonnage in my stamp room would be a waste of my time.
I do know that I, or my family, will make 100% ‘profit’ whenever my material finally gets dispositioned. I know this because when I buy material, I make the decision based upon how much intrinsic enjoyment the purchase will bring me. For example, if I buy something that I estimate I will spend 10 hours on doing discovery, writing up, making pages and mounting and I value my leisure time at $10 an hour; then buying it for $100 means when it gets dispositioned it will be 100% profit.
Don
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I have a large collection, but at any time can tell exactly what it's worth, nothing as I do not sell stamps!
1898
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05:10:22pm
I am an old school collector since I mostly use albums rather than self made pages or stock books. When my wife and I started collecting she put Scott numbers and prices above the stamps and I have continued this. It will make it easier for whoever has to dispose of the collection. I don't do totals though so only have a gut feeling as to the values of the collections.
Edit: When I say "values" I know that book values are silly! I usually consider that when my collections are disposed of it will be nowhere near those numbers. Book values are only useful to give relative values.
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@1898,
I think this was a fair and reasonable question. I understand where the others are coming from in their answers, but on this one I think I'm understanding where you are coming from.
Now, I'm not into stamp collecting from an investment put of view. I do like though to keep track of my collections and I use Stampworld.com to do just that. Stampworld allows me to easily find a particular stamp and just by clicking a checkbox to indicate that I have a copy (be it Mint, Used etc) in my collection. As I'm doing that Stampworld automatically gives me their total value for that collection. So I know what the Stampworld value of my Australian collection is. Being a person who just can't leave well enough alone I go one step further and take the total value for each of my collections (and I have about 52 of them) and put them into a spreadsheet, which gives me the total value of all of my collections. Now, this does nothing but gives me a bit of fun to watch the total value of all my collections grow over time.
I know that the total value of my collections as indicated in the spreadsheet isn't the real value of the stamps, but that doesn't really matter, because I, like the others are not into it from an investment point of view. The true value in my stamp collections is the fun that I get out of it and the friendships I've made along the way.
I hope that answers your question, at least from my perspective.
Regards ... Tim
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As I am a buyer and reseller, I don't care what the value of my "inventory" is. I just hope the ultimate sales value exceeds the cost. Of course I want to be somewhat profitable, but now I use all my sales to buy more inventory. At some time I hope to only buy to replace sold stuff. Not there yet, but I'm having a blast doing this, and that exceeds any ultimate profit. Certainly not expecting to "get rich".
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My collection lies somewhere between worthless (to a dealer) and priceless (to me). I use a variety of catalogs, new and old, to help identify my stamps but never as a guide to value.
Dale
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Dale, you must have read one of my old posts, we both agree.
I use the catalog as the means to know which stamps I'm missing in my collection, and about prices? they make me laugh,
stamps that catalog for several dollars are for sale in many websites for 5 or 10 cents.
And you are right, what price tag would you put on 60 years of enjoyment?
Tony, a lifetime freelance stamp collector.
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I do not understand the point of catalog values. Say in 1945 I purchased a set of mint, hinged set of US Zeps at the then current Scott catalog value of $75. And I now see in my 2021 Scott catalog that my set of mint, hinged Zeps are valued at $1060.
Do I celebrate this increase? Of course not, I cannot tell if this is 'good' or 'bad' unless I start doing more discovery and more work.
So I go to an inflation calculator and see that my 1945 $75 dollars is the equivalent to $1,382 dollars in 2021. So I have lost over $300 dollars. But wait, catalog values are not close to actual market values so I spend more time on more discovery.
So I dig around and find that based upon eBay sold values my set of mint, hinged Zeps in 2021 was worth between $650 and $850. Oh, ok… I have lost about $600 on them.
And now with the discovery I have invested more time throwing good money after bad… what was the point again? 
If I want to find the actual market value today, this week, I list them for auction on eBay and whatever I get is the current value. Next week it might be different. Next year and largely based upon inflation, they will be worth something else. /shrugs/
Don
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@Don(51Studebaker),
All true, but at times one has a need to know the general value of one's collect e.g. insurance purposes, or just because you want to.
Regards ... Tim
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I did calculate the value for a while for insurance purposes (rough approximation) but do not track values on ongoing basis. I do maintain an inventory in Stamp Manage. Stamp Manage includes value but never look at them.
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rrraphy:-
You missed a comma and three zeros after the 8 !!!
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Some very interesting and valid comments here. I certainly do agree with the majority here on the catalog values being ephemeral, and that most of us as collectors value the research and the knowledge more than the monetary values.
I do have a database of all of my stamps, and instead of catalog values I record the price which I paid for each stamp purchased, as well as the date of the purchase. So I guess my $ cost is more important to me than a wildly fluctuating market value. If and when I bequeath my collection, I will be past caring what current market value is. I can hope it is a high value, but the collecting and the learning are what I am paying for. You can't just pass those attributes on, unless you are sharing those experiences with, for example, your successor(s), and that must be pretty rare these days.
I can't imagine a scene 50 years from now, where a family enthusiastically gathers around the kitchen table to leaf through great grandad's stamp albums. Typing the last sentence made me laugh.
Oh yes, having the price paid for a stamp readilly available is a great aid in deciding whether or not I will purchase a nicer copy at a future date. It also helps me track my own monetary inflation data.
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I guess I agree with Dale's comment about being somewhere a wee bit above worthless to a dealer to priceless to me.
What I told my wife and my daughter is if I go before my wife was to take my shop and all the tools and hire a auctioneer and sell everything. Have a big Who-Ha all day celebration in my name. But the stamp collection...I'll have the names of some trusted stamp dealers in one binder to call to see if they might be interested. They might get a bit more interest there instead of trying to sell them in our one horse town.
As far as ME keeping track of the value...nah...not interested. I think I buy everything right. I've built a Microsoft Access database that is tracking all the collections that I've bought so that I have a running total of everything that I've spent over the past year since I've started up collecting again (NOTE: I'm still updating the darn thing...and I'm still buying more collections...and I'm slowly getting stuff cataloged...starting with 36,000 FDCs....yay!)
Mike
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Although I do not collect stamps as an investment, not a good idea unless one is in the market for very high-priced and rare stamps, I do keep track of my collection in a program called StampCAT; no longer available but still supported. I do enter values from catalogues but the program also allows me to add a great deal of other useful information about the stamp, history of the stamp, condition and add scans of the stamp. For me, the value is only useful for insurance purposes and it is good practice to have some kind of list of stamps with values in the event of a claim. Maybe when I pass the collection on to relatives they may be excited about this valuation, but I do have notes explaining that this figure is not what they can expect to get if sold, may be 15%?. Part of my collection is a topical one based on the philatelic history of the British Royal Navy and in StampCAT I can add detailed notes on the stamp and its relation with the navy, battles, explorations, captains etc. As these stamps are in a stock book this is the best place to add these details.
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07:08:59pm
"and what value"
The value is not the reason I collect things but you really do have to consider it. The CV is silly but I usually consider 20% of CV to be a reasonable approximation of value. It's just my opinion but what do you think?
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I don't.
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And I don't.
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"where a family enthusiastically gathers around the kitchen table to leaf through great grandad's stamp albums."
I do not think families do this for almost anything except maybe an old photo album but I may be around different families. Stamp collecting at its core is a solidary hobby.
Using catalog values is a convenient benchmark, but then you can apply the proper adjustment.
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Just a silly thought, how much of your collection is made up of minimum value stamps ? a stamp dealer will pay zero for them and you might get 17 % for the good stuff. I did my kids a favor and stamps are not mentioned in any family trust.
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The question is interesting. I keep track of purchase value and will use catalog value as a benchmark. Having an inventory is most important for me but I struggle with that as I don’t have a lot of free time and it’s time consuming. This is more in reference to the extra material I have accumulated and will eventually sell, maybe when I retire. Thus, I like to have a benchmark price, whatever it might be, for those items I have inventoried, whether it be individual items or collections. The reason for benchmarking is, while I don’t trust Scott or Michel to express the actual value of the item, it can be useful to me as a determination of relative value between two items. For example, is the catalog value of an early stamp higher if used or mint and to what degree?
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philb,
Agreed. I think it is common to find collections where 10% of the stamps represent 90% of the market value. Single items that catalog under $20 (US) each are often not even included in market valuations. Making things even more challenging is the fact that those top 10% of higher catalog value items are the ones most likely to be faked, forged or have significant condition issues.
The internet has brought much greater availability and access to material than any other time in our hobby. But one aspect of this is that a lot of that access is to lesser quality material. I do not feel that this is a bad thing, I support collecting any way a person desires or can afford. But these types of collections often generate less demand and less return, and this really should be accounted for when trying to understand any valuation.
Don
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If someone says "My stamps are worth $10000". it has no reference. If someone says "My stamps have a Scott catalog value of $10,000", you have a reference but then this can be vague too since Scott values are for VF centering. It is common for sellers to sell for some percentage off Scott and many expect buy at well below Scott (25% to 50%)
This is from an ad from Dr. Robert Friedman & Sons in the AP.
The ad states mostly F-VF (this could be strict F-VF or range from F to VF). The $2280 value is for the Indian States collection in VF condition so we know the catalog value is not the true catalog value of the collecting.
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It would be helpful to know which version (year) of the catalog was being referenced.
Don
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I keep lists in Excel for each country based collection which have catalog #, catalog value, grade, and whether unused or mint non-hinged. The various country totals are summarized in an All Collections spreadsheet with a grand total. I include a column of relative percentages for the various countries which attempts to reflect an expected percentage of Scott value that each country might have.
I, also, added up the USA stamps only from my two active International based collections as I was curious as to how much progress I had made on these items in particular in the world collections and found I had a lot more than I had expected. I do envision eventually having stamp lists for all of the International albums as well. Given that the main 1840-1963 collection has ten binders and over 43,000 stamps representing almost exactly 50% of the stamps required to complete the albums this is going to take a lot of time but will be beneficial in providing me with a detailed list of which stamps I have.
Currently I use Scott values from the 2022 catalog as I purchased a full set to celebrate my retirement in 2021.
Country collections include USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Mexico, Syria, and Canada plus two additional USA - Lighthouse and Canada - Palo albums which I started work on after my main albums reached a stage where I could no longer envision additions without a major lottery win. 
Lately my purchases have slowed significantly due to availability to me of desirable, mint stamps locally especially of lower value worldwide stamps which are the hardest for me to locate.
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10:04:29am
As to total value of collection, I have been an avid stamp collector for over 50 years and if I would check CV and add everything up it would be scary! Considering the material I have CV for the total collection would have to be between a quarter and half a million, which is a bit nuts!! I think CV's are way too high but quite often that seems to be what sellers want. Maybe for exceptional examples, but not for average centered stamps. I think somewhere around 20% CV is reasonable but for material I really would like to add to my collection or if it's a page filler (Yes, I know, that sounds silly!!) I will pay more sometimes. But I do quite often pass up material I would like to own if the price is too high. I'd be stupid not to!! I also am very careful with shipping prices, especially on E-Bay!
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My current catalog value total for all collections with the caveat that modern issues after 1970 have never been included and the worldwide collections have only had the up to 1940 USA issues cataloged is just above 240,000. For the estimated retail values I would estimate on the order of 60,000 for pricing that would be low enough to attract purchasers at a stamp show who could see the stamps in person. Only the oldest collection for the USA includes any used stamps.
My advice to my wife if anything happened to me is that any offers below 30,000 would be unfair to the collection and should not be considered.
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The Greece Hermes Head collection that I posted (link below) has a 2021 Scott catalog value of $43,400 (US).
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_ma ...
I highly doubt that if I listed this on eBay that it would even come close to 10%, probably more around 4%-5%. These classic era Greek stamps are fairly popular and market demand pretty good. But it would never get close to the 10% mark because of the ratio of higher CV stamps to lower CV stamps.
The marketplace is full of people just like us; we already have all the common material and are seeking the harder to find material. This tends to make a 'glut' of the common material and I think this is why we have seen common material market value drop so much over the last 10-15 years. But prices for the harder to find material remains strong.
This is why I never trust any auction Lot description or listing which throws around 'Catalog Value' without a complete listing or images of the entire collection. I do not think a good watermark is simply XX% of catalog value, you have to also account for the ratio of higher/lower stamps AND condition of the material.
This is also when shopping for bargains can come back to haunt you; the majority of people know what really nice material is worth and will price it accordingly. If a person is wanting to build an investment level collection, they certainly would not be getting material from 'bargain' sellers like NY Stamps. Nothing wrong with buying bargain material and enjoying the hobby to its fullest; but it is vastly different than buying and expecting a great return.
Don
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For several years now I've been working on adding my collection, wish list, and spares into colnect.com. There is a hidden field where I keep a Scott catalog value for stamps -- usually those that I want or that I have available to swap -- since it can be useful to know a relative catalog value when swapping. This information can also be exported into spreadsheets to calculate equitable trades.
In addition to swapping, it is also helpful to know the relative catalog value when making up approval books, since I try to price stamps at a fraction of the catalog value. My duplicates notes in colnect.com are often handy.
Perhaps someday I will have a general idea of the "worth" of my entire menagerie of albums, etc., to help with estate sale valuation, but hopefully that day is far off still. At any rate, it is all relative -- whatever the buyer will pay at the time. Retail values in a catalog are relative for collectors like me.
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12:54:15pm
How do you keep track of your stamp collection value?
Do you use a cat. and keep records every year for the total cat. value?
Do you take the cat. value and reduce it by 50%?
Do you some other method to guess what your stamp collection is worth?
1898
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02:45:04pm
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I do not keep a record of value of my collection.
I collect for my pleasure and my pleasure only.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
Yeah I don't keep a record of the value either. My biggest collections are postal history and there are no catalog values for most postal history.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I have no use for catalog values and in my opinion actual market value is only meaningful when someone is dispositioning material.
In general, stamps and postal history are horrible financial investments unless you are a real (food on your table depends upon your philatelic sales) dealer. If you are a dealer, knowing market value is critical since you actually make your money when you BUY, not when you sell. Market values are ephemeral and are constantly changing over time. But since I rarely sell anything and am not currently planning on selling anything, calculating the market value for the tonnage in my stamp room would be a waste of my time.
I do know that I, or my family, will make 100% ‘profit’ whenever my material finally gets dispositioned. I know this because when I buy material, I make the decision based upon how much intrinsic enjoyment the purchase will bring me. For example, if I buy something that I estimate I will spend 10 hours on doing discovery, writing up, making pages and mounting and I value my leisure time at $10 an hour; then buying it for $100 means when it gets dispositioned it will be 100% profit.
Don
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04:54:40pm
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I have a large collection, but at any time can tell exactly what it's worth, nothing as I do not sell stamps!
1898
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
05 Oct 2023
05:10:22pm
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I am an old school collector since I mostly use albums rather than self made pages or stock books. When my wife and I started collecting she put Scott numbers and prices above the stamps and I have continued this. It will make it easier for whoever has to dispose of the collection. I don't do totals though so only have a gut feeling as to the values of the collections.
Edit: When I say "values" I know that book values are silly! I usually consider that when my collections are disposed of it will be nowhere near those numbers. Book values are only useful to give relative values.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
@1898,
I think this was a fair and reasonable question. I understand where the others are coming from in their answers, but on this one I think I'm understanding where you are coming from.
Now, I'm not into stamp collecting from an investment put of view. I do like though to keep track of my collections and I use Stampworld.com to do just that. Stampworld allows me to easily find a particular stamp and just by clicking a checkbox to indicate that I have a copy (be it Mint, Used etc) in my collection. As I'm doing that Stampworld automatically gives me their total value for that collection. So I know what the Stampworld value of my Australian collection is. Being a person who just can't leave well enough alone I go one step further and take the total value for each of my collections (and I have about 52 of them) and put them into a spreadsheet, which gives me the total value of all of my collections. Now, this does nothing but gives me a bit of fun to watch the total value of all my collections grow over time.
I know that the total value of my collections as indicated in the spreadsheet isn't the real value of the stamps, but that doesn't really matter, because I, like the others are not into it from an investment point of view. The true value in my stamp collections is the fun that I get out of it and the friendships I've made along the way.
I hope that answers your question, at least from my perspective.
Regards ... Tim
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
As I am a buyer and reseller, I don't care what the value of my "inventory" is. I just hope the ultimate sales value exceeds the cost. Of course I want to be somewhat profitable, but now I use all my sales to buy more inventory. At some time I hope to only buy to replace sold stuff. Not there yet, but I'm having a blast doing this, and that exceeds any ultimate profit. Certainly not expecting to "get rich".
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06:00:20pm
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
My collection lies somewhere between worthless (to a dealer) and priceless (to me). I use a variety of catalogs, new and old, to help identify my stamps but never as a guide to value.
Dale
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
Dale, you must have read one of my old posts, we both agree.
I use the catalog as the means to know which stamps I'm missing in my collection, and about prices? they make me laugh,
stamps that catalog for several dollars are for sale in many websites for 5 or 10 cents.
And you are right, what price tag would you put on 60 years of enjoyment?
Tony, a lifetime freelance stamp collector.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I do not understand the point of catalog values. Say in 1945 I purchased a set of mint, hinged set of US Zeps at the then current Scott catalog value of $75. And I now see in my 2021 Scott catalog that my set of mint, hinged Zeps are valued at $1060.
Do I celebrate this increase? Of course not, I cannot tell if this is 'good' or 'bad' unless I start doing more discovery and more work.
So I go to an inflation calculator and see that my 1945 $75 dollars is the equivalent to $1,382 dollars in 2021. So I have lost over $300 dollars. But wait, catalog values are not close to actual market values so I spend more time on more discovery.
So I dig around and find that based upon eBay sold values my set of mint, hinged Zeps in 2021 was worth between $650 and $850. Oh, ok… I have lost about $600 on them.
And now with the discovery I have invested more time throwing good money after bad… what was the point again?
If I want to find the actual market value today, this week, I list them for auction on eBay and whatever I get is the current value. Next week it might be different. Next year and largely based upon inflation, they will be worth something else. /shrugs/
Don
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
@Don(51Studebaker),
All true, but at times one has a need to know the general value of one's collect e.g. insurance purposes, or just because you want to.
Regards ... Tim
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I did calculate the value for a while for insurance purposes (rough approximation) but do not track values on ongoing basis. I do maintain an inventory in Stamp Manage. Stamp Manage includes value but never look at them.
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05:29:39am
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
rrraphy:-
You missed a comma and three zeros after the 8 !!!
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07:30:11am
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
Some very interesting and valid comments here. I certainly do agree with the majority here on the catalog values being ephemeral, and that most of us as collectors value the research and the knowledge more than the monetary values.
I do have a database of all of my stamps, and instead of catalog values I record the price which I paid for each stamp purchased, as well as the date of the purchase. So I guess my $ cost is more important to me than a wildly fluctuating market value. If and when I bequeath my collection, I will be past caring what current market value is. I can hope it is a high value, but the collecting and the learning are what I am paying for. You can't just pass those attributes on, unless you are sharing those experiences with, for example, your successor(s), and that must be pretty rare these days.
I can't imagine a scene 50 years from now, where a family enthusiastically gathers around the kitchen table to leaf through great grandad's stamp albums. Typing the last sentence made me laugh.
Oh yes, having the price paid for a stamp readilly available is a great aid in deciding whether or not I will purchase a nicer copy at a future date. It also helps me track my own monetary inflation data.
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11:28:46am
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I guess I agree with Dale's comment about being somewhere a wee bit above worthless to a dealer to priceless to me.
What I told my wife and my daughter is if I go before my wife was to take my shop and all the tools and hire a auctioneer and sell everything. Have a big Who-Ha all day celebration in my name. But the stamp collection...I'll have the names of some trusted stamp dealers in one binder to call to see if they might be interested. They might get a bit more interest there instead of trying to sell them in our one horse town.
As far as ME keeping track of the value...nah...not interested. I think I buy everything right. I've built a Microsoft Access database that is tracking all the collections that I've bought so that I have a running total of everything that I've spent over the past year since I've started up collecting again (NOTE: I'm still updating the darn thing...and I'm still buying more collections...and I'm slowly getting stuff cataloged...starting with 36,000 FDCs....yay!)
Mike
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
Although I do not collect stamps as an investment, not a good idea unless one is in the market for very high-priced and rare stamps, I do keep track of my collection in a program called StampCAT; no longer available but still supported. I do enter values from catalogues but the program also allows me to add a great deal of other useful information about the stamp, history of the stamp, condition and add scans of the stamp. For me, the value is only useful for insurance purposes and it is good practice to have some kind of list of stamps with values in the event of a claim. Maybe when I pass the collection on to relatives they may be excited about this valuation, but I do have notes explaining that this figure is not what they can expect to get if sold, may be 15%?. Part of my collection is a topical one based on the philatelic history of the British Royal Navy and in StampCAT I can add detailed notes on the stamp and its relation with the navy, battles, explorations, captains etc. As these stamps are in a stock book this is the best place to add these details.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
https://www.fnprg.com/index.html
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
06 Oct 2023
07:08:59pm
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
"and what value"
The value is not the reason I collect things but you really do have to consider it. The CV is silly but I usually consider 20% of CV to be a reasonable approximation of value. It's just my opinion but what do you think?
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I don't.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
And I don't.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
"where a family enthusiastically gathers around the kitchen table to leaf through great grandad's stamp albums."
I do not think families do this for almost anything except maybe an old photo album but I may be around different families. Stamp collecting at its core is a solidary hobby.
Using catalog values is a convenient benchmark, but then you can apply the proper adjustment.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
Just a silly thought, how much of your collection is made up of minimum value stamps ? a stamp dealer will pay zero for them and you might get 17 % for the good stuff. I did my kids a favor and stamps are not mentioned in any family trust.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
The question is interesting. I keep track of purchase value and will use catalog value as a benchmark. Having an inventory is most important for me but I struggle with that as I don’t have a lot of free time and it’s time consuming. This is more in reference to the extra material I have accumulated and will eventually sell, maybe when I retire. Thus, I like to have a benchmark price, whatever it might be, for those items I have inventoried, whether it be individual items or collections. The reason for benchmarking is, while I don’t trust Scott or Michel to express the actual value of the item, it can be useful to me as a determination of relative value between two items. For example, is the catalog value of an early stamp higher if used or mint and to what degree?
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
philb,
Agreed. I think it is common to find collections where 10% of the stamps represent 90% of the market value. Single items that catalog under $20 (US) each are often not even included in market valuations. Making things even more challenging is the fact that those top 10% of higher catalog value items are the ones most likely to be faked, forged or have significant condition issues.
The internet has brought much greater availability and access to material than any other time in our hobby. But one aspect of this is that a lot of that access is to lesser quality material. I do not feel that this is a bad thing, I support collecting any way a person desires or can afford. But these types of collections often generate less demand and less return, and this really should be accounted for when trying to understand any valuation.
Don
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
If someone says "My stamps are worth $10000". it has no reference. If someone says "My stamps have a Scott catalog value of $10,000", you have a reference but then this can be vague too since Scott values are for VF centering. It is common for sellers to sell for some percentage off Scott and many expect buy at well below Scott (25% to 50%)
This is from an ad from Dr. Robert Friedman & Sons in the AP.
The ad states mostly F-VF (this could be strict F-VF or range from F to VF). The $2280 value is for the Indian States collection in VF condition so we know the catalog value is not the true catalog value of the collecting.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
It would be helpful to know which version (year) of the catalog was being referenced.
Don
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
I keep lists in Excel for each country based collection which have catalog #, catalog value, grade, and whether unused or mint non-hinged. The various country totals are summarized in an All Collections spreadsheet with a grand total. I include a column of relative percentages for the various countries which attempts to reflect an expected percentage of Scott value that each country might have.
I, also, added up the USA stamps only from my two active International based collections as I was curious as to how much progress I had made on these items in particular in the world collections and found I had a lot more than I had expected. I do envision eventually having stamp lists for all of the International albums as well. Given that the main 1840-1963 collection has ten binders and over 43,000 stamps representing almost exactly 50% of the stamps required to complete the albums this is going to take a lot of time but will be beneficial in providing me with a detailed list of which stamps I have.
Currently I use Scott values from the 2022 catalog as I purchased a full set to celebrate my retirement in 2021.
Country collections include USA, Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Mexico, Syria, and Canada plus two additional USA - Lighthouse and Canada - Palo albums which I started work on after my main albums reached a stage where I could no longer envision additions without a major lottery win.
Lately my purchases have slowed significantly due to availability to me of desirable, mint stamps locally especially of lower value worldwide stamps which are the hardest for me to locate.
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This is my diabetic cat OBI! I think, therefore I am - I think! Descartes, sort of!
08 Oct 2023
10:04:29am
re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
As to total value of collection, I have been an avid stamp collector for over 50 years and if I would check CV and add everything up it would be scary! Considering the material I have CV for the total collection would have to be between a quarter and half a million, which is a bit nuts!! I think CV's are way too high but quite often that seems to be what sellers want. Maybe for exceptional examples, but not for average centered stamps. I think somewhere around 20% CV is reasonable but for material I really would like to add to my collection or if it's a page filler (Yes, I know, that sounds silly!!) I will pay more sometimes. But I do quite often pass up material I would like to own if the price is too high. I'd be stupid not to!! I also am very careful with shipping prices, especially on E-Bay!
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
My current catalog value total for all collections with the caveat that modern issues after 1970 have never been included and the worldwide collections have only had the up to 1940 USA issues cataloged is just above 240,000. For the estimated retail values I would estimate on the order of 60,000 for pricing that would be low enough to attract purchasers at a stamp show who could see the stamps in person. Only the oldest collection for the USA includes any used stamps.
My advice to my wife if anything happened to me is that any offers below 30,000 would be unfair to the collection and should not be considered.
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
The Greece Hermes Head collection that I posted (link below) has a 2021 Scott catalog value of $43,400 (US).
https://stamporama.com/discboard/disc_ma ...
I highly doubt that if I listed this on eBay that it would even come close to 10%, probably more around 4%-5%. These classic era Greek stamps are fairly popular and market demand pretty good. But it would never get close to the 10% mark because of the ratio of higher CV stamps to lower CV stamps.
The marketplace is full of people just like us; we already have all the common material and are seeking the harder to find material. This tends to make a 'glut' of the common material and I think this is why we have seen common material market value drop so much over the last 10-15 years. But prices for the harder to find material remains strong.
This is why I never trust any auction Lot description or listing which throws around 'Catalog Value' without a complete listing or images of the entire collection. I do not think a good watermark is simply XX% of catalog value, you have to also account for the ratio of higher/lower stamps AND condition of the material.
This is also when shopping for bargains can come back to haunt you; the majority of people know what really nice material is worth and will price it accordingly. If a person is wanting to build an investment level collection, they certainly would not be getting material from 'bargain' sellers like NY Stamps. Nothing wrong with buying bargain material and enjoying the hobby to its fullest; but it is vastly different than buying and expecting a great return.
Don
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re: How do you (if you do) keep track of your Stamps Value (and what value)
For several years now I've been working on adding my collection, wish list, and spares into colnect.com. There is a hidden field where I keep a Scott catalog value for stamps -- usually those that I want or that I have available to swap -- since it can be useful to know a relative catalog value when swapping. This information can also be exported into spreadsheets to calculate equitable trades.
In addition to swapping, it is also helpful to know the relative catalog value when making up approval books, since I try to price stamps at a fraction of the catalog value. My duplicates notes in colnect.com are often handy.
Perhaps someday I will have a general idea of the "worth" of my entire menagerie of albums, etc., to help with estate sale valuation, but hopefully that day is far off still. At any rate, it is all relative -- whatever the buyer will pay at the time. Retail values in a catalog are relative for collectors like me.
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