If you have just inherited a stamp collection, the thing nobody tells you is that the buyer matters more than the stamps do. Take the same three albums to four different people and four offers come back that are nowhere close to each other, and the gap between the best of them and the worst is usually paid for in how fast you wanted to be done.

Below are the five kinds of buyer that exist for an inherited collection, with the published numbers where published numbers exist and a plain statement of where they do not. We run a marketplace ourselves, which is one of the five, and the section on marketplaces says where a marketplace is the wrong answer, because 3,000 common stamps are not worth the evenings it would take you to list them.

What to establish before contacting any buyer

A seller who cannot describe the contents of a collection is at a disadvantage in every conversation described below, and the disadvantage is worst with the buyers who pay fastest, because a buyer paying quickly prices the uncertainty into the offer.

What a rough inventory has to record is short: which countries are represented, roughly which decades, whether the stamps are mint or used, and whether any expertizing certificates are sitting in the albums. Producing that much detail takes no more than an afternoon at the kitchen table, and buyers who are handed it stop treating the collection as an unknown quantity, which turns what had been an open question into a negotiation about described material.

Aggregate catalog value is the wrong number for a seller to arrive at a negotiation holding. The American Stamp Dealers Association states the position in its own guidance on selling a collection, where catalog value is described as a guide that “may not represent the true market value”, and where a stamp is said to sell above or below catalog depending on the condition of that particular stamp. Across an inherited album the aggregate of those catalog figures routinely exceeds the realistic sale price by a wide multiple, and sellers anchored to the aggregate figure go on to reject offers that were fair when the offers were made. Checking four or five specific catalog numbers against recent sold prices on the stamp values tool is the more useful exercise.

The five kinds of buyer

Local stamp dealers

A local dealer buys the collection outright and pays the seller at the point of collection, and storing the material, sorting the material and carrying the capital tied up until the material resells are all costs the dealer absorbs before a single stamp is resold.

No trade body publishes a figure for what an outright dealer offer comes to as a share of eventual retail, and this page is not going to invent one. What the American Stamp Dealers Association does publish is the principle, which is that a dealer “must buy at a price that allows” a fair profit when the stamps are sold on. A seller who wants a number rather than a principle has one route to it, which is to obtain three offers on the same material and watch where those three offers cluster.

Estates under time pressure are where a local dealer earns that discount, along with houses that have to be cleared by a fixed date, and an accumulation of mixed common material belongs here too, since the sorting alone would cost more than the extra return from any slower route.

Auction houses

An auction house never buys the collection from the owner at any stage of the process, because the house sells on the owner’s behalf and deducts a commission from the proceeds once the sale has settled.

Published commission rates vary more than most sellers expect. Daniel F. Kelleher Auctions states that its “standard commission rates start at 20%” and that settlement proceeds are paid 45 business days following the last day of the sale, while Schuyler Rumsey Philatelic Auctions charges vendors 10% to 15% of the hammer price and settles 30 business days from the date of the sale. The Milwaukee Philatelic Society, writing for collectors rather than for houses, puts the customary range at 10% to 20% of the sale price.

Scarce material realizes more at auction than anywhere else, because an auction puts competing collectors in one room and lets those collectors bid against one another until only one of those collectors is left. What competitive bidding costs the seller is time, and the settlement terms above are only the last part of that time, since cataloging and scheduling commonly add months before a lot is offered at all.

Most collections never reach an auction floor, and the reason is printed on the consignment pages themselves. Schuyler Rumsey asks for a total consignment worth at least $2,000 with individual lots averaging at least $200, and H.R. Harmer sets its own floor at $100 for a single item and $1,000 for a collection. Material that cannot clear those floors costs a house more to catalog than the material returns.

Online marketplaces

On a marketplace the owner lists the material and sells to collectors with nobody taking a dealer margin in between, and the fees are charged per sale rather than deducted from a lump sum at the end.

Marketplace fees sit well below auction commission, which is the whole argument for the route. HipStamp, the largest established philatelic marketplace, publishes a transaction fee of 8.95 percent of the total sale amount, rising to 11.95 percent for sellers on its cheapest subscription tier, with fixed price listings themselves carrying no listing fee and store subscriptions running from $4.95 to $99.95 a month depending on how many listings a seller needs to run.

What a marketplace costs the seller instead is paid in hours rather than in margin, because identifying the material, photographing the material, writing the listings and packing the sales are all the seller’s own work, and a collection of several thousand stamps represents weeks of evenings before the first sale completes. Nobody should choose a marketplace without counting those evenings first, because the other four routes exist precisely for people who do not have them.

Estate buyers and general antique dealers

Anyone who clears whole houses for a living buys the contents and resells across every category those contents fall into, and philatelic expertise is rare in that trade, so stamp collections get priced by bulk rather than by content and a scarce stamp sitting inside a general lot usually goes unrecognized.

Of the five routes, a general estate buyer pays least for anything holding real value, and a general estate buyer is appropriate only where the collection has already been assessed and found to be common throughout.

Other collectors

Collectors buying for their own albums pay more than dealers pay, because no resale margin has to be protected and a collector is therefore free to go closer to retail than a dealer ever can.

Reaching those collectors at all is the practical obstacle that keeps most sellers away from this route, and societies, club meetings and stamp shows are the traditional way in, which is why the route works best for material inside a defined specialty where the seller already knows who collects it.

Matching the collection to the buyer

Most inherited collections contain more than one of these categories at once, and splitting a collection commonly returns more than selling the whole of that collection in one transaction. The pattern that works: the identified better material goes to auction, the mid-range material gets listed on a marketplace, and the residue goes to a dealer in bulk.

Questions worth asking any buyer

Any buyer making an offer should be asked how the figure in that offer was arrived at, because a buyer who can point to which parts of the collection carry the value has examined the material, and a single figure produced without reference to content means the material was not examined.

Establish whether the offer covers the whole collection or selected parts of the collection, because where a buyer takes only the better material what the seller is left holding changes, and the offer should then be priced against what is left rather than against what was brought in.

Material that the buyer does not want is worth raising as a separate question before anything leaves the house, since nothing obliges a buyer to hand back what the buyer has declined to purchase.

Where a collection may hold anything scarce, more than one offer is essential, and offers on identical material vary most in exactly the cases where the material is most valuable.

Warning signs

Pressure toward an immediate decision is the clearest of the warning signs, and a buyer applying that pressure is relying on the seller not obtaining a second opinion before the material leaves the house.

A refusal to itemize carries nearly as much weight as pressure toward a quick decision, because where a buyer will not say which parts of a collection carry the value, the buyer either cannot say or has decided not to say.

A written record of what was taken is the remaining thing to insist on, and a buyer who offers to remove material for assessment without leaving that record has created a situation the seller has no way to verify afterward.

None of the three warning signs described above proves bad faith on its own, and each of the three warning signs is a reason to obtain a second offer before proceeding.

Where to start

Not sure what you are holding. Start with the stamp values lookup before you call anybody, and run five or six catalog numbers from the albums through it. What comes back is what that material has actually sold for recently, not what a catalog says it might fetch, which is usually enough to tell you whether you are sitting on common material or something that deserves a proper look.

Ready to sell it yourself. List on the marketplace and reach collectors who are actively hunting, without a dealer discount or an auction commission coming off the top. Our fees run from 9.59% on the free plan down to 5.59% on the Dealer plan, and we put them next to HipStamp’s and eBay’s on a comparison page so you can check the arithmetic yourself. And if you would rather meet buyers face to face, our stamp show calendar has what is coming up near you.

One last thing, because it comes up constantly. Most inherited collections turn out to be worth modest money, and a dealer who tells you that is not a dealer cheating you. The genuinely valuable ones are rare, and checking a handful of catalog numbers yourself before anyone makes an offer is the only way to find out which of the two you are holding. That check costs nothing, and of every hour you spend on this it will be the one that pays.