Top Dollar Paid: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Stamps

I recently inherited my father in law's stamp collection. My wife wants to sell it, to raise some much-needed money. I bought a current Scott catalogue and determined that one of the U.S. plate block albums is "worth" $350. My wife was told by a stamp dealer that he will only pay about 10% of catalogue value. That would make the album worth $35. I read Top Dollar Paid. It says that only certain stamps are good investments. Those are the stamps that were already rare and highly priced collectibles when they were first purchased. In other words, if you go into a stamp dealer and buy a 3 cent stamp for $500 because it is rare, that is exactly the kind of stamp that is a great investment. It is the type of stamp you can leave to your children or grandchildren, and its value will rise as the years and decades go by. But if, when your father or grandfather was a child in the 1930s or 1940s, or (God forbid) in the 1950s or 60s, he went into the post office and bought mint stamps, plate blocks, or sheets, and had a beautiful and complete collection, all of those old and pretty stamps are worthless. If all you want is the cash for them, use them for postage. They aren't worth a damn thing. If you bought a hot dog in 1963 you wouldn't expect to sell it for $50 today would you? There are interesting anecdotes in this book. There's the Hungarian boy who hoped to sell Hungarian stamps in the U.S. at a profit. (No way!) There's the author's meeting with Gerald Ford and his stamp collection. There are stories of stamp collection owners who try all the tricks that you yourself would have thought to try, and just where those tricks got them. I'm glad I read the book. Now I think I'll just add some of my father in law's stamps to my own collection. After reading this book, I would guess that the collection I inherited might sell for $100. Big deal. The moral of the story is .... your stamps aren't worth a thing. This is the worst investment there is. Put your money under your pillow and you'll be better off. Before reading this book, I figured that stamp dealers will generally low-ball you and buy your valuable collection for peanuts unless you know the value of it yourself. After reading this book I understand that stamp dealers have incentive to tell you what your collection is really worth to them, and make a fair offer, but it's going to be a small fraction of what you expect, because stamps are a God-awful investment.

This book does two things well: 1) How Stamp dealers go about determing how much a collection is worth. 2) Keeps you entertained by showing the human qualities of both the dealers and the sellers. The latter are usually the heirs of the collector. They are almost always non-collectors and have some very interesting misconceptions. It is funny and sad to see the reviews complaining they wanted the book to tell them how much their collection is worth. Mr. Dalz repeatedly tells you exactly how much a collection is worth. It's worth what the dealer can pay for it. You need an appraisal by someone who knows both stamps and the market.

How can I contact the author, Stephen R. Datz ? I would appreciate it (address or e-mail address).

I bought this book to get a stamp dealers viewpoint of stamps and collecting. I had no idea the book would be so enjoyable. Lots of interesting stories made the pages fly by as I was learning strategies and techniques about buying and selling stamps.It really humanizes stamp dealers.

If you know nothing about stamps or the collecting of them, but find yourself the owner of a stamp collection nevertheless, this book is for you. My husband and I found ourselves the "inheritors" of a stamp collection with no idea of it's worth, how to describe it to anyone or even WHO to describe it to. This book is simply wonderful for explaining how to approach a stamp dealer to sell your collection. It's a slim volume, easy reading and the anecdotes are very educational. My husband and I discovered we fell into most of the pitfalls described in this book. If you have a stamp collection you wish to liquidate, don't do a thing until you've read this book!!