Executors who inherit a stamp collection often assume a valuer will need to see every stamp, which for a dozen albums could mean thousands of photographs. We don’t need anything like that. For most collections, six photographs of each album and one picture of the whole collection give us enough to produce a figure for the IHT407, and all of them can be taken on a phone in good light.
The reason lies in how collections are assembled. The type of album, the way the stamps are mounted and the collector’s own handwriting say more about where value sits than any single page, so choosing the right pages to photograph matters more than photographing many of them. It also shapes how precise the final figure can be. A shelf of common used worldwide albums can be valued within a narrow range, while a specialist collection, where a slight difference in shade can change a stamp’s value many times over, sometimes cannot.
The Six Photographs We Need From Each Stamp Album
Start with one clear photograph of everything together, including albums, boxes and any loose stamps. This shows us the scale of the collection before we look at any detail. Then work through each album in turn:
- The cover. The outside tells us what kind of album it is.
- The first page. This often shows how the collector organised things, and collectors tend to put their best stamps near the front.
- A page near the start.
- A page from the middle.
- A second page from the middle.
- A page near the end.
Choose the last four by position rather than picking the fullest or most colourful pages, since a spread from across the album shows the collection as it really is rather than the collector’s highlights.
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Loose stamps count as one album. Photograph the box or bag they came in, then spread a few handfuls across a table and photograph those. Daylight from a window, with the album or stamps lying flat, will give you a sharper picture than a flash, which tends to glare off album leaves and protective sheets.
Most of the value in a stamp collection sits in a fairly narrow band of material. If you come across any of the following, photograph those pages as well as the six above, and mention them when you send your pictures:
- Queen Victoria and early 20th-century British stamps
- British Commonwealth stamps from before about 1936
- Chinese stamps, particularly from 1949 to the 1970s
- Early United States stamps
- Envelopes or covers dated before 1935, early airmail or zeppelin mail
- Certificates, specialist catalogues or pages annotated with plate numbers, watermarks or shades
If an album looks promising, our valuer will ask for more pages, and occasionally every page. There is no extra charge for this.
Why Plain Binders Often Hold the Most Valuable Stamps
Please photograph every album, including plain binders with handwritten notes. They are easy to set aside because they look the least interesting on the shelf, but they are often where the most valuable material is.
Printed albums with spaces for each stamp are usually bought for general collecting. A collector who moved beyond that stage tends to write up their own pages, annotating them by hand as their knowledge grew. When we see a plain binder with neat handwritten leaves, we pay close attention to it.
How Precise Your Stamp Collection Valuation Will Be
Every valuation we carry out gives you a figure for the IHT407, which HMRC expects to reflect open market value at the date of death. What varies from one collection to the next is how tight that figure is.
For common used worldwide albums and first day covers, six photographs per album are enough and the range will be narrow. Better albums prompt us to ask for more pages, sometimes a photograph of every page, again at no extra cost.
Specialist material is different. Small differences in shade or perforation can carry large differences in value, so the range we give may be a wide one. We will still value everything within your fee. Narrowing the range takes research time, which we quote for separately, and nothing extra happens without your agreement. In our view a wider range is still acceptable for probate, and many executors take it and move on.
If you are unsure which kind of collection you have, our guide to the three types of stamp collection explains how each is valued. And if you are dealing with stamps as part of an estate, our stamp probate valuation starts with the same six photographs.