Stamp Collections Explained: The Three Types and What They’re Worth

A stamp collection in an estate can run to twenty thousand individual items, so executors reasonably assume that valuing one means examining every stamp in turn.

Individual stamps certainly have to be inspected, because condition, watermark, perforation and shade all bear directly on value. That stage comes later, though, and what it consists of is decided well before it starts. The first thing a valuer reads is the album.

Collectors turn out to behave in remarkably consistent ways, and the housing of a collection records that behaviour with some precision. The album chosen, the method used to fix the stamps to the page, the presence or absence of handwriting and the pattern of what has been left out all indicate what kind of collector assembled it, and they do so before a single stamp has been identified. That reading then directs which parts of a collection justify item-by-item examination and which can safely be sampled.

It also produces a conclusion that catches families out, which is that the plainest binder in the box is frequently the one worth opening first.

How Stamp Collectors Behave, and Why the Album Gives Them Away

Almost every collection can be placed by asking how much the collector actually chose.

In the first type, nothing was chosen, because the material arrived of its own accord and was filed as it came. In the second, the collector hunted down individual stamps but did so to a list that a publisher had written. In the third, the collector wrote the list.

Schoolboy Albums and First Day Covers: Material That Arrived Rather Than Was Chosen

Two very different-looking groups belong in the first category, and what unites them is the absence of any selection at all.

The first is the worldwide album most people picture when stamp collecting is mentioned, a springback binder with a country name printed at the head of each page and often a small map beside it. The Strand, the Triumph, the Improved and the Swiftsure all sold in enormous numbers between the 1930s and the early 1980s. They were filled from packets bought at the Post Office or Woolworths, from approvals booklets posted out by dealers who catered to the pocket-money market, and from kiloware, which is used stamps sold by weight and soaked off at the kitchen sink. The contents are accordingly used, common and worldwide, hinged carelessly and often stuck straight down, and a shoebox of soaked-off stamps nearby will confirm the reading.

The second group looks entirely unlike the first and behaves identically. It consists of first day covers, presentation packs, PHQ cards and year books, most bought on standing order from the Philatelic Bureau and filed unopened as they arrived, along with the bound mail-order collections supplied by subscription and issued with certificates of authenticity that give them the appearance of something limited.

Serious philatelists rarely collect first day covers, and where they own them the covers sit apart from the collection proper rather than forming part of it. The people who bought them had a real affection for stamps without pursuing them technically, which produces almost nothing of value, because the covers were manufactured in the quantities the subscriptions demanded and then kept carefully by everybody who received them. The single exception is date, since covers predating 1935 are genuinely scarce for the straightforward reason that hardly any were made.

None of this reflects on the collector, given that the worldwide album is where most serious philatelists began.

Windsor Albums and Reign Albums: Collections Built to a Publisher’s List

The second type marks the point at which real philatelic work begins, even though the terms of that work were set by somebody else.

These are printed-space albums covering a single country, in which every issue has a space waiting to be filled and the collector’s task is to go and find the stamp that belongs in it. The Windsor is the best known, alongside the Devon and the continental Davo, while reign albums cover a single monarch, which is why a King George VI Commonwealth album turns up so regularly.

Nothing here arrived by itself, and that is the distinction that matters. Filling a Windsor album means working through dealers, want lists and auction catalogues, and the empty spaces record what proved difficult to find. These albums are worth reading closely for that reason, even though completeness was defined commercially and the print runs were calibrated to the demand of the day.

Blank Leaves and Handwritten Pages: How to Spot a Specialist Collection

The third type dispenses with printed spaces altogether, consisting of plain or quadrille leaves on which the stamps are mounted individually and annotated in ink with catalogue numbers, plate positions, watermark orientation, perforation gauge and notes on shade.

Gaps here should not be read as omissions, because the collector set the scope and may have excluded material deliberately, usually for reasons recorded on the page.

Corroborating evidence tends to sit nearby, whether a run of specialist society journals, a Stanley Gibbons Specialised catalogue in place of a Concise, or expertising certificates from the Royal Philatelic Society London, which relate to individual stamps and bear no relation to the certificates supplied with mail-order sets.

An album of this sort carries no decoration of any kind, and set beside a Windsor with its illustrated leaves and gilt lettering it reads as somebody’s working notebook. It is routinely the most valuable object in the property.

What Catalogue Value Actually Means for Probate

Identifying the type also allows expectations to be addressed at the outset, which matters where a family has spent years assuming a collection would cover the cost of something, since that assumption almost always traces back to a catalogue.

Stanley Gibbons catalogue prices are retail asking prices for fine examples bought from a dealer, and what a collection realises on the open market is a fraction of those figures, with the gap widening as the material becomes more common. That confusion between replacement cost and open market value recurs throughout estate contents, and for inheritance tax purposes it is open market value under section 160 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 that HMRC requires.

Valuing a Stamp Collection From Photographs

Because the albums establish the shape of a collection, the detailed work can be done from photographs rather than in person.

For most estates, images of the album spines together with a selection of open pages are enough to identify which of the three types is present and what it means for the return, and where the evidence points towards a specialist collection a fuller photographic record is requested so that individual items can be assessed properly. A collection can therefore be valued where it stands, without anything being packed, insured or sent anywhere.

Executors dealing with one should observe three things before anything else happens, which are that it should not be sorted, that it should not be divided between beneficiaries until it has been valued, and that the plain binders should on no account be thrown away.

Not sure which type you’re holding?

Send us photographs and we will tell you. For each album we need the cover, the first page and four other pages of your choosing, and there is no need to photograph individual stamps. Our valuers read the album the way this article describes, then assess the contents against auction records to arrive at an open market figure.

Online stamp valuations are £30 for a single album and £60 for up to five, with reports prepared under section 160 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 and delivered within one to three working days. Larger or specialist collections sometimes warrant an in-person visit, and we will say so if yours does rather than proceeding regardless.

Start your stamp valuation or call the office on 0330 088 4099.