World Wide Collection

Buying already made collections at auction might be one of the greatest bargains in philately. Next week in our public auction we have an interesting world wide collection.(4367) It is in several Scott International volumes of the kind that were so popular for world wide collectors thirty years ago. This collection was created over a thirty year period by one collector and has over 55,000 different stamps in it. The stamps are truly world wide in scope, from over 359 philatelic issuing entities. It is remarkable the amount of time collectors of the previous generation put into their collections and how many stamps they acquired and how comprehensive a collection they could create. And what is as remarkable is how inexpensively these collections sell for on the resale market. The collection in our auction has 55,000 different stamps in it and if we estimate that the average stamp took the owner two minutes to purchase, catalog and mount correctly (and it had to take more) then the collector spent nearly 2000 hours making the collection. If the collector spent four hours a week working on his stamps, this took him ten years. If the stamps cost the owner a dime a piece(and they had to cost more) and you paid the collector minimum wage to make the collection, you would have cost of stamps plus albums plus labor totaling over $20,000 for this collection which in our sale next week has a suggested bid of $1500. It is good thing that collectors who make collections of this type do so for their own pleasure  as the resale on ordinary material compared to the time and money spent is very low.