Collecting Has Some Pros and Cons

Question: What are some of the advantages of investing in stamps instead of say, coins or stocks? Do stamps provide a good hedge against inflation over the long term? How does one go about putting together a logical stamp portfolio?--T.H.

Answer: Stamps are easy to store, because they are tiny flat bits of paper. You could easily hold a million dollars worth of rare stamps in your closed hand. (Whether you could afford to buy them is another question.)

Rare stamps of known pedigrees are quite liquid in that they can be sold easily to dealers with adequate funds. Over the last 20 years, choice U.S. and foreign stamps have risen substantially in value.

On the negative side, stamps are fragile and may be permanently damaged by careless handling. Not all stamps go up in price at the same rate, and stamps may even drop in market value, like any other speculated commodity. Also, you must be certain that you are not overpaying to begin with or are buying a stamp that has been secretly repaired or is a forgery of a rare item.

You may not want to hear my advice for stamp investing, but here it is: Be a collector first, an investor second. Get and read philatelic books from a dealer or the public library. Talk to other collectors, visit dealers’ shops and inspect their wares before buying anything, join a stamp society, and read one of the weekly stamp newspapers (available at stamp shops or by subscription).

Spend a year or two learning about stamps so you can make an informed decision about what to purchase for long-term investment. And remember: Nothing is guaranteed except savings accounts insured by the federal government.

Q: I have a 4-cent U.S. flag stamp with the date July 4, 1959, printed on it. There are 49 stars on the flag, and I understand that when Hawaii entered the Union our flag was soon changed to 50 stars. Is this stamp rare because of limited sales in the post offices while we had a 49-star flag?--E.S.

A: Alaska became the 49th state on Jan. 3, 1959, and your 49 star flag commemorative was issued July 4, 1959. Designated as Scott catalogue No. 1132, your stamp had a press run of more than 200 million copies, far in excess of the average commemorative of that time, and enough stamps to supply every serious stamp collector in the world with many copies of it. So it is not rare, and in fact is still worth about face value after almost 30 years.

Hawaii became our 50th state on Aug. 21, 1959, and on July 4, 1960, a new 50-star flag stamp was issued. But the 49-star stamp was sold for a long time so anyone who wanted one could easily get it at the post offices during the last half of 1959.

Q: While traveling through Sweden in the late 1960s, I picked up a quantity of souvenir sheets with stamps showing paintings by Ivan Agueli. What are these things worth today, and are they scarce items?--T.D.

A: Issued June 6, 1969, this souvenir sheet is listed at $2.75 mint, $5 canceled. This is an example of stamps that are worth more used than unused. Of course, the cancel should be genuine and of the time period when the stamps were issued, to justify a hefty discrepancy between cheaper mint and more expensive canceled price.

Q: I received an air mail envelope from Iran, but can’t decipher the stamps. From my enclosed photocopy can you tell me something about them?--S.P.

A: The 10-Rials stamp shows Seyd Hassan Modaress and is listed in the catalogues at 30 cents mint, 8 cents used. Your 50-Rials issue portrays Sheikh Mohammed Hossein Kashef and catalogues for $1.50 mint, 50 cents used. Both were part of a 1983-84 set of Iranian stamps that honored noted religious and political figures.

It is really tough to find out about stamps like these without having a standard stamp catalogue. If you can’t translate a foreign-language inscription, you may not even know what the stamp represents, much less have any idea of when it was issued.

In Scott’s Catalogues, available at any stamp dealer or in all public libraries, there are pictures of common stamp designs of the stamps of each nation. By comparing your stamp with those in the catalogue you can identify it and find out its relative value.

Q: Someone once told me that you should never soak stamps off their envelopes because this would decrease their value. Is this always true?--E.L.

A: No. Many stamps, especially early or rare ones, are worth substantially more if left on their original cover (envelope). But most modern and cheap varieties are of no special premium on cover.