Top Dollar Paid!: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Stamps [Paperback]

Stephen R. Datz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 15, 2009

Wondering how to get the highest price for your stamp collection? Best selling Top Dollar Paid! - The Complete Guide to Selling Your Stamps takes the mystery out of it and helps ensure maximum profit. It's a concise factual guide and an entertaining, revealing, behind-the-scenes narrative about the real-life world of stamp dealing written by veteran dealer, Stephen R. Datz, whose decades of experience include arranging for the sale of President Gerald R. Ford's collection-and making sure he got top dollar for it. Critically acclaimed, Top Dollar Paid! is an absolute must for anyone who buys, collects, invests, or is in the market to sell. Newly revised and updated.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Illuminates the fascinating business of stamp dealing and thoroughly covers all aspects of selling stamps."

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: General Trade Corporation; 2nd edition (April 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882190229
• ISBN-13: 978-0882190228
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Antiques & Collectibles > Stamps
  • #79 in Books > Education & Reference > Encyclopedias > Antiques & Collectibles

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

128 of 132 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A God-send for stamp amateurs, May 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Top Dollar Paid!: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Stamps (Paperback)

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!!

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Now for the bad news, December 19, 2005

By 

LF "Keep your feedback to yourself, these are... (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Top Dollar Paid!: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Stamps (Paperback)

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.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book can save you money, May 31, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Top Dollar Paid!: The Complete Guide to Selling Your Stamps (Paperback)

I'm not planning to sell my stamps - but this book has saved me money by giving me some insight into what kind of stamps will never be worth the time or money spent on them! I also love Datz's vignettes of life in the stamp trade!