New to buying stamps and keen to avoid some of the common mistakes in the hobby?

You’re in the right place.

Here, we’ll give you a short and simple guide to buying - on- and off-line - safely.

The result?

One of the most fulfilling and enjoyable hobbies any collector can enjoy.

Seriously. Stamps are life: - history, geography, national identity, war, peace, language, symbolism... it’s all there.

So let’s have a look.

Oh no, I bought a fake stamp!

Buy real stamps.

That’s the first and biggest rule of stamp collecting.

How do you do it?

First of all, we need to have a sense of perspective here.

It is possible to fake stamps.

There are some very notorious examples.

Some of them considered themselves artists, and created stamps that had never existed for the joy of it.

Others were scoundrels, like Lucian Smeets, who found stamps with the right paper, perforations, and watermarking to use as a basis for a forgery of a more valuable issue.

A probable Lucien Smeets forgery. Could you spot it? 

Today, extremely advanced printing (and 3-D printing) technology is available to almost anyone.

A huge influx of big money into the Chinese stamp market in the early 21st century was accompanied - as all gold-rushes are - by an outbreak of forgeries of rare favourites.

But, the vast majority of buyers and sellers are operating honestly and in good faith.

Established, well-known dealers are the safest place to shop.

If you’re buying privately, then known collectors who are active in stamp collecting communities might be considered in the same breath.

If you buy from third-party trading websites make sure you know your rights and use only highly rated traders.

This beautiful 1911 £1 deep green stamp is pretty clearly in fabulous condition.

Guarantees, certification, expertising and provenance

You can look for more concrete guarantees of authenticity than reputation.

Look for authenticity guarantees that might give you your money back if an item is proved inauthentic. 

That's what we offer. 

Certificates of authenticity are as good as their source.

So, a good dealer offering a certificate is worth having.

And, then beyond authentication from sellers are experts and expert committees which provide authentication services.

This is called expertising.

Look at all the detail on this expert certificate.

Again, you shouldn’t take expertise claims on trust - look for reputation and paperwork to back up appeals to authority.

Some expertising bodies are very well known and highly regarded. For example, The Expert Committee of the Philatelic Society London (now the Royal Philatelic Society, London). Or the BPA.

Most expertise is the product of specialisation, so you may have to shop around to find expert advice on the stamp you’re interested in buying or selling. And, if you commission an expert opinion you will have to pay for it. 

All of these moving parts can be combined into the machinery of provenance.

Provenance is the evidenced story of a stamp.

As a collector you’ll soon learn that you need to keep everything.

And, when you buy high-value stamps you should look for documentary evidence to back up what the stamp is.

This should include records of past sales, and expertising or certification, and even personal statements of authenticity or origin.

Good provenance is probably your best protection.

Paying too much for stamps

How much is a stamp worth?

This isn’t an easy question.

You should consider your own budget limits when you shop for stamps. 

And you can be guided by the commonly accepted drivers of value in the market:

Rarity, quality, condition.

These are constants.

And they can usually be measured quite precisely with some research.

Certainly condition is a very well defined area of philatelic knowledge, with several rating scales.

You should always shop for the best condition stamps you can afford.

Quality (design, quality of printing, centring and production, philatelic milestones, historic importance) may be more subjective but can be assessed. 

Stamps were usually produced in their millions. But real rarities - and these often include errors - can sometimes (but not always) be very precisely numbered. For example, it's known that only one sheet of 100 Inverted Jennys (the world's most famous stamp error) were released to the public.  

There's a maximum of 12 of these stamps in existence. 

Demand isn’t precise.

But it contributes to the value of a stamp.

Your own personal “need” to get a stamp in order to complete a collection is one element of demand you should consider.

Philately operates in a fairly pure market. Forces of supply and demand do operate and do influence the price of stamps.

The informed collector can certainly look to make savings by following these trends and playing the market rather in the way one might any other. It’s something that might add another dimension to your collection.

Buy rare, historic stamps today

Fairly priced, authentic stamps are what all collectors are looking for.

We hold one of the largest collections of philatelic rarities in the world.

You can see some of them here.

And, if you’d like to know more and to get the latest news from the collecting world then sign up for our newsletter here.