There comes a time when a person who has inherited a stamp collection must make a decision to sell it or have the collection appraised to determine value. Simply put you must trust someone.
I highly recommend you put your trust with the APF (American Philatelic Foundation). We offer to the public for serious collections the opportunity to have us sell at public auction or private treaty your stamp collection. There is no charge for this service; should you be pleased with the result you can consider making a modest donation to APF. For more information click on “Having the APF sell your collection”

The APF has been auctioning fine collections on behalf of their customers for many decades. No collection is ever offered until the customer reviews the appraisal and wishes us to go forward with a private treaty offering or public auction.
As to the actual sale collections are offered to our stamp collector base of many serious collectors & investors who only wish to buy collections or rarities that have not gone through a dealers hands.

Should the collection not be sold in this manner I then place it on ebay always with a reserve. The consignor always approves reserves before being offered for sale. There is no disappointment ever as we do not sell under the reserve price. The average sale runs in excess of $10,000.00 and we have sold three collections on ebay for $75,000,00 each! In just 2005 we sold nearly one million dollars on ebay or by private treaty.
It is important to understand when you go to a good public auction house of which many are listed on line the consignor must pay at least 15% consignor fees and the buyer pays 15%. Collectors today are very savvy and when they bid they deduct that 15% from what they would normally pay privately. The bottom line is you lose 30% from the top before it is ever sold! AS to your cost with APF most consignors pay us 5%. This covers all our costs and as we are a public Foundation that is fine with us. Please contact APF and ask our Director Michael DuBasso any question you may have. He will be happy to give you professional references to call. He can be reached at his office at 310 275 3256.