As time goes on our phone is ringing more and more from excited family members who have just found a long lost stamp collection that their late relative put together "many years ago". The excitement in their voices is contagious, but also hard to handle due to the less than positive news we eventually end up giving them about the collections monetary value in most cases. One of my encouraging sayings when breaking the news to them is "there is very little monetary value here, but the serious value was in the time your family member spent putting this together, they must have had fun!"  It seems to soften the blow a bit, but it is still tough to hear as many times they have already planned their retirement.

One of these calls came in a couple weeks ago and I was a bit more intrigued by what I heard than usual so I inquired further and had them send some scans of the material. While it wasn't a retirement value situation, it was worth far more than most of the material we are contacted about each week. What it ended up being was a dealers stock that had been forgotten in a family cabin since the 1970's. Most of the areas we handle were present, including early Canadian classics, Revenues, Precancels & the Provinces but the highlight was the material tucked in the back of one of the books that looked like it had been sent by Kasimir Bileski to this late dealer just yesterday. The usual Bileski typewriter notes and tiny envelopes contained some very nice Newfoundland proof material that is rarely seen. Once we went through everything thoroughly we contacted the family and gave them the good news....a big cheque was coming their way! (which included 1/2 of the shipping costs to send the collection to us).

That is one of my favourite parts of this business and every time we value a collection for a family I am hopeful that I get to make one of those enjoyable phone calls :-)

The new stock will be loaded up onto our website starting today. 

Happy Collecting!