Stamp value guides
Most stamps are worth cents. A few are worth a house. These guides explain which is which, in plain English — what actually sets a price, where the published numbers come from, and how to avoid the mistakes that cost sellers the most money.
How Much Is My Stamp Worth? The Honest Answer
Condition decides more than age, and catalogue value is not what anyone will pay you. Here is how a stamp is actually priced.
Read the guide →What Are My Stamps Worth? Valuing a Whole Album or Box
In a typical album, a handful of stamps carry nearly all the value. Here is how to find them before you sell the lot.
Read the guide →Stamp Value Calculator: What They Can and Cannot Tell You
Any tool that gives you one number for a stamp is hiding the assumption that does the work. Here is what that assumption is.
Read the guide →Are Old Stamps Worth Money? Why Age Is the Weakest Signal
A stamp from 1935 can be worth cents and one from 1985 can be worth thousands. Age is the least useful thing you know about a stamp.
Read the guide →You've Inherited a Stamp Collection. Now What?
Most of the value lost from an inherited collection is lost in the first week, by someone trying to be helpful.
Read the guide →Stamp Errors Worth Money: What to Look For
Printers catch almost every mistake. The few that reach the counter are scarce by construction — and they are not always old.
Read the guide →How to Sell a Stamp Collection Without Losing Money
The route you choose matters less than the sorting you do first. Unsorted collections get bought at the price of their most common contents.
Read the guide →Stamp Condition and Grading: The Factor That Decides the Price
The same stamp in two conditions can differ in price by a factor of fifty. Grading is not a formality — it is most of the valuation.
Read the guide →The Most Valuable US Stamps — and What They Teach You
The famous American rarities all became rare the same way. Knowing how is more useful than knowing the list.
Read the guide →Valuable British Stamps: What's Actually Worth Money
Britain printed the world's first stamp and then printed a great many of them. Fame and scarcity are not the same thing here.
Read the guide →Free Stamp Appraisal: What You Can Get, and What You Cannot
Free opinions are genuinely useful for triage and genuinely unsuitable for probate, insurance or selling a rarity. The difference is worth knowing before you ask.
Read the guide →Are First Day Covers Worth Anything?
Most first day covers were made in quantity for collectors and kept carefully by all of them. That combination is the opposite of scarcity.
Read the guide →Or just photograph the stamp
StampWorth identifies the stamp, grades its condition and gives a market-value range in about ten seconds. Free on iPhone and Android.