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.

"Free appraisal" covers several different things, and they are not interchangeable. Knowing which one you are being offered — and which one you actually need — prevents both wasted money and, more often, wasted opportunity.

The four kinds of free opinion

A dealer's verbal assessment

Most stamp dealers will look at a collection and tell you roughly what it is, at no charge. This is genuinely valuable and it is also a buying conversation. The number you are given is a price the dealer would pay, which reflects wholesale economics and the years they may hold the stock. That is a fair trade, not a trick, but it is not an independent valuation and should not be treated as one.

Ask two or three dealers, and ask each of them two distinct questions: what would you pay for this, and what do you think it would realise at auction. Both answers are honest and they will differ.

An auction house estimate

Auction houses assess material at no charge because they want the consignment. Their estimate is what they believe the item would fetch at sale, before commission. This is often the most useful free number available for genuinely good material, because their incentive is to be roughly right — an estimate set too high produces an unsold lot.

They will decline material below their handling threshold. That refusal is itself information: it tells you the collection belongs in the bulk market.

A philatelic society

Local societies and national bodies frequently offer informal opinions at meetings or open days. There is no commercial interest, the people involved often have deep knowledge of a specific area, and it is the right level of help for working out what you have. It is advice, not a document.

Automated identification and valuation

An app or online tool that identifies a stamp from a photograph and gives an indicative range. Best used for triage — separating the handful of stamps that deserve real research from the hundreds that do not — and inherently limited by what a photograph can show. Gum condition, thins, creases, repairs and watermarks are not visible in a front-facing image, and those are exactly the things that move the price.

Every free route is good at the same thing: telling you which items are worth spending money on. None of them is a substitute for a formal document when a document is what the situation requires.

When free is not enough

Situation	What you need
Deciding whether to sell	Free opinions, two or three of them
Probate or estate valuation	A written appraisal from a qualified valuer
Insurance cover	A written appraisal, usually at replacement value
Division between beneficiaries	A written appraisal, for fairness and for the record
Selling a high-value single item	An expertising certificate
Disputed authenticity	An expertising certificate

Certificates, and why they pay for themselves

An expertising certificate is not a valuation. It is a statement from a recognised body — the Philatelic Foundation and the American Philatelic Society's APEX service among them — that the item is genuine, correctly identified, and free of undisclosed repairs, regumming or alteration.

For anything worth roughly a thousand dollars or more, it usually pays for itself. Buyers discount uncertified material because they are pricing in the risk of a fake, and for famous rarities that risk is real: some forgeries are over a century old and were made with contemporary paper and ink. The fee is typically a base charge plus a percentage of assessed value, which is why it makes no sense on a twenty-dollar stamp and obvious sense on a five-thousand-dollar one.

How to get the most from a free assessment

Do the triage first. Arriving with a sorted set of candidates and a box of bulk gets you a better conversation than arriving with an unsorted carton.
Bring the paperwork. Old receipts, auction cards, inventories and annotations tell an assessor in minutes what would otherwise take an hour.
Do not clean or reorganise anything before the appointment.
Ask what they are not valuing. Assessors focus on what they trade; material outside their area may be waved past rather than judged.
Get a receipt itemising anything left with them, and agree in writing what happens if it is not sold.

The warning worth repeating

Unsolicited approaches following a bereavement notice, pressure to decide on the spot, and offers to take a collection away for valuation without a signed inventory are the three patterns that precede most bad outcomes. Legitimate dealers and auction houses expect you to seek other opinions and will not object when you say so.

Common questions

Is a dealer's free valuation trustworthy?

Usually, but understand the incentive — a dealer who would like to buy your collection is quoting you a buying price, not an independent valuation. That is not dishonest, it is just a different question. Ask two or three.

What is the difference between an appraisal and a certificate?

An appraisal estimates value. A certificate from an expertising body states whether the stamp is genuine, unaltered and correctly identified. High-value sales usually require the certificate, not the appraisal.

Will a society value my collection?

Many local philatelic societies will give informal opinions at meetings, and some run open valuation days. It is informal advice from experienced collectors, which is exactly the right level for triage.

How much does a certificate cost?

It is typically a fee plus a percentage of the assessed value, which is why it makes sense only above roughly a thousand dollars.