Is It Worth Getting Stamps Appraised?

Is it worth getting stamps appraised? For most stamps, no — the stamp is not worth enough to justify the fee, and appraisal only earns its cost for the small minority that are already suspected of being scarce, genuine, and valuable.

That is the entire decision in one sentence. The rest of this is about how to tell which category your stamps fall into before you spend anything.

What does "getting stamps appraised" actually mean?

People use the word loosely, and it covers three different things with three different costs.

• A free verbal opinion from a dealer or local club member, given without paperwork. Useful for identification and a rough sense of value, worth nothing as proof of anything.
• A written appraisal, sometimes paid, that estimates value for insurance or estate purposes. This is an opinion, not a guarantee, and it is not the same as authentication.
• Formal expertising, where a body such as the American Philatelic Society's APEX service or the Philatelic Foundation examines a stamp physically and issues a certificate stating whether it is genuine, unaltered, and correctly described. This is the only one of the three that carries real weight with a buyer.

Most people asking whether appraisal is worth it are really asking about the first or second kind, and for the overwhelming majority of stamps, the honest answer is that the stamp's value would not cover the appraiser's time.

When is a paid appraisal actually worth the money?

It is worth it when three things are true at once: the stamp is old or scarce enough to plausibly be valuable, it is in condition good enough that value is not already ruled out, and your own research — using a catalogue such as Scott, Stanley Gibbons, Michel, or Yvert & Tellier — has not resolved the question.

Some categories are worth the cost of certification almost by default, because fakes and repairs are common enough that buyers will not pay full price without a certificate regardless of how good the stamp looks:

• Any stamp that might be a well-known rarity — issues in the class of the Inverted Jenny or the Z Grill attract convincing forgeries and altered copies precisely because they are famous.
• Stamps identified as a scarce plate or printing variety, where the difference between an ordinary printing and a scarce one (a Plate 77 position, for example) is not visible without expert comparison.
• Anything you plan to sell at a price where a buyer will reasonably ask for proof before paying.

Outside those cases, formal certification is usually not worth the expense. A common used definitive is not going to be helped by a certificate, because no amount of paperwork turns a stamp with no scarcity or demand into a valuable one. Our guide to stamp errors worth money covers one of the categories where certification tends to matter most, because errors are exactly the kind of stamp that gets faked.

What can a free appraisal actually tell you?

A free appraisal, from a dealer, a club, or an online forum with knowledgeable members, is genuinely useful for identification. It can tell you the country, issue, and approximate catalogue number, flag whether something looks like a known error or variety, and give you a rough sense of whether you have common material or something worth a closer look. That costs nothing.

What it cannot do is replace a certificate. A dealer's free opinion is not independent — if that same dealer is offering to buy, their estimate has an obvious incentive built in — and it is not a documented finding that would satisfy a buyer on a genuinely valuable piece. Our page on free stamp appraisal goes into more detail on what these free services can and cannot deliver, and find stamp value free covers the tools you can use yourself before asking anyone.

Should you appraise everything, or just the good stamps?

Just the good ones. Appraisal, paid or otherwise, does not scale sensibly across a whole album or box. If you have inherited a collection, the right order of operations is: sort first, identify the handful of stamps that look potentially significant, and only then consider paying for an opinion on those specific items. Our guide on inheriting a stamp collection walks through that sorting process, and what are my stamps worth covers how to value a whole album realistically rather than stamp by stamp.

In practice, in a typical album, nearly all the value sits in a small number of items, and the rest is filler worth very little individually. Spending appraisal money across the whole collection wastes most of it on stamps that were never going to be worth much regardless of what an expert said.

How do you decide if a specific stamp clears the bar?

1. Identify the stamp precisely using a catalogue reference, checking country, year, perforation, and any known varieties.
2. Grade the condition honestly — centering, gum, faults. Our stamp condition and grading guide explains what buyers actually look for.
3. Check whether the catalogue value, at the correct grade, is high enough that even a conservative resale estimate would clear an appraisal or certification fee several times over.
4. If it does, and if the stamp falls into a category prone to forgery or alteration, get it certified before selling, not after.

Remember that a catalogue number is a reference point, not a price — our piece on the stamp value calculator explains why online tools and catalogue listings routinely overstate what a stamp will actually fetch.

What's the realistic bottom line?

Most stamps, including most old stamps, are not worth appraising because they are not worth much. Age alone is a weak signal, as covered in are old stamps worth money — plenty of nineteenth-century material is common, because huge quantities were printed and kept. A country's stamps issued in numbers like 68 million, a plausible figure for an ordinary twentieth-century definitive, remain easy to find in any condition and worth as little as a used copy fetching perhaps £5 or less, regardless of age.

Appraisal earns its keep only at the point where a stamp's plausible value is large enough, and the risk of forgery or misattribution is real enough, that a certificate changes what a buyer will pay. For everything else, careful identification and honest grading tell you what you need to know for free.

Common questions

How much does a stamp appraisal cost?

Costs vary by service and by whether you want a verbal opinion or a formal certificate. A free assessment from a dealer costs nothing but is not a certificate. Formal expertising from a body like the APS or the Philatelic Foundation carries a fee and is worth paying only when the stamp's potential value comfortably exceeds it.

What is the difference between an appraisal and a certificate?

An appraisal is an opinion of value, often free, often verbal, and not binding on anyone. A certificate is a formal, written finding on whether a stamp is genuine and unaltered, issued by an expertising body such as APEX or the Philatelic Foundation, and it is what serious buyers expect before paying real money.

Do I need an appraisal for an inherited stamp collection?

Usually not at first. Sort and identify the collection yourself, or get a free dealer opinion, before paying for anything. Reserve formal appraisal or certification for the individual stamps that turn out to be scarce and valuable enough to matter.

Can a free appraisal be trusted?

A free appraisal from a reputable dealer is a reasonable starting point for identifying what you have, but it is not independent proof of authenticity, and a dealer offering to buy has an interest in a low number. Use it for orientation, not as a final word on value.