Cancelled stamps from 1950-1970

Cleaning out the attic in a family members house, I found a bag of over a thousand cancelled postage stamps. Does anyone collect them and is there a value to them.

Going postal
Jan '18

My dad is a collector and said they only have value if they are a scarce (meaning limited type). If they aren't (were 100s of the type were made) then no.

AMWhite AMWhite
Jan '18

Sometimes in that time period First Day Covers (cancellation on the first day of issue) have some value. Also some value in all of series as some complete sets are worth something even cancelled.


Of that time period everything was made in the millions. Even the mint stamps are now worth less than you paid for in this time period. At stamp auctions you can buy unused stamps for about 80% off of the original price and then use them on your mail. Most stamp dealers send out their newsletters and materials with old stamps from the 70's and 80's. There are only a handful of items that were high priced at the time that have retained value. That's about it. But the used items are best put in recycling.

The US stamps that have some value mostly are before the 1940's, and even then only select ones. The ones with high value are mostly before 1900.

The one exception to that is error stamps which were never supposed to make it out of the printing room. There are sometimes stamps which were printed with 4 colors when there were supposed to be 5. That's entirely different.


Thanks for the response and the info, if anyone would like them to look thru them before I toss them, just email me

Going postal Going postal
Jan '18

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