Never Lie To Your Wife

About twenty years ago I had an appointment to see a widow. Her husband had died a few months before and had told her that his stamp collection was worth very little but that she should call me and have me look at it during my next trip to her area. When I offered her a bit more than $20,000 for the collection her jaw dropped. Her husband had never told her he had any good stamps and she had thought the collection was worth a few hundred dollars. Conversely, one of our staff members was out to see a collection recently where the widow knew that her husband had spent, as she said resentfully, “a small fortune” on the stamps. When we got to her home, none of the better stamps were there, no doubt sold to finance some life style that he wished to keep secret from his family. Most collectors are not duplicitous in this way. They neither hide what they spend nor ferret out family assets to spend on gambling or girlfriends. The duplicity we most often see is more of the egotistical variety – the collector who tells his family of the shrewd buys he imagines he makes and how rare and valuable is the collection that he has formed with only modest expense. Since 1980 (that is over thirty years ago now) the only stamps that could be bought for little money and which have appreciated dramatically are the stamps of the Peoples Republic of China. If you don’t have those, your family will probably have to sell your stamps when you are gone for less than you paid for them. Stamps have not been a great investment during this period and most United States and Canadian stamps sell for less today than they did thirty years ago (We sold mint #C18s for $250 in 1980-we sell them for $50 today). A loving and caring father and husband would tell his heirs what to expect after he is gone. Only a coward or a fool would lie.