How Kiloware Are Done ?

Hello.

First of all I must say that I am not a kiloware buyer (at least not now) but I was reading through the discussions here then get to ebay and delcampe to see what there is on offers.

For normal dealers, I have no problem, I suppose they had a deal with some big administration or company to get their ols covers.

But how does a « normal » person did it ? I saw some seller on ebay (ebay France and Delcampe France too) that are clearly just people which get hundreds of covers and I don't see how they manage this.

Any hint on that ?

They may ask different people and businesses that they know to save covers for them or the stamps from the covers. Some can even get it from the company that they work for. There is a story about a guy who used to buy kiloware from someone until he found the address of the person who was supplying his supplier on one of the cut stamp papers so that he managed to go directly to the source instead of the middle man.

For many years, I worked in a large government department and the people in the mail room kept all stamps for me. About 99per cent were normal British stamps so for over 20 years I brought them to a church charity who sold them as kiloware to dealers and collectors.
Now that I am retired I buy kiloware from the same charity.
About a month ago, I bought a large amount of Irish stamps and a large amount of "world stamps" (excluding Britain and Ireland).
I am primarily an Ireland collector.
The coil and booklet stamps are not much good to me but the commemoratives are always useful as collect multiple used copies of stamps.and "Stamps on A Roll" are gold dust as I am interested in the post office which issues the stamp.
The "world" stamps are primarily for fun.
So far, I have sorted most countries and so far I have 1,733 from about 120 countries and territories.
The only countries still to be fully sorted are France, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan and USA.
I hope to finish the sorting at the end of this week and I will have probably more than 2,000 stamps for less than £15 which I think is good value for a general collector.

The remainder of the world stamps will go back to the charity. I don't think it has been cherry-picked as there still a lot of sorting in there.

Thanks for your hints.

So I may think that's more an « insider » opportunity than people who find a way with administrations.

Sadly the charity I get my kiloware from is my last contact. It is a very large charity. They could supply me with over 200kg per month once. Now am lucky to get 20kg per 3 months.

Out of that kiloware I get about 4kg very recent issues per 20kg and it costs me fortune.

Am one of the very, very few that get very recent Australia kiloware these days.

We are looking at the end of recent kiloware. With fake stamps coming out of China this only speeds up the end of it all.

Security issues as well have become a source of inconvenience for general collectors. In Canada a lot of buisnesses will have all old covers shredded or sent for recycling. They say they are protecting the confidentiality of clients because of return address on covers.

Even if you ask that they just tear off the stamp or rip the cover in half to remove any info, or offer to do it in an office so they can check, many will not oblige, even for charitable reasons.

Too bad it is getting so difficult for all around to get used copies.

Mike

I am going to ask people to save me the stamps / covers where I work. I work at an insurance company and we get a decent load of mail each day so I might get a nice stock pile to sell as Kiloware. There probably will not be any high denominations as most of the mail is the regular size envelopes. Nothing will be searched and I am going to do my best to cut off / tear off the stamp with only the front cover of the envelope attached.
I am guessing this would be considered kiloware but please correct me if I am wrong.

Thank you,
Robert

Ho much does kiloware sell for?

Depends what it is. There is a demand for modern stamps as they are used less and less, and collectors don't find them so often these days. However, you will need a very big pile of stamps to make anything much. Search "kiloware" on Ebay to see.