Have You Ever Found Treasure In Kiloware?

Let me guess, you got the lock plus 20 stamps all for the price of a half kilo of premium european charity mix! ehehehe. Kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and used to collect cans for the cash and how some of the guys I knew would try to "weight them down" with rocks or something else.

I found some fairly high catalogue early bavarian stamps, Scott 38-47, look like this.



Also found this beauty in a packet of very common stamps.

Treasures can be found in KILO lots but it takes a expert to see the one of value.Usually its some printing,paper,or perf. vartiey that is not likely pulled by a casual viewer.Some are not even known to the catalog publishers.
I enjoy going thru large bulk lots because what im looking for is outside of the normal interest of worldwide collectors .

One must also define "treasure". A "treasure" as in a valuable stamp, the answer for me is "No.". A "treasure" in terms of a variety or some odd stamp I needed to fill in an album space, the answer is "Yes.". Have I flyspecked some kiloware and found some varieties that may or may not be catalog listed and the answer is "Yes." And do I have fun doing it, the answer is "Yes.".

So you define a "treasure" as only in uncovering a valuable stamp? As far as I'm concerned if the stamp is an addition to my collection, regardless of whether or not it may be valuable, it's a "treasure" as far as my collection is concerned as that's all that is important to me.

As I've said many times in the past, I'm into stamp collecting for the enjoyment of the hobby; if I find a valuable stamp along the way, great. If not, I've lost nothing, as the time and research and enjoyment in the hunt is the part that is "fun" for me.

As the old saying goes: "One man's junk is another one's 'treasure'!"

I define finding treasure as getting way more than I expected.

That happened on the last 1/2 kilo of Aussie P&S stamps I purchased. It cost $12 for the lot and another $6 for postage. The stamps were nearly all $0.55 or $0.60 issues but that wasn't the treasure.

It was the $36 in high value stamps that the seller used to ship it to me. Two $10 and three $5 stamps plus a set of 2012 stamps.

I did offer to reimburse him for the postage snafu but he would have no part of it. Needless to say, if he ever has anything else to sell, he won't need to look very far for a buyer!

I have never bought kiloware in "real" terms and find for some reason I end up finding more interesting items in smaller lots than I do when I spend more money on larger lots. Maybe it has just been bad picking on the larger lots but I have nearly sworn myself off of them.

I agree with SEAHORSE,most lots,mixture,and Kilo lots are checked and filtered before they are sold.What is possible is finding varieties that have not yet listed in the catalogs.I found a LONG ISLAND stamp in a Turkish lot purchased at auction.

I found some real treasures in German kiloware. Including a letter with a full sheet of 10 Pf Heuss fluorescent (the letter was even marked with a pencil saying it was the fluorescent kind!) - Michel Germany rates this at € 1000, it can easily be sold for € 400 and all I paid for the kiloware was around € 25 incl. p&p. There were some other nice stamps in it, although nothing of such high value.

Recently I bought 9 kilos of what was supposed to contain a lot of used Posthorn issues. Now, those aren't really high value so the bids on the 9 kg weren't too high. I was pleased to find a lot of "Bauten 1948" and "Notopfer Berlin" in there, some rather rare ones too. After sorting and a quick glance at possible treasures (I am sure I haven't found nearly all yet), I would at least value the sales price of the more valuable stamps to be about 10 times my cost.

My past experiences with kiloware: dedicated European stamp dealers usually sell well searched kiloware and there is hardly anything of value in them - you may be lucky with stuff not in the catalogues yet but ....

I always look for people selling larger quantities of kiloware who are obviously not selling stamps a lot. If they seem to be heirs of stuff they don't know too much about, there is always a good chance to make some finds - I don't look for new stuff but then again old kiloware (before 1960) is hard to find at a decent price, unless it is obviously only the very cheapest mix. Sometimes it is also worth investing a little more - I paid € 70 for a kilo of mixed Luxembourg once and that was obviously better than buying 5-7 kg of "all world stamps" at the same price in most cases.

So, I agree with those who said that the treasures are usually not the US No. 1's or other such obvious stamps as most former owners would have taken those out many years ago. Rather, there is a good chance to find rare stamps in series of older stamps with a lot of variety (watermarks, perforation, fluorescence/phosphor varieties, plate numbers and units valued a lot higher than the single stamp and so on).

My personal experience is that you find more valuable stamps on kiloware ON paper. The reason is quite obvious: stamps without paper have usually been checked better, a lot of them are often damaged (folds and creases, discolored due to soaking, tears and so on) whereas the ones still left on backing envelope or parcel paper have often not been checked for back numbers, fluorescence/phosphor, watermarks and misprints of all kinds.

My experience relates to kiloware mostly bought from European sellers.

George

George, that was a good read, thank you!

I frequent a stamp store where the owner puts together 1/4 pound packets for $16. These are mostly off-paper and contain a minimal number of duplicates. To date, I have bought several of these and always find somthing interesting in them. The latest one was packed with 1860-1870 era Austrian Franz Josef, Numeral in Oval, and Newspaper stamps. There were enough of these to nearly complete several of these sets. I was able to pick out well centered specimens of most denominations, and there were a number of them with bullseye cancels that I will research later. I was also delighted to find an 1851 (scott P1) Newspaper stamp. It's a little off center and has a small missing corner, but it fills a fairly expensive album space very well.
This same packet also contained a couple of 1880s Korean stamps, a couple of Hawaii stamps (the lower value monarchs issues), several Queensland, Australia stamps, and a myriad of other interesting offerings world-wide, both new and old.

A previous packet I purchased was heavy on WWII era stamps. This included quite a number of German propaganda semi-postals, and a good number of German occupied Poland issues. As I recall, this packet even produced a nice Prussian state Frederic William stamp c. 1858.

I believe these packets are thrown together from collections that the owner doesn't particularly want to pick through, as there is always some 'better stuff' to be found in them.

Treasure? why yes ,when I find that one stamp to complete a series,or a boxlot contains an album of back of the book type stamps,I think alot of us find something even if its a treasure for 5 or 10 minutes.I guess stamp collectors have a very broad view of what "treasure "is.

I can't say that I've found anything that is really valuable in terms of catalog value, but I have found lots of moderately interesting stuff. I recently purchased two different kiloware mixtures, both of GB material. Ironically, the one that actually came from GB was far less interesting and more expensive than the one that came from a seller in the US. The GB mix was overloaded with Machins (which I do collect but these were all very common) while the US mixture included many older definitives so was much more fun to paw through. I've got a bunch of Wildings drying now...

We buy kiloware at our stamp club and make up paper sacks and have grab bag night and for a nickel a stamp whatever you pull out of your bag and then you can go into bags that others have already been through. I have found some really nice stuff and I believe the highest value stamp I found was probably in the %5.00 range. BUT I have found stamps that I had been looking for to fill in a set where I was missing the lowest or highest value in the set. So if you have the time and patience and you find a good supplier they cam be fun. Nick

Well, I once found a stamp that may well have been unique!

I probably ought to stop there since the full story is a bit disappointing. I mean it wasn't an 1856 British Guiana one and a half cent...

Some of you will know that from the mid 1950s onwards Switzerland for many years abandoned printing 'proper' Postage Dues and used provisionals created by handstamping a T on ordinary postals. The main catalogues don't list them, but the Amateur Philatelist Swiss Catalogue does.

About 10 years ago I found in a bag of kiloware an unlisted combination of a particular 1950s definitive and a particular T type. I sent it to the catalogue who confirmed it was genuine and that they'd never seen one. I then wrote it up for the Helvetia Philatelic Society suggesting that if anyone else knew of a copy they could let me know. No one ever did.

I sold it along with the rest of my Swiss three or four years ago, so I no longer know where it is nor can I provide a picture, but it's all there somewhere in the HPS Newsletter back numbers.

At present the kiloware have already happened for dozens of collectors, it is difficult to find treasures .... but also it depends of: what do we name a treasure in kiloware?

I collect definitive stamps and it entertains me very much when I find some 'variant' of the same model ... this is a treasure for me.
A treasure also is when I find, inside a kiloware, a scandalously nice stamp.

(Excuse me if there are errors in the phrases, my English is pathetic and I help with a translator online).