Philatelists, help! Need values for old uncancelled stamps

Cafe Society
1

The Mrs. and I just received an invitation to a wedding, and the letter is truly laden with low-value stamps, some of which are older than I am! All cancelled, sadly.

But of interest to me is what some of these stamps would have been worth if they’d not been used to mail us this invite.

#1: 200th Anniversary of Nassau Hall, Princeton University from 1956

#2: Mount Rushmore Memorial Stamp 1952

#3: 50th Anniversary of the Rough Riders 1948

Cancelled, they seem to be worth less than $2, as far as I can tell. But my feeble attempts to find what their uncancelled values would have been have not been real fruitful, so I turn to the experts.

Thanks!

2

According to this page the first two are worth about $0.15 and $0.20, respectively.

According to this page, the third is worth $0.10. I have no idea if these are representative values, but you can buy them from this guy and they are in the following condition, which I assume to mean uncancelled:

3

Thanks!

4

Let me put it this way: If they weren’t canceled, I’d say use them for postage. They’re not worth any more than that.

5

Yes. Most US postage stamps, up to about 60 years old, are worth no more than their face value. You can buy them in bulk on eBay, often at less than face value. Too many people bought them as potential investments, not realising that stamp collecting would go out of fashion, and they have been steadily coming onto the market.

6

Well, we’ve just discovered that the bride to be purchased all these various stamps online, just to use them on the invitations. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of tradition, but it certainly made the invitation far more interesting to me.

7

Were there any modern stamps on the envelope at all? Or were they all old stamps adding up to current first-class postage?

8

IIRC, there was a 32 cent stamp on the (extra-heavy) envelope, with a 7 cent US airmail stamp, a 5 cent Hugo Black stamp, a 6 cent Eisenhower stamp, and the 3 3 cent ones I described above.

That’s going from memory, so don’t hold me to it. I’m assuming the 32 cent stamp was of the most recent vintage, but I don’t recall what was on it.

9

I am going to steal this idea one day! I used to collect stamps as a kid.

10

In our business, we purchase stamp deals at about 70% of the face value. We mail out about $75/day in packages, and use these as discount postege.

It certainly was the thing to do, starting back after WWII. I remember, as a teenaged stamp collector, going to the post office in around 1959 and purchasing a sheet of 3 cent stamps($1.50 the sheet) and preserving it for my future. :slight_smile: Today I’d use it for postage.

11

This is a classy idea. I like it a lot.