Beginner Guide to Collecting

We are lucky to have a world expert on our team, Brian Austin. That means we can give you a lot of advice and help, whether you are new to collecting first day covers or an old hand.

Judging a cover’s condition – just as with antiques or any other collectable, condition is everything when it comes to covers. Here is our guide:

Essential Guide To Condition

• The edges of the stamp should be perfect. Most stamps have perforations (lines of small holes between rows of stamps that make them easy to tear and separate). The perforations must be complete. Missing perforations mean a cover is completely ruined.
• The stamps should be stuck flat with no air bubbles, lumps, bumps or creases.
• The postmark should be clear. You want to be able read the date and place. And the postmark should touch each stamp once and link them to the envelope.
• The envelope should be clean. On earlier issues always stand back and have a look at the cover, to make sure it is up to your standard. Pick the one with the cleanest envelope, the neatest address and nicely laid out stamps.
• Be careful with addresses. Royal Mail has a rule that everything sent to be postmarked must have an address on it, which is why you will see our Internet Stamps printed in small type at the bottom right of our covers. However, collectors have high standards. Small printed dealers addresses or peel able labels are acceptable. Handwritten ink addresses are only acceptable on issues up to 1953 (The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II). Between 1953 and 1971 (Decimalization), you should try and get covers with a neat typed or label address. From 1971, collectors expect a neat label, light pencil or ideally no address at all (unless it is a very, very rare cover). We strongly recommend that you don’t put your name and address on a cover. It may personalise it for you but it completely devalues the cover if you want to sell it in the future.

Not Essential But Nice-To-Have Extras

Stamps arranged in value order. Ideally, the stamps will be stuck in value order, starting with the lowest value (usually 2nd class) and moving to the highest value (which can be as high as £1.12 or more!). While some collectors feel the order of the stamps is very important, most are not too bothered providing the cover is in good condition (see points listed above). Sometimes, our designer will deliberately change the order of the stamps to improve the overall look of the cover. For example, our Jane Eyre stamps cover deliberately has the wrong numerical order because we wanted to avoid putting two grey stamps next to each other which would upset the colour balance of the overall design.

Perfection! Although the overall condition is very important, it is a mistake to get too hung up on tiny details. You could go cross-eyed checking whether stamps are stuck on perfectly straight. Also, if a cover has been carried onboard a ship or plane and then signed, it is not going to be completely pristine. Slight fingernail marks or dents from where the signer has picked up the cover or very slight dog-eared corners are all tributes to the cover’s adventures. It would be more suspicious if the cover looked perfect in these cases. Travelled covers always have a story to tell. If you are not sure, ask our advice. We are care about building long-term relationships with our customers so we will tell you the truth!

Beginner’s Guide To Collecting – A History Of The Hobby And Tips For What To Look Out For Today.

The First Covers

Collectors have been interested in stamps on envelopes for over 150 years. It’s not clear when people posted envelopes on purpose to get the postmark of the first day but certainly in 1870, many of the new halfpenny postcards were definitely sent to be kept. One only has to look at the first Post Office illustrated 1890 Jubilee envelope to realise its interest. By 1902, with the new King, the hobby had genuinely started and has developed ever since. In 1911, a new development took place: a beautiful illustrated envelope for the new King George V Coronation stamps was produced by the Junior Middlesex Stamp Club. Some collectors posted envelopes to receive the rare Westminster Abbey postmark. Today these are worth £1000s. The first Commemorative stamps followed in 1924 for the Wembley Exhibition and the first pound stamp for the Postal Congress in 1929.

Illustrated Envelopes

The hobby developed quickly and over 400 different illustrated envelopes were available for the 1937 Coronation Stamp. The Second World War slowed things down but collectors still managed to get their first day covers although the quality of the envelopes obviously left much to be desired. These wartime covers are much underestimated. After the war, special stamps were few and far between but in 1957, the General Post Office (GPO), as it was then, organised a massive operation for the Scout stamps. It was a false dawn. The next issue for parliament was an overprint on a normal 4d stamp. Most people missed it, which is why it costs up to £100 today.

Special Envelopes And Postmarks

In 1963, there came a major change. Pictorial stamps became a regular feature of the stamp year. The GPO introduced FDI postmarks. Collectors became more demanding. They wanted better illustrations, more interesting postmarks and neat, printed addresses or labels they could remove. For the Red Cross issue, a special Florence Nightingale cover was posted at West Wellow, her birthplace. The Botanical Conference issue of 1964 had a pictorial postmark of Edinburgh and one dealer posted covers at Primrose Valley (there were primroses on the stamps). Reasons for most postmarks were obvious: Biggin Hill for Battle of Britain and Wembley for the World Cup. The hobby had changed again and those collectors who paid for the extra service were the winners, with the special covers ending up worth ten times the standard. Meanwhile, a second development was also taking place: autographs on covers.

Autographs On Covers

Again, like postmarks, the choice of most signatures was obvious. Douglas Bader’s autograph on a Biggin Hill cover cost probably around 25p at the time. It now adds over £100 to the cover. Bobby Moore and Alf Ramsey were even more lucrative. Many collectors paid £1 more for the pair and also did the same on the Winners issue. Today, the four covers would cost up to £2000!

Autographs are worth more on relevant covers and condition is very important.

More Postmark Changes

In the early '70s, pictorial postmarks became the in-thing. Instead of the boring postmarks issued by the Philatelic Bureau at Edinburgh (a place with no connection to the stamps), collectors wanted more unusual postmarks. Whereas the Bureau covers still only cost £1 each, many covers with better postmarks cost between £100-£300 pounds. As more and more collectors got wise to this though, of course the spectacular gains became more infrequent. Dealers and collectors then turned to small normal circular postmarks from relevant Post Offices or special mail slogans. Tony Buckingham took covers to Turners Hill for the Turner issue. The covers cost collectors less than a £1 at the time. Today, they are worth over £150. These were good days for such postmarks. He did six for Churchill in 1974 and all of them now cost over £100. He also arranged postmarks in Cowes for sailing (now worth £100) and when the 1975 Christmas stamps featured angels, our cover was postmarked at Angel Hill and is now worth £175. Informed collectors did well, but, as with pictorial postmarks, more and more new dealers joined in and often made the basic mistake of doing more covers than there was demand (sometimes 1000s more!). This ruined the value of all but a few extremely good covers. By the early 1980s, Tony produced very few covers with small normal postmarks and we are still horrified at seeing the glut of badly produced covers done with no thought for the collector.

Official Covers

Another major trend was the interest in the envelopes produced by the sponsor of special pictorial postmarks. The then Post Office allowed organisations with a definite reason to sponsor a postmark. Provided it was done to guidelines, the sponsor paid the Post Office a fee – and then the Post Office offered their postmark to everyone else for free! Even worse, if the sponsor postmarked more than 1000 covers, they had to pay more. It was ridiculous. I know of one sponsor who did a few hundred covers whereas another dealer produced thousands. Early official covers are very sort after and fetch amazing figures (up to £500) but by the end of the 1970s, too many dealers had joined in and again overproduced, which undermined the market.

Branded Covers

The next big change was that collectors found the type of cover they liked and the dealers they could trust and chose to collect just that brand of cover. In 1978, Tony started the first numbered first day cover series. He called it the Benham Official Cover series. It was revolutionary because people started to collect a complete matching series of covers. To make the collection more special, Tony worked with the organisations whose anniversaries were commemorated by the stamps. Many of these covers are valuable but Benham supplied hundreds of dealers who, excited by the quickly rising prices, overbought, hoping to make a quick killing. When the recession of the 1980s hit, he realised just how many extra covers had been stupidly bought and resolved never to make that mistake again. During his time with Benham, he organised some fantastic signatures. Many of these are fetching extraordinary prices. Up to 50 times the original price is not unusual.

Warning about Condition: Stamps and covers are like antiques. Condition is everything.

What To Collect Today For Fun…And Long Term Gain (Hopefully!)

What Not To Do

It is no use joining the 125,000 people who buy the Philatelic Bureau covers from Royal Mail if you wish to build a potentially valuable collection. These are always available and have no future. Collect these for the fun of having a letter dropping through your letterbox. All Royal Mail want to do is sell stamps. They have no interest in what happens to them afterwards. They say that that is the dealer's job – but the dealers don’t want Royal Mail covers either. Collect Royal Mail covers for fun if you like them but do not expect a future value.

Never hand address covers: we have seen superb covers ruined in terms of future value as people believe the stupidity of “personalisation”. A hand addressed cover can reduce the value of a rare cover by 60% and for modern covers, make them worthless. Collectors expect a neat label, light pencil or no address at all. If you produce your own covers, buy labels that peel off for your address and make sure you get hold of the Postmark Bulletin so you can choose a good postmark for your cover.

Quality Counts

Buy the Best You Can Afford: A well-produced cover that has not been overproduced should have a good future. The better the make, the better chance of future gain. However, this does not mean silly numbers. If only 85 covers are produced regularly, then there are probably only 85 collectors out there who are interested in them. Yes, this means the cover is scarce – but who wants them when you come to sell? We think the maximum number of covers produced should be 5000 and that would be for a very big and popular stamp issue. We limit Buckingham covers to 2500 and try to ensure that there are always new collectors finding out about them. Hopefully one day, we will have sold all of them before issue and have a waiting list.

Autographs Add Value

We have raised nearly £750,000 for good causes through signed covers. These will always be limited to the number of covers the celebrity is willing to sign. Since Tony started Buckingham Covers, we have tried to get the best signatures. It is not always possible but if you aim high, your standards stay high. If you look through our catalogue, you will see Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu, Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst, Jason Robinson and Ben Cohen, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, Victoria Cross winners, Prime Ministers, film stars, in fact a Who’s Who. We are very proud of our charity work and of the great signatures we have obtained for collectors.

Warning About Signatures: Provenance is important. Bobby Moore signed many covers while he was alive and even more it seems, since he passed away! His signature is regularly forged. If you buy autographs (on covers or anything else), buy from someone you trust. We can all make mistakes but a reputable dealer will put it right. A Certificate of Authenticity from Mom and Pop Stamps is not worth the paper it was printed on.

Producing covers – many collectors have no idea of the work, sweat, blood, tears and not to mention, panic that go into creating a cover. An insight into some of the scares and triumphs!

We will not bore you (oh yes, sez you!) with the more mundane disasters: printers going bankrupt or actually dying while printing your cover, works burning down, covers successfully printed and then sent to the wrong address. These you have to live with. No, first let’s start at the beginning…

Printing The Envelope

If you are working with an organisation, there is always the chance that someone will change their minds, often after you’ve already printed the envelope. The covers are meticulously checked for errors, but of course if the organisation misses something we have the fun job of reprinting and swallowing the loss. We once printed a cover, made them all up into envelopes (the next stage: they come flat-packed from the printer and our homeworkers fold them into envelopes using Pritt and put the cards inside) and then had to destroy them all because the artist decided against the cover. To make it even better he was our signature!

Even when you are perfect, there is always the “Sword of Damocles” in the name of Royal Mail hanging over you. It was not amusing to have an extra £1.12 stamp added one Christmas. We had to add a second cover and signature to our signed cover as we had already used the space for an earlier relevant date.

Miniature Sheets are fun as so often they will not fit on the cover you’ve already designed so our designers have to design an emergency second version. Even better is when they give you the wrong size details (sometimes you don’t find this out until the miniature sheets arrive). You get the picture! Just organising an envelope is not as straightforward as it might seem…

Sticking The Stamps

In theory, all you have to do is stick the stamps on to the envelope – a doddle – anyone can do it… or so you might think. Years ago, we were pushed for time and some friends wanted to help. It would have been better if the mechanic had washed his oily hands first, but even that was preferable to his spacing and layout. There were, alas, 12 small stamps to stick and nobody wanted any of his ruining their collections. What could I say? They thought they were doing us a favour.

Organising The Postmark

Sometimes, covers end up in the wrong place. There is a great story of when the boss of Royal Mail visited Brighton. He saw a red Royal Mail van drive past with the advertisement “Post your parcel here and it could end up in Timbuktu” (the advertisement gurus obviously thought this gave a taste of the exotic to Royal Mail). The boss saw red. “That’s exactly what people are afraid will happen to their letters!” he yelled, “Get that advert stopped immediately!”

Well, that advert can be prophetic. Tony was phoned up one March by the then postmaster at Bethlehem (the real one) wanting to know why he had sent him a box of Christmas covers. It turned out they were another dealer's covers that had been sent to Bethlehem, Wales the previous November ready for Christmas. He had a dreadful problem getting compensation.

As most people in the cover world know, complexity is our middle name. We like carrying covers on maiden voyages (QM2) flying in Concorde, Spitfires, Lancasters etc and getting interesting extras like taking the Entente cover to Paris for genuine Paris postmarks as opposed to Scottish “French” postmarks offered elsewhere. But our wild schemes give all kind of occasion for more disasters.

Now here is your riddle for today. One time, Tony arranged for covers to be carried on a ferry to Boulogne for a European issue. His idea was to get a French paquebot postmark on British stamps on the first day – something really special. The French however thought they would leave them to do the following day, which would have been fine except someone efficiently changed the date. There is not the same interest in second day covers!

Then there are just the usual potential postmark problems: We have had our covers postmarked upside down, so badly done you couldn’t do anything with them and of course regularly with the wrong postmark altogether. When you have been involved in covers as long as we have, nothing surprises you.

Getting Autographs

Judging by some of your letters and comments, all we have to do is ask the Queen, the Pope, Tom Hanks, David Beckham etc and they will jump to it. Regrettably this is not the case. We have raised over £700,000 for good causes through signed covers.

We are extremely fortunate that so many celebrities have helped, but there are so many charlatans claiming to raise money for charity that understandably celebrities have become suspicious. It gets harder and harder to get a letter read. Even if you are successful, there are still many snakes left on the board and a few ladders. We have had our covers already signed have gone AWOL. In one case, we couldn’t get replacements as the window of opportunity had gone. Luckily working so far in advance means we can usually correct the situation.

It can be worse. Years ago, when Tony was working with Granada and the Sherlock Holmes TV series, a batch of 500 covers were sent to actor Jeremy Brett to sign. He was in hospital and perhaps a little confused, so he generously signed them and gave them all away to his nurses (try explaining that to your angry waiting customers)! Luckily, we had anticipated big orders and had done some spares so we eventually managed to replace the 500 signed covers already sold.

We can have also the reverse problem. We sent a celebrity some covers but they came back with apologies that they wouldn’t have time after all. We found an alternative signature instead and forgot all about it until to our amazement, the original ones turned up, signed! It was really kind of both signers but left us with more covers than expected and to the collector, it may look like we were trying to sell more.

You would be startled to know how long things can take. We have known celebrities take two years to sign 100 covers! Although admittedly nothing was as long as a Jamaican railway issue that took three years! Also, you cannot rely on getting back the number of covers you sent. Shrinkage can be very costly.

What A Carry On

Getting covers to the right place at the right time is also a nightmare. Tony once spent weeks at Heathrow with the Concorde project and hours at Southampton waiting to get the QM2 covers so he could rush them back for the new stamps the day before the issue date! Trains had broken down, mail coaches had got lost, a fishing boat sunk (luckily before our covers were aboard), fog had caused havoc with helicopters, boxes of covers had fallen off a train and, once, at an RAF station, our covers were almost blown up as suspicious parcels.

Getting Hold Of Older Stamps

It’s great with commemorative covers to use appropriate stamps. Most of our large rivals use easy stamps that they can buy straight from Royal Mail. We, on the other hand, buy older stamps and of course if the demand grows, things can get frightening. At the moment, we would love to buy more VC stamps but the cupboard seems bare. Years ago we spent days on the phone trying to buy Queen Mother stamps. we were offering twice retail but most only had one or two sets. For us, each set meant four more covers and four covers was better than nothing as we had sold thousands more than we had stamps for! We bought in hundreds of sets and scraped through but it was hard work. You would have thought we had learned our lesson but we suppose we are cover lovers and want the best even if it causes so many problems.

This is just an overview of the pitfalls of cover producing. It is fun, scary and stressful and at the end of the day, Tony loved it so much that even when he got a chance to retire, he couldn’t resist starting up again. Sometimes the problems may mean that you don’t get the cover you hoped for but more often, I hope, the effort and love that goes into our covers means you get something really special in your collection.

Our Expert:

Brian Austin has 25 years experience in first day covers and was trained by Tony Buckingham. Also known world wide for his expertise, he is a regular writer for Stamp & Coin Mart magazine and our Head Buyer.