Hey, can I help you? Hello. Yes, actually. I have this. CHUMLEE: All right. Oh, are you a stamp collector? ELIZABETH: I'm not, but they
do appear to be very valuable. They're extremely old. All right. The Stamp That Lost Us
The American Colonies. Stamp of 1765
issues in accordance with the Greenville
Stamp Act in the attempt to tax the American colonies. Oh, wow, I think this is a stamp
in relation to the Stamp Act. Too bad my boss isn't here
because he would really want to nerd out on this right now. ELIZABETH: I'm here to sell
some old stamps that I have. They're definitely unique. I know they're not like the
stamps that we use today. That's for sure. I'm asking $250 for the stamps. I feel like they're worth some
value because how old they are. CHUMLEE: So this is pretty cool. I mean, basically what the
Stamp Act was is the British Parliament deciding that all
British citizens need to pay a paper tax whether they
lived on this continent or in Britain, so they
imposed the Stamp Act of 1765. And if you lived on this
continent at the time it wasn't America
everyone was from England, so you still had
to pay that tax. And this little
stamp right here had to be on every single piece of
paper, if I remember correctly. Otherwise, there was some
type of legal consequence. ELIZABETH: Oh, wow. And it says "America"
on it too, actually. On here. American colonies. Yeah, we weren't
quite America yet. This is right before we
fought the Revolutionary War to become free. They're pretty interesting. They almost look embossed. They kind of look royal. It kind of looks like something
the British Parliament would make, these deep blue colors. How much are you
looking to get for it? I'm thinking
probably, like, $250. Well normally, I'd
just go get my boss, but he's not going to
be back for a few hours. If you have a few
minutes to hang out, though, I can call my buddy. And he knows the value of
all this kind of stuff. OK. Yeah, I've got a
couple of minutes. It could be worth
a lot of money. I'd like to hear
what the expert has to say because I'm
confident they're valuable, but I'm not exactly
sure how much. I'm just taking a
wild guess on this. So this is what
I called you about. I thought it was
pretty interesting, but Rick wasn't around. And I figured even if he was,
he'd call you down anyways. He would love this. Yes, you're right. These are really,
really interesting. This is something
that a collector's put together who collected
British revenue stamps. These ones up here are from
the 1694 series which was for general use by the British. However, this one here
appears as a stamp issued by the British in
line with the Stamp Act. Well, the Stamp Act was a
way for the British crown to raise money in the
colonies in America. Remember, they had just
come out of fighting the French and Indian War. They emerged victorious,
but it was very expensive. And they wanted to recoup
some of that money. So they came up with a Stamp
Act, which specifically targeted the Americas. It mainly affected
items on paper, although it also affected dice. I mean, who knew. No gambling without a tax. Exactly. I'll make sure it says America. The British issued all sorts of
revenue stamps in 18th century. If it says America,
we're in business. Yes, it does. Yeah, this one says America. This is wonderful. So this is an important stamp. It seems like there'd
be a lot of these if you had to stamp it
on every piece of paper. You would think. It was a relatively
short-lived act. It was introduced in 1765
and, just a few months later, repealed. So there wasn't a lot of
opportunity for their use. What kind of value
would you put on it? Well, the basal value
is about $400 or $500 if you're buying it
in a stamp auction, but this also has
some other stamps. I think to any
advanced collector, it's easily a
thousand dollar item. Awesome. OK.
Well, appreciate. It
- All right. All right, congratulations. - Thank you.
- Thank you. It looks like someone's
happy with what they heard. Yeah, I had no idea. I'm working with 1,000 now. How does that sound to you? It sounds like a
little too much to me. Would you take 450? 450? That, I think maybe if
it was just these, but-- What are you thinking? Well, I don't
want to sell them for half what they're worth. So how about 650? You think you could do 600? I don't think so. That's a little too low. That's almost selling them
for half what they're worth. 250 to 650, huh? I could just take
him back with me. I really want to
show them to my boss, so I'm going to make a deal. $650. $650. All right, meet me right
up here at the counter. I'll take these. I'm leaving here with
$650 for those stamps. And that's more than
I was looking for, and that's awesome. RICK: What do we have here? It is an official piece of
mail flown by Charles Lindbergh on the Spirit of St. Louis. RICK: Wow, that's cool Bought it spur of
the moment, but it doesn't really go with anything
else that I collect, so-- Impulse buy, I understand. I'm at the grocery
store constantly. And I pick up those damn M&Ms or
something right at the counter. [chuckles] STEVE: I decided to
come to the pawn shop today to try to sell my 1928
Charles Lindbergh letter. I'm looking to get
around 200 for it, but the least I think I take for
it would be probably around 75. RICK: So where did you get this?
STEVE: Got it online. I don't really know too
much about Lindbergh. I do know he did the first
transatlantic flight. Yeah, I know he
didn't carry no mail on that when he went to France. I mean, it was the
first plane to fly all the way across the Atlantic. They had to load
so much fuel on it. Everything they could
cut out of that plane, they cut out of that plane. It didn't have paint
on it because the paint weighed something. They put the gas tank almost
directly over the wings. With the large gas
tank right there and the controls right there,
he had to fly with a periscope. OK, literally, I
mean, that's the way he had to fly the plane. When Charles Lindbergh flew
solo across the Atlantic, people were amazed
that he pulled it off. He was one of the biggest
celebrities of his day. And he's still considered
an American icon. 1928 West Indian Aerial
Express Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Air mail service is
no big deal now, OK? But back in the 1920s,
it was still pretty new. So Lindbergh used
his celebrity status to promote air mail service. So he went on a tour
of the Caribbean to hand out these souvenir
letters just to show, hey, air mail service has arrived. Now, what did you
want to do with this? Looking to probably
get around $200 for it. I know he didn't carry any
mail in the Spirit of St. Louis besides this piece
on a couple of others that were in the mail sack. It's got to be kind of rare,
especially with the stamps even just being what they are. RICK: This is one
of my problems. I don't know a lot about stamps,
and mail, and things like that. I'm taking a shot in the dark. I'm assuming a sack of mail has
got around 500 envelopes in it. Probably. So it's not uber rare. There's probably more
of them out there. 50 bucks. Can you do, like, 150? It's Charles Lindbergh. Any aviation nerd
is going to buy it. Tell you what,
I'll go 100 bucks. Yeah, I guess we can do that. OK. All right, let's go
do some paperwork. There are a lot
of collectors that go absolutely nuts for anything
related to Charles Lindbergh. And the fact that
it's already framed up is going to make it that
much easier to sell. What do we got here? You got an $0.08 book of
stamps that my dad got in 1971. And it's been
misprinted and miscut. Yeah, the post office. It doesn't surprise me they
screwed up some stamps too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I came to the pawn
shop today to try to sell my 1971 misprinted
Eisenhower $0.08 stamps. I researched on the internet. I've never seen
anything like this. I'm hoping to get close
to $800,000 per stamp. RICK: Where did you get these? FRED: Well, my dad
worked at a post office. He was one of those grumpy
old guys that sold stamps. He sold them to a woman who
brought him back two days later and said, hey,
these are no good. So he gave her a good book and
brought those home and said, this could be worth
money someday. RICK: OK, it could be. Do you know anything about it? All I know is that
this is a good page. This is how we're
supposed to be printed. And this is a bad page. Obviously, it's in sideways. And it's miscut, too,
because there was supposed to be perforation there. RICK: OK. I've used $0.08 stamps before. When I was a kid, that's
how much a letter was. FRED: Right. RICK: I never mail
anything anymore. As far as, like,
bills or anything like that, everything's online. Back in the early days
of the US Postal Service, they actually did
not use stamps. The recipient was
supposed to pay the postman directly when he
showed up to deliver the mail. But that took way too long. So in the 1840s, they
introduced prepaid stamps. RICHARD: Eisenhower was one of
the greatest presidents ever. He built the interstate highway. He expanded Social Security. And he fought for civil rights. It's no wonder they
made a stamp of him. What were you looking
to do with them? I want to sell them. I'm getting close to
retirement, and I'd like to have a little
extra money to play with. Do you have any
idea what you're looking to get out of it? I really don't. How much do you want
to give for them? To tell you quite frankly, I
don't know a lot about stamps. At least with
coins, they'll make the same dime for 40 years. Stamps, they change
them every few weeks. I mean, it's like
a field in itself. But it is a mistake,
and I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen
often, so you might have something worth 5 bucks. You might have something
worth 5,000 bucks. I have no idea. I actually do know a guy
who knows all about stamps, been doing it his whole life.
FRED: OK. RICK: Let me get him down here. FRED: OK, sounds good. All right, be right back. FRED: I'll keep my
fingers crossed. I'm hoping this expert can come
up with a big number for me. RICK: Hey Jay, how's it going? Hey, Rick. The guys call me
down to the shop when they have a rare
stamp or rare coin that they need more
information about. This is an interesting item. There's millions of
stamp collectors, and there's probably
hundreds of thousands who collect errors on stamps. RICK: So what do we have here? JAY: We have more than a miscut. This is four or five
errors combined in one. RICK: OK. This is clipped along the
bottom corner here and here. And then you have three
clip stamps along the top. And because these
perforations are missing in this row and this
row, you have a miscut plus an imperforate error. RICK: Imperforate,
what does that mean? Imperforate means
no perforations. OK. JAY: Out of millions of
these panes produced, you don't see this too often. A miscut or a misprint
is very collectible because they're rare. There's very few of them. Some are worth
just a little bit. And some are worth great,
great sums of money. RICK: So I mean,
how many of these do you think exist like this? The miscut, probably
in the 50 to 100 range. OK. JAY: The imperforate
pairs are much rarer. RICK: OK, how much
would it be worth? It would be worth
between $500 and $700. RICK: OK. It's a lot more than I
thought because I thought you were going to say 50 bucks. It's a lot less
than I thought. Thanks a lot, Jay.
I really appreciate it. My pleasure. The value of anything
is determined by supply and demand. And errors that are sought
by millions of people are worth a lot more than errors
that are not that popular. So the demand is a big factor. RICK: So how much
you want for them? I'd go the low
end of that, 500. RICHARD: That's not
the low end, son. That's retail. OK. I'll tell you what, I'll
give you 400 bucks for it. I am a business. I do have bills, you
know what I mean? I mean, no one works
for me for free, even though he
thinks they should. [laughs] But I'll
give you 400 bucks. How about 425? Four. - 425.
- OK, sounds good. Thank you. All right, I'll meet
you right up front. I'll write you up. I wanted more, but
that's reasonable. Obviously, $425 is
not enough to retire. So I'm going to put it
aside and see what happens COREY: Hey.
How's it going? JOE: Good.
How are you? COREY: Doing good. I have a set of
North Dakota controlled substance tax stamps. The legislature passed
a law back in 1989 requiring people with illegal
drugs to purchase a stamp and apply it to
their illegal drugs. Who the hell
ever would do that? [laughs] JOE: I am a stamp collector. So when I seen
these up for sale, I decided to purchase those
as a collector's item. I'm looking to sell the stamps
just to get rid of stuff. My kids don't want it when
I am no longer around. What's the difference
between the different colors? Do you know that, or-- JOE: Well, the green
is the ones that were to be affixed to the marijuana. The-- No kidding. The blue was controlled
substances that are sold by weight, such as cocaine. And then the red,
drugs that were sold by dosage, such as heroin. COREY: I mean, I
just can't believe the state of North
Dakota actually paid to have these things printed. Well, it didn't go over very
well because most of the people that were required to
purchase the tax stamp, they certainly didn't want
to wave their hand and say, hey, I got illegal drugs here,
I need to purchase tax stamps. Any idea on what you're
looking to get out of them or-- I'm looking to get $100. I've seen them priced on the
internet for 125 per stamp. OK. Here's my issue. For me to be able to do
something with these, I'm going to have to actually
pay to get these things framed. I mean, I hate to low-ball
you so much on them, but honestly, I'd offer
you about 30 bucks for him. I'd have to
respectfully decline $30. I mean, if you can
get close to 100, I can maybe come
down a little bit. I mean, I'll tell you what,
I'll do 50 bucks because I can buy a really, really
cheap frame at the drugstore by my house. Yeah, all right, I'll go
ahead and do 50 on this. Do 50?
All right, man. I appreciate it. So meet me over here. We'll do some
paperwork, all right? All right. $50 is not as much
as I was looking for, but I'm going to take the
money, and I want to split it up with my grandkids. RICK: Hey, how's it going?
- Good. How you doing? RICK: Good. I got this little
1930s stamp viewer. It's called a roto gage. FDR used to keep going on
his desk during World War II because, naturally, as
a man in a wheelchair, he didn't have a whole lot of
activities available to him. RICK: Actually, he was
a pretty damn busy guy. You know, he's running the free
world, running the country. MATT: I'm here today
with my 1930s roto gage. It's designed for stamp viewing. And I'm hoping Rick
might have an interest in picking up for $500. This little device lets you
measure perforations per inch. And it gives you a magnifying
glass so you can see what the heck you're looking at. RICK: Stamp collecting that
used to be really, really huge. You could buy bulk stamps from
catalogs and stuff like that. And literally, they
would just send you a package with 100 stamps
from all over the world and everything like that. But the problem is they
didn't tell you what you got. A lot of stamps,
especially early 1900s, it's really hard to figure out
where the hell they come from. So it's little, subtle
differences like the perforations on the side. So this would tell you how
many preparations per inch. And when you're going
through the catalogs, it would tell you,
OK, this stamp has this many perforations,
for instance, has this many, and therefore, help you
catalog your stamps. So how much you want for it? MATT: I see 500 on
them for stamp sites. RICK: OK, those are stamp sites. Last time I had one of these,
I think I got 175 bucks. And I had the magnifying glass. You know, I know a lot of
the times the magnifying glass is not there. MATT: FDR's doesn't have the
magnifying glass anymore. I like to think he chucked
it at Patton or something, broke it off. RICK: I'd give you
100 bucks for it. How about $200? RICK: No. MATT: How about 150? RICK: No, I'm not going
to make any money on 150. I mean, it's-- we have something
really, really simple here. I give you 100 bucks. I sell it for 150, 175. We both have a wonderful
day because you only paid a buck for it, probably. MATT: Yeah, 100 bucks will work. OK, cool man.
I'll meet you right over there. We'll do some paper
work, get you paid. MATT: Sounds good. This is cool. What do you have here? I got five pounds of
stamps I want to sell. Do you have any
Girl Scout cookies? No. Rick, come check
these stamps out. Believe it or not,
he has no cookies. Because the Boy Scouts
don't sell cookies. Oh. LEE: I'm going to go
into the pawn shop today and see if I can't
sell a whole bunch of stamps. I really hope that we'll get
about $6,000 for these stamps from the pawn shop. If we do, it'll really benefit
a bunch of underprivileged boys and send them to camp next year. Wouldn't that be great? So do you know
anything about these? LEE: Not a thing. RICK: So you're not
prepared this time? LEE: I'm a boy scout
who's not prepared. What do you think of that? I figured you'd know more
about them than I do. I figure it's just
like collecting coins, you know what I mean? It's simple. No, no, no. Coins are easy
compared to stamps. LEE: They are? RICK: Well, they'll make
the same coin for 50 years. LEE: They do? RICK: They don't make the same
stamp for more than six months. LEE: Oh. There's just
millions and millions of different kinds of stamps. There are stamps that range in
value from anywhere from $0.01 to over a million dollars. You Just never know
what you're going to find in a pile like this. These are all,
like, World War II. This is 1941. OK. This is Third Reich stuff. What makes you think
they're valuable? We were told
they were valuable. OK. We were told that the
estate collected these over 60, 70, 80 years or more. RICK: This us my problem. I don't know nothing
about stamps. So the mystery is, do
you have 50 bucks here or do you have 5 million here. I just don't know. But I do have a buddy
who lives here in town. I can get him down here to
look through these things. I think that's a great idea. OK. RICK: Hey, Len.
How's it going? - How are you doing, Rick?
- I'm pretty good. Good. Well, these are the
stamps I called you about. LEN: My name is Len. I'm an expert in stamps. I love this hobby. I've been doing this since 1950. Why do I collect? Because it tells the
history of the world. It's something that once
you get involved in, you just don't
want to walk away. I'm hoping to
find in this pile somewhere a million
dollar stamp. LEN: Well, I'll tell
you, there might be. In everything that's here,
there may be that one stamp that is worth that million dollars. RICK: So Len, what exactly
makes the stamp valuable? What makes a timestamp value
is how many they printed. how many were purchased,
and how many are available. And certain stamps, basically,
are worth more than others. It doesn't necessarily have to
be mint or canceled to be worth any money. I've heard the term
postmarked, not canceled. Is it the same thing or-- It's the same thing. And basically, a mint stamp
is a stamp like you would purchase from the post office. A cancelled stamp is when
it's been through the mail. Give us some time, and I'll go
through it and look it over. OK, you go right ahead. And don't miss a single stamp. Well, all I can say is the
expert's looking at the stamps right now. And I'm sure he's going
to find something. RICK: That worth anything?
- Nope. RICK: All right. Worth anything? Nope. RICK: Worth anything? Nope. RICK: Worth anything? LEN: No. RICK: What about that one? No. That million dollar stamp
has just got to be in there, but the suspense is killing me. There's thousands of
stamps to sift through. And examining each one is
going to take some time, but at least it's
for a good cause. So do you think
they're worth anything? Rick, I looked
through all these. I haven't seen
anything of value. None? LEN: They basically are
not worth anything at all. OK, you want to tell him,
or you want me to tell him? LEN: You tell him. Len has scanned through
every one of these stamps and hasn't found a single
one of them worth anything. Now I got to break
the bad news to Lee. Not great news. Well, I'm a boy scout. I can take anything. They're not worth anything. You mean to tell me
there's not a million dollar stamp in there? Nothing. Nothing? RICK: Recycled paper. Oh, brother. Well, that's a real
disappointment, ladies and gentlemen, I got to tell you. It could have done a lot
of good if it had been something in here worthwhile. I'm shattered. I'd have thought
certainly there'd be at least one stamp
worth a lot of money that would send boys to camp. Thank you for your time, Len. You're welcome, Lee. I'll tell you what, since
I used to be a boy scout, and I can't buy
the stamps off you, I'll send a boy or two to camp. Well that would be great. I mean, really, that's the best
news I've had all day today. All right, well, let's
get these stamps cleaned up. - You gonna help me?
- Yeah, I'll help. OK. [laughs] Hey, how can I help you? I have some 1960 stamp books. OK. LORI: Eight to the
Top Value stamp books and then two of the
Quick Saver stamp books. If they saved up the stamps,
they can go and purchase stuff out of catalogs. COREY: OK. LORI: I'm here today to sell
my stamp books from the 1960s. 90% of the books are
completed with the stamps. I am hoping to get
$1,000 for the whole set. COREY: This is interesting. Mind if I take a look? LORI: Go ahead. This is a little
before my time, but it's not really
a new concept. They started doing this
with the late 1800s. Once they started getting
these big supermarkets, someone came up with this. It was a great customer
loyalty program. Some people would absolutely
obsess over stuff like this. But realistically, by the time
you bought enough stuff at Top Value to get your 80 books
filled with stamps to get your curio cabinet,
you probably could have just saved up some money
and bought the curio cabinet. Stamp books, they hit their
peak in about the '70s. And then the computer came
around and the credit cards. The loyalty programs started
going more towards that. So we have Top
Value stamps here. That's your stamp book that
you're collecting here. This one's almost filled up. You have your
catalog here, where you can get a mini chest lamp
table for 34 books of stamps. So if you have 34 of these
books filled with stamps, you could get a
little table lamp. So what are you looking
to do with them? I would like to sell them. OK. You know, the condition's
pretty good on them. But to be quite frank with
you, it's fun to talk about. They're kind of
interesting to look at. Realistically, there's
no value to these. I wouldn't even be able to
make you an offer on it. I mean, you kind of brought
me in some '70s junk mail. Realistically, I
would just pass on it. There's not really anything
I could do with it. Thanks for coming in. Thank you Appreciate it.
