A family member bought a big box of stamps from an estate sale. It was a big box with a wide variety of stamp collector stuff in it including a lot of post cards, first day covers and bags of stamps. Even a lot of plate blocks. It was clear that it was an amateur stamp collector who had this box of stuff. And there was a lot of it.
And it was a whole lot of fun slowly going through it all.
Here is a look at some of the things I discovered.
There were a lot of loose pages of plate blocks. It looked to me like a stamp collector, or someone with stamp knowledge had gone through them and removed any valuable ones. They were all nice but pretty average.
And almost a hundred full sheets of three cent stamps. Uncirculated so technically they can still be used as postage. But, not worth much. Optimistically they could go for $2 a sheet. Which means in total we have about $200 dollars there. But, it would be a lot of work trying to sell them.
I went through them very carefully looking for anything of high value. But it seemed that somebody had already done that. So, nothing of real value here. 
And in the box was lots of postcards, first day covers and stuff like that. (A whole shoebox full of them).
Stick with me here. There is a reason why I am slowly showing you this process I went through. It's what stamp collecting is all about. If you like treasure hunting then you might like stamp collecting.
And there was quite a few bags of stamps. Here are two of them. Clearly a lot of sorting had been done with these stamps.
Maybe the owner sold stamps on ebay or something like that because a lot of it was organized like this. Each bag has a quantity of the same exact stamp like the presidential series 50 cent, 30 cent, etc.
And I did find a fair number of mint unhinged stamps that went right into my personal album as an upgrade. They replaced stamps I had that were postmarked. This alone, while not worth much money, was a definite plus for me. This made the hunt worthwhile. I got some good, and needed, stamps for my album. Quite a few of them from the 1930's through the 1950's. Here is a look at them on one of the pages in my album.
Now things get really interesting.
After making a thorough pass through everything - hours spent! I had done a lot of sorting. I ended up with a whole lot of average stuff that I could forget about.
And I carefully separated out stamps that need further, and detailed, examination. I call these "set asides". I set them aside to be looked at in the future. Here is my little container of set asides.
Let me explain this a bit. Here is a group of 1 cent Washington stamps.
Upon looking at them they might all appear to be the same stamp. But.... this particular stamp was issued many times over the years, and each issue had a small difference. There were differences in watermarks on the back, some with no watermark. And a whole bunch of different ones that had various sizes of perforations. These differences make a huge difference. A 1 cent washington that is a Scott issue # 405 is worth twenty-five cents. But a Scott issue # 544 which is slightly different is worth as much as $8,000 dollars! Yup! Those two stamps look almost identical.
So, I go through a wide variety of stamps like this sorting them out carefully and looking for the rare ones.
And this is where our little bunch of stuck together stamps comes into the story.
I very carefully examined the bunch and extremely carefully separated them from each other without causing any damage to any of the stamps. And what did I find in the middle of the bunch?
Two high value stamps!!
A Scott 85e (used) and a Scott 90e (unused) The Scott # 90e. It is in unused condition and it has the e Grill on the back. Used, this stamp is worth between $325 and $475. And in unused condition it is worth between $500 and $3500! Woot. My stamp is in fair unused condition although it does have some damage from hinging. It has some hinge on the back, and some hinge on the front (because it was in a clump stuck together). I will not tinker with any of that. I will leave it exactly as it is so I don't damage it. So we will pin it at the very low end of $500 in value. Here it is on the Kenmore stamp website for 2,500. mint. And here it is on the Mystic stamp company website for 2,800.
Stamp values can be a bit tricky. It all comes down to what somebody will pay for a stamp. But we will take a conservative view of this stamp and place it toward the low end because of its condition at 500. Here is a look:
Front and back
 
And here is the 85e (front and back) used. It is valued at between $600 and $1700 used. Let's once again take the conservative estimate and place it at $600.
So, that makes this find worth $1,100. dollars :)  
Imagine that. It always mystifies me. These two tiny pieces of paper about one inch in size worth a total of a thousand dollars.
And, as I mentioned I am pretty sure a stamp collector had this collection. And maybe another collector went through the collection picking out anything of value. It seems that way to me. But... this little clump of stuck together stamps was overlooked. And was almost overlooked by me too. But, I stuck with it. Set it aside with other potential valuable stamps and finally got to carefully inspect it. And, got a really great surprise. Now, I am pretty happy with my estimate of these stamps. But to really get an outstanding assessment I would have to send them off to be professionally authenticated. Here is an example of how I could do that through the American Philatelic Society: Getting a stamp authenticated Will I sell these stamps? Or get them authenticated? No way, they went right into my album! I am good with that.
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