As someone who inherited a large, country-spanning stamp/cover collection: +1 to this. As someone with collecting tendencies myself, I don't look down on my re

As someone who inherited a large, country-spanning stamp/cover collection: +1 to this. As someone with collecting tendencies myself, I don't look down on my relatives for doing the collecting (unlike some of my family), and knowing how much work and thought went into it, I don't want to just toss it in the trash (again, unlike some of my family)... But I also have no idea what to do with it, and I have neither the knowledge nor the time to even attempt to go through it, nevermind actually selling any parts of it. So there it sits, taking up quite a bit of room in my house. I keep hoping someday I'll stumble upon an enthusiast who'll want to take the entire thing (for a low bulk price), but there don't seem to be that many collectors around nowadays, and as you (and others here) have mentioned, a lot of the personal value comes from having done the collecting, so most collectors probably wouldn't be interested anyways. So I encourage collectors to take this advice! Set aside anything you'd want your family to try to get value for, separate from what you're okay with them letting go. (Possibly as a consequence of this, my collecting tendencies tend towards things with intrinsic value such as tools -- I tell myself that at least selling e.g. a hammer at a yard sale should be easier if you don't need to find someone looking for a one-of-a-kind mis-forged XYZ brand from October 1965... Definitely not expecting anything to be a store of actual value, though, and I'm sure my heirs will feel burdened no matter what they end up having to deal with in my estate)