The Value of Your Stamps

There are few terms that you need to understand and know in term of stamp collecting. These terms refer to the condition of the stamps when you look at them
The condition of the stamps can be summarize into several categories, i.e.: Very Fine (VF), Fine (F) and Very Good (VG), Good (G), Acceptable (A). There are other terms that are used and those will depend on the area and the general agreement of the local custom. These term are generally used on the stamp catalog to give the value of a certain stamp.

Basically there are 5 parameter that will be used to give a judgement of the stamps condition.
Gum Condition.
How well the condition of the gum on the back of the stamps. The early issue stamps are using material that is easily damaged by air humidity. Also the method of displaying the stamps in the past are not always in the best interest to keep the gum part undisturbed, therefore damaged gum are quite normal to find in the old stamps.
Colour
The colour condition of the stamps itself should be good. A lot of the older stamps are printed by using inks that will bleed in time. They are mostly printed in single colour as well. The modern stamps are printed using full coloured printing machine and more resilient inks.
Centering
The location of the designed picture should be centered. Also the distant to all side of the stamps should roughly be equal.
Paper/Material Used
The paper or material used for producing the stamps should be free of defect. Defects means that the paper is not perfect and it is very subjective appraisal.
Cancellation
As a general rule, a cancelled stamps worth less and less attractive compare to the un-cancelled stamps. However, there are some cancellation which are in demand because they happened only once in a lifetime. For example a cancellation of the millenium will be in demand, specially when they are done from a rather special place as well.

The combination of the all the above parameter will generally be used to assess the value of a certain stamps. However, it does not mean that all the stamps that fall out of the above categories are bad stamps. Infact, there have been a lot of cases that a certain stamps with a misprint or printed with the wrong colour or printed on the wrong paper or produced with different original gum command a higher price in the market. The word to remember about the philatelic material is scarce. The more scarce the item, the higher the prices (provided that the scarce component are legitimate component). Creating your own scarce stamp will not increase the value of your collection.

They are people who specialize in collecting these "error or mistakenly printed" stamps. There is no limit as to the type of errors. The most commons error will be the printing error. The printing error could come in the form of shifted colour, inverted picture, wrong colour, double printing and a few other mistakes.
And then of course the perforation part of the stamps. Some printing company forgets to perforate the stamps. There are some imperforated stamps issued by the postal department, but these are specially imperforated stamps which are normally issued to commemorate something. The "forget to perforate stamps" normally only happen during the process of finishing the stamps and certainly not on purpose.

Most of these "error stamps" are more expensive than the normal stamps. There is no open market value like the ordinary stamps. Some of these "unique stamps" are mentioned in the normal catalog, but in general they are not even mentioned because not everybody know about it.