Postman's retirement fund stamps

A man from Poole spent a lifetime collecting stamps to fund his retirement, but died before he could sell them.

With the help of his wife, daughter and grandchildren, Alan Roy spent 70 years stockpiling stamps.

He began when he was six years-old and his collection is so vast now that it fills 40 packing crates.

There are stamps from all over the world including ones which mark historic events like Olympics games.

Alan mainly collected duplicate stamps and planned to sell them in packages

Following Alan's recent death aged 76, his family say they never want to see another stamp again and are selling them at auction.

David Elliott from Elliotts Auctioneers in Wimborne has been unable to put a true value on the stamps because he cannot complete the time-consuming task of cataloguing them all.

David first heard about the collection when he received a call from Alan's daughter, Janette Dorrell, 50, from Poole.

David said: "First of all she said she had one or two stamps, and then in the next breath she said she had more like a million stamps.

"It turns out on further counting to be more like two million, or possibly even more."

"Quite incredible"

David and his team have found a few rare stamps in the collection

As David explains, Alan, a former postman, developed quite an "obsession" for stamp collecting.

He said: "Of course he worked for Royal Mail and then further on in life he got a contact in Ireland - a nun - who was shipping him Irish stamps in huge quantities over about a 20 year period.

"There turned out to be about 500,000 of those stamps alone."

Alan mainly collected duplicate stamps. It was his plan to process these bundles of stamps into saleable packages, but sadly he never got that far.

David said: "There are just under 2 million British and Commonwealth stamps.

"They start at Queen Victoria - although there's not many of those - and then move into Queen Elizabeth's time, and there are several hundred thousand of those.

"Finally we move right up to date with just about every stamp ever produced, but in quantities of thousands per stamp.

"I don't think a private individual would have had quite this many stamps in one collection - ever!

"It's quite incredible."

Quantity counts

Three large lots of stamps will be auctioned in Wimborne

Alan's stamps will be sold over a series of auctions and will be joined with stamps belonging to other people.

But just how popular will the lots prove to stamp-collectors?

David said: "It's not as popular as it was.

"I think it's less interesting to children than playing on computer games, so I don't think there's as much sticking stamps in albums happening now, but it still exists and it's a highly profitable industry - if you know what you're doing.

"It's all about margins of stamps, if it's hinged, if it's mint, it's rarity - there are many, many factors that go into what make's a stamp valuable.

"We picked out a few rare stamps from Malta [in Alan's collection], that are worth a few hundred pounds each.

"Unfortunately there aren't any penny blacks, but there are plenty of penny reds - hundreds in fact!

"But generally it's the quantity over value that matters."

The first auction takes place at Elliotts Auctioneers, Wimborne, on November 28.

There are three large lots - 'Great Britain' which includes about 1.5 million stamps, 'Ireland' and 'the rest of the World' which each have around 500,000 stamps.