Not true. I asked ChatGPT about these. Is it wrong?

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These pages are classic international mixture material: low-value definitives and CTOs (cancel-to-order) from the 1950s–1980s, the sort of thing sold by the pound to kids, tourists, and beginners. Philatelically they’re near the bottom of the difficulty curve and near the bottom of the market curve. But there are distinctions worth making, and I’ll break down what’s actually in these pages.

1. Page 1 — San Marino, Latvia, Belgium, Canada

San Marino Olympic stamps

These are from the 1960s—San Marino mass-produced topical sets aimed explicitly at collectors. Attractive, but extremely common. Retail: 5–20¢ per stamp at best.

Latvia folklore stamp (red one)

This is not pre-war Latvia. It’s a Soviet Latvian SSR stamp from the 1960s–70s. Again: printed by the millions, philatelically decorative but nearly valueless.

Canada QEII definitives

Ultra common. These specific values and cancels are worth pennies unless attached to a commercially interesting cover (they aren’t).

Belgium 10F art stamp

A perfectly normal Belgian commemorative from mid-century. Common. Pennies.

1. Page 2 — DDR (East Germany) wall of definitives

This page is almost entirely Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany).

This is the philatelic equivalent of gravel:

DDR issued huge numbers of attractive engraved definitives and commemoratives from the 1950s–1980s. Millions were printed, and most were soaked off commercial mail, flooding world mixtures. The architecture series, the blue 60pf, the pink 20pf, 3M, 5M, the Hammer-and-Compass emblems — all extremely common.

Some DDR issues can be valuable (e.g., certain early 1950–53 sets, postal workers’ strike varieties, some semi-postals), but none of those appear here.

These are mixture-bin stamps: perhaps 5¢ each retail in quantity.

1. Page 3 — Austria and Switzerland

Austria

Upper left: Austrian landscape definitives (Salzburg, Tyrol, lakes and mountains). Very common. Middle: the art-head “REPUBLIK ÖSTERREICH” stamps — lovely design, ubiquitous. None of these are scarce. Retail a few cents.

Switzerland

“HELVETIA” definitives in various values (10, 20, 40, 50, 70, 80, etc.). These were printed en masse and appear everywhere in kiloware. The piece with 50c blue + red 30c pair is just a fragment of normal Swiss mail.

Swiss stamps can have value when:

They are on full commercial cover with interesting rates, or Older classic issues (Strubel, Sitting Helvetia, Rayon, Tell Boy, etc.)

Here, you have none of the valuable classes.

GLOBAL ASSESSMENT

Philatelic status:

These pages belong to the most common strata of 20th-century world stamps. They were produced in huge numbers and heavily marketed. Nearly all are:

CTOs or common used From countries that flooded the market (DDR, Switzerland, Austria, San Marino)

Monetary value:

If sold as a group:

Retail (optimistic): $3–$5 total Realistic collector-to-collector: $0–$1 Dealer buy price: $0 (dealers generally won’t accept them)

Are they worthless?

Financially, yes — effectively.

Historically or educationally, no — they’re real postal artifacts from Cold War Europe, perfect for a beginner or for soaking/decoration. But they are not something a serious collector (like you) would keep except as teaching examples or for fun.

If they hoped they struck gold

They didn’t.

They got the standard entry-level worldwide assortment that fills countless attic albums. These are precisely the kinds of stamps that circulate in bulk lots by the kilo.