New Thoughts On The Imperf Baseball Press Sheets

Several weeks ago, I put a permanent "Search" on ebay for the first time ever. Every morning, ebay emails me with any new listings matching that Search. As an experiment, I specified the imperf Baseball press sheets.

In September, you might see one or two a day. Now, you might see one or two a week, and there are "none" this morning. There are almost no complete press sheets (i.e., $54 face) trickling onto ebay.

Would love to know if speculators are now holding on tight to them, or whether most have been cut up to meet collector demand? Even cut up, that's only (2,500 x 6) 15,000 panes of 20. The panes of 20 are being cut up at a rapid rate; one pane will yield 4 blocks plus 4 singles, and there are plenty of blocks available. Comment?

Well, I cut mine up and doled it out. I saw no reason to keep the sheet whole.

I think people are hording them in the hopes of prices going up. I don't think prices have gone up the way hoarders were hoping they would. Scott not listing them, didn't help matters much.

Henry Gitner Philatelists currently has an ebay listing for these at a BIN price of $250, plus $4.99 shipping; with "one sold, three available" and 12 days yet to go on the auction.

Personally, I think it's way overpriced. While it is understood that the MLB Uncut Press Sheets interest a wider audience than just stamp collectors, I find it intriguing that the USPS has not sold out of ANY Press Sheets for any issue in recent memory -- not even the individual player MLB Press Sheets, that were also claimed to be available in limited editions.

Collectors are soon going to tire of purchasing these Uncut Press Sheets when there are so many different ones available to collect, many of which arrive at their destination damaged because of the way the USPS ships them.

Right now they may seem like stinkers apart from the MLB combo sheet, but who knows what will be 5 years down the line. They didn't print that many of most of them and in case USPS will give up on them because of poor sales, collectors might get interested in them again at some point.

They are a pain to store for sure! Is it wise to store them in their original packaging? The sticker on the bottom says something like "packaging not suitable for philatelic archiving."

Michel will most definitely catalogue them by the way.

I have been watching E-Bay for these press sheets also, jrmcauley sold 4 of these uncut press sheets for $235 + $16 shipping with several days to go! I'll probably never see these in my collection.

I bought an imperf plate block out of a.'s sheet, purely because it was a donation auction here, for a good cause. (I'm not a U.S. collector, and I stay far away from modern stamps, generally speaking, except that I use them on correspondence.)

Not one person at my stamp club (made up of generally U.S. collectors) appeared remotely interested in it (I was showing, not selling), which makes me wonder if it has any traction with the collecting base.

I agree that no Scott number hurts it in the long run. (But as a donation purchase, I could throw it away and still feel that I've received my money's worth. (Don't worry, rod, I'm not throwing it away.))

My 2d.

There seems to be more demand for the blocks and panes than for the whole sheets. The sheets are jus too big, both physically and financially.

Postage.

It would seem that the market will almost inevitably be flooded by them as the U.S.P.S. trickles a million or so into the collectors hands. All I have to say is remember the Dag Hammarskjold issues? They printed a million inverted color so collectors couldn't make a fortune on their mistake and now, I think they have learned a lesson from it since and will most likely quietly profit from the MLB issues. I hope I'm wrong but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Well, it's not "a million or so" for every issue. The Earthscape issue has only 22.5k individual imperforated panes (9 per sheet x 2.5k print quantity). That doesn't sound enough to satisfy every US stamp collector on the planet to me.

October 27. This morning I got my usual group of search "matches" from ebay, and nothing larger than a block of four, several days in a row - no panes of 20, no press sheets.

If one poster is right about appearing in Michel, demand for all types of imperf should surge.

Scott is wonderfully consistent in their inconsistencies, so I won't be surprised if these particular imperfs don't earn a catalogue number. And I won't be surprised if they eventually do...

A Michel number would at least acknowledge that they exist, but would it create a surge? Surely, the number of collectors of modern U.S. who pay attention to Michel numbering must be tiny.

The point is more that European collectors use Michel almost exclusively, and a good many collect U.S., so in striving for completeness, they will buy (or at least covet).

The other thing worth considering are companies that produce pre-printed album pages such as Schaubek, Lindner and Leuchtturm. Very likely they will contain spaces for the imperf. stamps. So anyone who buys these will want to complete their collection.
Furthermore, what is there to lose to buy these sheets? You get them at face value, stamps are "forever" which means their value will increase whenever postage rates go up and the low print run of the majority of these will one day lead to a shortage in the market. Of course, a lot will depend on how many collectors will be left in 20 years from now. Stamp collecting is a dying hobby for sure.
One last thing, just ask yourself if you would buy a US commem. stamp with a print run of 22.5k (earthscape imperf.). I would... How many US commem. stamp collectors are there on this planet? Probably a lot more than 22.5k I would guess.
It's not like buying silver coins which are sold at a huge mark-up over spot where you may run the risk they'll be worth substantially less than what you paid for. Face value is face value, and if push comes to shove you can always use them as postage.
But of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

A small clarification about silver coins; quote:

"It's not like buying silver coins which are sold at a huge mark-up over spot.."

Correct - they are sold at a huge mark-up over face value, and that market price changes every day, but the price IS spot or 1% to 3% higher. Here in Columbus, I can buy all I want at spot, which is currently 22.95 times face value (October 29).

What is "spot"? I do not collect coins.

To clarify myself - I did not mean bullion (e.g. American Eagle, Maple Leaf), I meant collectors' coins such as those issued by the Perth Mint, US Mint, Royal Canadian Mint etc. These are sold at a considerable premium over spot (spot = precious metal price at the stock exchange (or whereever this is actually being traded - I'm not a pro myself!). For example, the US Mint currently sells the proof issue of the American Eagle for $59.95 per coin (1oz silver weight), whereas the actual precious metal (silver) content of 1oz is only worth $31.75 (as of right now: http://www.kitcosilver.com/charts/2...sspot.html).
Nonetheless, even if you buy bullion coins it's unlikely to get what you want for exactly spot. If you buy them from one of the distributors, they will charge you a certain fee or total amount over spot. And if you want to sell them again, you won't get that fee back, of course. With bullion coins you are speculating on the precious metals gaining in value - it's as simple as that.