Remarkable US 114 Collection On Ebay

It is less of a collection and more of an accumulation or hoard. While some of the cancels look nice, others are just smudges.

Well, I looked at the whole thing, and that's 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back again. I can't believe that someone spent that much time putting that up on pages. Granted that it has been cherry picked, but what's left is mostly a pointless accumulation that someone is trying to flip for a quick getaway.

I think revcollector was being very optimistic in his view of what a real auction house would do with this. The houses known for quality offerings wouldn't even touch it, and of the lesser houses I can't imagine anyone breaking it down. This is a remainder lot, at best, and would wholesale for a pittance. These stamps are packet material, and that is the best market. In a real auction I would hesitate to make a $500 bid because it just might take it. But what am I saying? For me this would be a pass.

As an 1869 specialist (NOT expert), I find this collection interesting. There may be some hidden gems in there - it is simply too big of a collection to effectively cherry-pick.

I have a lot of these sort of average/common 114s in my collection as well, but I rarely pay more than a buck per stamp for this kind of material. With the exception of the multiples, there's not much value here.

I totally agree that these would not do well in an auction house. I stand by my point on diminishing returns - that is, the more stamps there are, the less $$ per stamp this would sell for.

I am tempted to make an offer, but am still debating in my mind what to bid out of fear of offering too much.

Brian

"it is simply too big of a collection to effectively cherry-pick"

I don't understand. It wouldn't ake someone withknowledge that long to cherry-pick it.

It would not be broken down, it would simply be counted and multiplied by the $17.50 cat to get a total cat value, and would be estimated at 15%-20%. That is done with auction lots every day, and far worse lots than this one at times. And there are enough secondary auction houses who would put it up, it's a fairly easy description and requires very little time to do. The real hope would be that some 1869 collector wants a relatively inexpensive large lot to play with and go flyspecking.

Cherry picking 1869 pictorials goes beyond centering and cancellations - there is quite a bit of value to be had in stamps with split and multiple grills. If you dedicated a couple seconds per stamp, and worked without a break, it would take nearly an hour just to glance at everything. If you looked at the back of every stamp, it would take much, much longer. To a dealer trying to list a large inventory on ebay, that's an eternity! My belief is that this collection was briefly glanced over for centering and rare cancellations and nothing more.

Brian

In an accumulation like this where someone actually made pages for it, an auction house would assume that any really good multiple grill varieties would be marked. There is only one really good one anyway, so they would assume any not specifically marked are ordinary examples and let the dealers and collectors who do the viewing look for anything interesting since their bids would reflect what they see in any case.

There is some decent stuff in there. I took a quick look at the "hoard" and assuming they're not faulty, those multiples are nice.. especially he block of 4. There are some grill varieties that are better and there's a few nice stamps and a handful of truly premium cancels as well.

But I saw lots and lots of either obviously faulty or poorly centered or pen cancelled stamps. Now what on earth is anyone going to do with hundreds of lousy copies of a common stamp?

IMO 70% of that lot is comprised of stamps worth a quarter to 50c. I just bought a lot (I buy cheap copies for shade studies, I have hundreds) that included 14 24c 1861s for $155 shipped. If memory serves Scott on the lot was around $5,000. So there ya go, 3% or thereabouts of Scott. It also included a 3c, 2 12cs and I think around 8 Black Jacks. They're mostly if not all faulty I'm sure but for what I am using them for I don't need nor do I have the budget to buy hundreds of $300 stamps.

IMO the lot could technically be worth a couple grand, but at any price I bet there's not 10 buyers for it on the planet.

"IMO the lot could technically be worth a couple grand, but at any price I bet there's not 10 buyers for it on the planet".

I guarantee that is wrong. It might not be a huge number, but there are a modest number of collectors who would be very happy with it depending on the cost. I already explained why they might want it. There are always people out there who will buy pure crap for their own reasons.