Can You Help Me Decide?

n July the Collectors Club of Chicago will be having their annual open house to showcase the club, the members, and their philatelic activities for non-member visitors. New this year is the plan to have members submit a page from their collections. It may be from an album, an exhibit, or something specially prepared for this event, but with an emphasis on the "wow" factor. They leave it open as to just what that means.

So, here are three pages, one of which is in two forms. Of these three, which would you want to see?
If it were you, which would you submit?
How would you change it to give it more punch?



Option 1: the One Cent of 1887





Option 2: Continental Grill (without frames)




Option 3: Continental Grill (stamps in frames)




I will be considering other options later, and may bother you again, but for now I thank you for taking the time to look these over to help me out.

PS - If you care to offer any suggestions, please leave me a note in this thread.

No. 1 speaks for itself, I think!

Hmmmm. What's the attraction about the one cent page?

Alas, stamp people tend to dismiss as uninteresting the signed test grills which are much scarcer than anything on the first page, as pretty as the block and used imperf proof strip are. I voted for page 2, the colors seem a bit better on those examples.

While I think the grills are interesting, I think the non-collector, or a person not as aware of these stamp issues or grills would gravitate more toward the 1c first page. The reason is that there is a more complete and easy to grasp story, whereas for the grills there is much more of a story behind grills altogether that is not included.

"Non member" visitors does not automatically mean "non collector". I think an open house of a major philatelic club will bring out a lot of collectors but few non collectors except for possible spouses. There is sure to be plenty of high powered postage multiples shown, but few items like those test grills.

The test grills are fantastic, but they don`t speak for themselves like presentation no. 1. Too, grills are, after all, a failed experiment. (Is that unfair?) If there were a way to simply and graphically display the need for such steps like grills, then I would definitely go in that direction .

The EKU and large multiple gives the 1c presentation "wow" appeal.

By the way, I'm planning a weekend Chicago trip, from California, just for this meeting.

revcollector - just to clarify, I wrote "the non-collector, or a person not as aware of these stamp issues or grills", so was intending to embrace a wider audience, including non-collectors AND collectors that aren't aware of the issues/grills -- not only non-collectors.

Cheers,

-dave

I'm partial towards the grills. Awesome collection!

I think you need to explain the grills in order for them to achieve 'wow', whatever that is. Cheers,

Option 1, without a doubt, is an eye catcher.
Very impressive. A Plate block of 14 and a first
recorded usage cover. That is "WOW" for me.

Interesting discussion. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate the comments about telling "story" with the page. That would be a neat trick. Mind if I probe a little more?

Grills page: hands down it seems stamp people prefer seeing frames around the items. My wife does too. But a question - on that end roller grill (bottom item), do you think it would be better to show the obverse side? I went with the reverse because the grill is more evident when looking at the actual page. But with that hinge it's not exactly a thing of beauty. Still, for the J-grill there are very few end roller grills at all, and this might be the only pair, so I don't want it to leave a bad impression.

One cent page: This came out of a 16 page single frame exhibit I have been wrapping up. It is the only page in the exhibit with stamps, everything else is proofs and essays for this design.

As far as rarity and philatelic significance goes, the two pages are about even, if you limit the 1c imperf proofs to strips of three. The EDU is a recent discovery and resets the date in the catalog by 2 weeks to within 11 days of the earliest possible use. Since the exhibit is of a single stamp the story is tighter than with the grills, which are but a single element in a much larger story.

Reverse side gets my vote. If it's about the grill, then the best view of it makes more sense. Call it intellectual aesthetics rather than visual.

EDU's are nice to have but 11 days is still a lot of time, especially for a 1 cent stamp. Someone could find an earlier one tomorrow and then it becomes just another cover. I just feel that there will be much more impressive stamps there, but not more impressive grills.

Although the test grills are fascinating (always have been attracted to the grills...), the 1c page is more compelling due to the wider range of philatelic and postal history topics covered, compared to the interesting, but narrow and partial story on the grills/test grills.

Still a tough decision, as the grills are "sexy".

Regarding the end-roller grill, can it be seen from the obverse? If so, show the obverse, and maybe a pic of the reverse grill next to it. Perhaps add a short synopsis of the end-roller grill significance and scarcity for those not aware.