My Colubian Expo Set Current Progress

Here is my columbian expo set. I have #230-41. All Mint except for the 233, I sold my mint example on accident and now I have a used example. All the Mint stamps are hinged or have some gum disturbance. What do you think of my set? I plan to complete it in the future.

Nice start, you are farther along than I am. :)

I dug out my stamps after a long break '95.... and was looking for a challenging sequence. After a week settled on the Columbians and Mississippi series.... Only Mints and NH... painfully slow process and just reached the 10c mark. From here on, it is an uphill battle and the prices and risk goes up. Expecting to wrap the collection by 2020 at best. Also thinking if I can nail a 5$ MNH/OG piece at a good deal, it should speed up things. Those things are heavy at $3000 ballpark. Recently someone tried to pass on a reperf / regum piece on ebay :)

Good start.
ananthveerappan,
Please be careful on these, the market has many reperfs, regums, thins, creases, repairs on the higher dollar Columbians. Thinking you can 'nail a 5$ MNH/OG piece at a good deal' has me a bit concerned. (The $1 stamp you got was at a good price due to faults.) Quality stamps bring high prices, it would be rare that you would find a high quality $5 at a discounted price. I would recommend buying those with an exiting cert if it is from an unknown online seller. If you do roll the dice with an unknown seller, make sure you fully understand the return policy/terms and conditions.
On the other hand if you are looking to fill spaces and don't mind stamps with a few faults, you may indeed be able to finish out the series without breaking the bank.
Don

Sure 51Stude. The $5 is a big ticket item... I was hoping to get a $5 one, but not expecting it. Even the hinged ones with certs are going for 3000. So its not going to happen overnight but wouldn't hurt to dream. I am looking only for mint and good ones and scouring auction firms of good reputation for a while now. I found a fake on ebay the other day and upon confronting, they pulled it off. No wonder those are everybody's favorites !

At best, I might end up with a #241 $1 Carmine this year...

georgesstamps, Please accept this as gentle constructive criticism. Most of us find the Columbians to be a beautiful set of stamps. Yet I cringed when I saw the page above. It is the mounting. It is a complete mishmash of vertical mounts, horizontal mounts, tall and short mounts, stamps askew within the mounts. A set like this deserves to be consistently in the correct size mount. It will improve the appearance 100% to have identical mounts for each. As it stands, the mounting catches my attention and not the stamps.

Thanks for all the responses. I am eventually going to get the #245 $5 stamp with a cert.
John Becker,
.

Thanks that is a good point, and I will definitely put them all in new mounts. It will help, especially for such a nice set of stamps.

Nice going so far - definitely one of my favorite sets.

I think the $3, 4 and $5 will remain a dream of mine

Here's my set up at the moment:

Stick with knowledgable dealers for the 1-5 dollar stamps even if you pay a bit more, lots of fakes around. The lower values I look for well centered to be selling at fine prices, deals can be had if you search some.

How much do you rate this $5 #245 Mint OG NH version

Somewhere around the $4000 ballpark?

img]http://www.hostingdataservice.com/p...26_245_1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.hostingdataservice.com/pd/Sale_772/USAS030026_245_2.jpg[/img]

Without a certificate and with suspect perfs at right I would value it around $1000 at most.

Excellent Crouse. I am being offered one right around the mark.

But instead of that, I am thinking of going for this one..


Looks appealing though in MnhOg !

My strong advice would be to not buy any dollar value NH Columbians without a recent cert or the conditional right to get one. There are a lot of regummed and/or reperfed examples of 241-245 out there being offered as sound NH stamps.

Sure Rhett. Got the return period extended to 90 days and sending it for a PF cert. I suspect a reperf.

ananthveerappan, the $2 you pictured above looks reperforated at right (maybe more) and the $5 you linked to looks potentially reperforated on several sides. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other faults as well on both stamps. I agree with others that you shouldn't buy any of these stamps (especially described as OG NH) without a recent cert from PF or PSE. P.S. Forget about finding a "bargain" on dollar value NH Columbians. They don't exist. And I wouldn't waste time looking on a site like ebay for something like NH $5 Columbians. Odds of getting something properly described are <1%.

Thank you for the inputs guys. Cancelled the offer and looking at Sandafyre once again :)