Your Opinion Of Siegel's Rarities Of The World Sale Yesderday, 6-23-2026

The hammer prices seem a bit lackluster. Some high estimate lots were passed, some lots exceeded high estimate, but most did not.

If my philatelic money of the moment wasn't focus on another area currently, I would have happily pushed the hammer price closer to catalog on lot 100, 1c-10c National Parks, Small Die Proofs on White Wove (740P2-749P2). Complete set of 10. Of course if I knew in advance the hammer was going to be $3000 versus a $15000 catalog, I may have been able to do some adjustments in my purchases plans. It is only one of the two known complete proof sets, small dies, with one more small die partial set and only a partial set of large die proofs.

Your sale comments?

Boston hangover?

[I didn't watch the sale myself. If I had seen a national parks die proof set at $3000, I'd have bid on it...]

Inflation's been creeping up for the last few months, which some dealers at the Boston show thought is starting to take a small bite out of the higher end of the market.

But the bigger trend of course is that a few exceptions aside, demand gently declines each year. Most dramatic is looking at the exact same material that sold for less than it did 10, 20, 30 years ago.

Easiest comparisons are with previous Siegel sales. Look at Lot 168, sold in the 2009 Rarities sale (top) and then yesterday (bottom):




And Lot 139, the 1997 sale at top and yesterday at bottom:

Yet the inflation for 2021, 2022 and 2023, a multiple or multiples of the current rate was never used back then to explain a sales drop, if any. Stuff sold well.

What was $100 in 2020 costs $121.20 in 2025.
What cost $100 in 2024 costs $105.39 now.


Seems it must be something other than inflation or the business would have tanked during and immediately after COVID shut downs.

As to the France pair, today's $800 is 2009's $519.16 not the $2100 it sold for in 2009.

For the bridge, $32000 today is $15780.18 in 1997, not the $45000 it sold for then in 1997.

This is not inflation.

Two people really wanted it in 1997; one of them is not bidding this time?



I wouldn't rely on either of these examples as a bellwether.

Errors ebb and flow. A good percentage of collectors have little to no interest in errors.

Scott doesn't list "no gum" pricing for the France pair, while offering "no gum" pricing for Sc#3 and other Sc#3 varieties. No gum is around a fifty percent hit off of catalogue value, give or take, on the other Sc#3 listings.

If "no gum" is the expected state of Sc#3c, Scott would say so (I would expect). I don't see a note for "no gum" in Yvert or Maury, either.

We all know collectors, some of them hang out right here, who would say that "no gum" is a glorified spacefiller.