World Largest -Biggest Stamp Collection

"As for the collection that just sold for 340k, that means a catalog value of around one million dollars or more"

Or more. No one is paying 34% for a WW collection unless the quality is unbelievable.

First --- Like to say RASDALE STAMP'S did a excellent job putting this whole collection in a presentable way for both the seller and for the many bidders and buyers .

Sorry we can't give a person credit , who spend years building it over the many years it took . It was a long road to put that collection together .
Decades of buying specialty items and thousands of complete sets with a eye toward maintaining a clean well balanced stamp collection .
To me it was a masterpiece ,maybe because I am trying to do the same .

I always enjoy those personal bio's that Kelleher Auctions write about their sellers . Learn something about them . Would like to know something about this person who made the effort that so many other collectors will enjoy .

Kelleher's upcoming October 20-21 large lot auction has a few large worldwide collections for sale:

Lot 763 is an intact A-Z collection of 200 volumes with an estimated catalog value of $175,000 and a starting bid of $7,500.

Lot 766 is another intact A-Z collection in 250 binders. Sounds like a large collection of common stamps. Starting at $5,000.

Lot is 767 is a massive worldwide dealer stock. 50 moving boxes and a 4-drawer filing cabinet. I assume it's part of low-end stock of Sam Houston Philatelics that Kelleher's is liquidating. I can't even imagine the time it would take to go through all of that. Starting at $5,000.

https://stampauctionnetwork.com//V/v85420.cfm#200

A large one owner collection that Rasdale recently had in their last auction was lot 275.

This looked to me as a great worldwide in Scott's internationals 1840-1975. It shows what could be done over time in one set of albums by a determined collector.

Realized 30,000 with a conservative estimate of 14,000. I suspect that there was more here than what is shown in the many images.

The collection realized more than I could ever buy at one time. But I enjoyed viewing some of the images. If you have not viewed it, you may enjoy doing so before Rasdale fully closes.

Thanks for the pointer.

Page after page, completely filled. The investment in just the mounts alone must have been enormous.


The albums were described as "overfilled". Yes indeed.


(p.s. for others wanting to look, the pictures of the stamps start at photo #14. Pictures 1-13 are just the cover pages and outside of the albums).

In the few places that the stamps were not in mounts, you can see (but not clearly read) the Price Paid for each stamp. If that continues throughout the album that is an additional massive effort and fascinating historical goldmine. I wonder if the buyer is a collector, or a dealer who will break it up into country or single-page lots on the Internet. Either way, that is (was) quite the collection.

It is a shame so many great collections out there , but we only see a small number of them only when they are sold at a major stamp auction .
There is still a demand for parts of the collection that are sold but nobody know if they are melted into another great collection or was the buyer a on-line sellers and it disappears over a few weeks .

There are about 195,000 spaces for stamps in the Scott Internationals though Part 11, If they were 95% complete for the run as the auction says, that's 185K different stamps. Quite a collection with higher values not picked out from what I could see.

Couple thoughts on that outstanding collection at Rasdale Stamp Co. and the price realized .

Looks like it sat in storage for years . Some serious brown spots thru out the album pages .
Someone dumped a heck of a lot of money into mounts .
Nice that the collector mounted everything in the correct places to the albums .
Have to think if the firm didn't make clear if any was Mint Never Hinged .
The wording of "ALL DIFFERENT " should be noticed is missing . Also the wording "INTACT " or "COMPLETE " should make a difference .
It is clear the collection needs to be remounted,so months of removal is going to be needed if those months are not planned then a seller has to inform the buyers the pages have mold or rust issues because that is a real problem to any second on-line buyer .

Being in a Scott International is already telling everyone the first volume could have high values of various sets missing and Rasdale didn't make that clear .
For most Worldwide collectors and me included that collection would be 90% to 98% DUPLICATIONS. So big money collectors are not in the market for lots of work and lots dup's . {I use the term big money meaning thousands of dollars for a purchase to a existing collection }

Its is important that all these large worldwide collections that you will see none are exactly a like . Each owners does something different .

As for me I can't understand why the above collection has Iron Curtain C-T-O stamps in mounts ,that surprised me viewing the scans . Am also a big beliver in displaying different watermarks and perf's written with a note to the differences .

So it is safe to say no two collections are the same .

I seem to remember that preserving the gum on CTOs was a thing for German collectors at one point.

Guessing at the age of the collection that there is an intersectionality between the advent of Showgard mounts in the 60's and peak Soviet CTO production. It wasn't abnormal to treat the CTO's as something with value because they were what people purchased. That is also the reason why there are Russian sets from the 40's and 50's that command hefty premiums in mint condition, especially MNH, since non-CTO stamps were mostly used for mailing, not sold in the philatelic marketplace. The Soviet economies were not conducive to having a lot of disposable income for hobbies.