Bill Langs Passed Away

What is most odd, is that since Bill's passing, I've made numerous offers on various of his items and not received a single acceptance, counter, or response. You'd think they'd rather make a deal than take a larger loss at auction (which in most cases they are compared with his high prices). I know for one, that I paid $2200 less for one item at auction than he was asking on Hipstamp!

jamesg...dont you think Kelleher is in posession of the material now??

I have no information as to whether Kelleher is in possession of all the inventory, however they delivered the 3 items I purchased rapidly and as described. I suspect they are in possession of the auction items before the actual auction. Bill's Hipstamp store is still actively advertising and trying to sell his 'bargains' though :-)

I guess the easiest solution for Kelleher would be to withdraw and lots that get sold via eBay or hip.

"It might also be that the Langs store was pre-paid for a period a time, perhaps for a year at time."

There is no way the king of take possession now, pay later would prepay anything for a year.

i have been following the discussion of posts on the Kelleher sale of the Langs material. I got one revenue item that I bid on so far. However in the prior sale I did not get an item offered in the sale as having been won by me. payment was made followed by silence. eventually a refund was made. the explanation tendered was that the lot had been "lost in the mail". a subsequent lot was routinely delivered. these things happen. but with the recent revelation that items have been cross platform listed I wonder if the explanation rings true.
i am not adverse to the practice of cross listing, however when this is done imo it should be disclosed whether done privately or by a house. reputations are at stake here and given some past experiences I will think long and hard about bidding again.

I call BS on that explanation.

This is getting to be very interesting.

except for saying that the whole thing took 4 months to resolve, I will make no further comment.

rogdcam - this does get interesting. I am by no means an expert in rules/laws pertaining to auctions. MY belief is the relationship between the auction house, and a buyer is the same between promisor and a promisee in a conventional executory contract of sale. The seller has no right to accept a higher bid, nor may the buyer withdraw the bid. It is also on the auction house to be listing lots it has possession of.


Now, if this item were to turn up, and not be "lost in the mail" I would think this breach of contract would undermine the entire auction house. Integrity is all an auction house is really based on. Clearly a lot to risk on a few lots, no?


This article also mentions the fact that the listing would be coming down- https://www.linns.com/news/us-stamp...e-hit-market
The auction catalog mentions from the 1st auction states "A holding so vast and valuable that only Brinks Armored Car Services could be entrusted to transport the Strong Eight-Figure insured property to its destination at our galleries in Danbury."

So... I am not sure what is going on from an online perspective. Someone is actively managing the sales, because I am getting alerts of new listings, supersales are being launched, and other modifications to listings. In a word, something is indeed wrong.

It just gets better and better. HipStamp just sent me an e-mail alerting me to the availability of multiple 375vars (ribbed paper). Lo and behold BOTH LISTINGS are for the same stamp that Kelleher is offering. But the listings themselves have slightly different names and prices; e.g.,
375 Var, VERY RARE RIBBED PAPER WITH PSE ! @ $1,120 AND
#375 VAR. VERTICAL RIBBED PAPER W/ PSE CERT - EXT RARE - ERROR UNLISTED HV3998 @ the super low $399.20

I've reported the plethora of listings along with the existing of the Kelleher lot to HipStamp admin. I don't expect anything useful to happen, but am most certainly convinced that buying anything still showing on Hip or eBay from "bills..." or related shops is a mistake.

Let us take that statement as fact. By deduction if a lot is purchased on Hipstamp and transmitted to the buyer it would have to be delivered from Kelleher. No?

The puzzling aspect of this (one of them anyway) is that on its face it would seem that Kelleher would benefit more from the 38-40% commission it would get in total from an auction lot sold. Unless of course Kelleher owns the material outright which changes everything.

I will say that special contract provisions can be made between an auction house and a consigner. It is done all of the time, usually to the fee structure.

In the small world of philately the real story will come out at some point.

So in contrast to the Linns report, I would suggest that less than 85% of the lots on HipStamp (haven't bothered checking eBay) have been taken down. I've just done a parallel search of Kelleher Lots 2256 - 2304 (skipped lot 2292) representing Scott 1 to 9. Of this set of 48 lots, I was unable to find 6 or 12.5% of the selection on HipStamp. My eyes may be getting old and my search technique may leave something to be desired, but that leaves a huge redundancy that is, to me, problematic.

If someone can tell me how to share an MS Word file (or PDF or Excel), I'd be happy to share my data.

My quandary with this whole thing is that a direct bid or SAN bid in advance of auction should trigger an alternate venue listing takedown. Since all these things are disparate, albeit with loosely defined linking, this brings real problems...

3007d modern error. Listed for 3960 and 3600 on hip, with knockdown discounting from 4950 and 4500 respectively. Those claim $5100 CV.

Kelleher says
Scott $3,900 + as 12 blocks
Suggested Bid $1,200-1,800

600 current bid.

So the question becomes if someone bids 600+ will this be delisted? How can it legitimately stay up, with an outstanding commitment to a highest bidder.

what a mess

I did a comparison of the revenue lots in the Langs sale to what is on eBay currently. The revenue lots run from 3559-3627. These lots are NOT on eBay: 3560, 3571, 3575, 3576, 3577, 3580, 3586, 3598, 3617, 3624. Out of 69 lots, 10 are NOT on eBay. That's 86% still up.