Kelleher To Offer 180 Volume US Collection In September Collections Sale

This Kelleher Auction should be interesting with their huge amount of collections in the worldwide section . This is going to be a good test after the Schuyler Auction a few weeks ago selling a massive amount of worldwide collections and Schuyler was getting very active bidding .

It is going to be interesting to see if that strong and aggressive buying follows thru .

A few observations after reviewing a large number of Gatsby lot PDF's:

1) There is no doubt that each volume comes from one collector. The notations throughout are of the same type and tone.

2) The collector had a propensity for labeling many items as "rare". In many instances these "rare" items have an additional notation of "needs cert". None of these items appear to have ever been certified.

3) There are quite a few condition issues not the least of which is toning which seems to be related to storage.

4) There are a number of multiples for items such as Newspaper stamps that are not often seen today. Quite impressive.

5) Given the quantity of material involved there are not very many certs.

6) Given the collectors penchant for ancillary materials and noting purchase dates and sellers names (GP shows up a bit and I assume that to be Gary Posner) I am somewhat surprised that no receipts are present.

7) Centering overall leaves much to be desired.

8) The collector loved cancels of every type.

9) You can feel that this was a passion for the collector.

In summary I can see why this is being auctioned in collection parts. There are many fascinating items but many need certs and even then, condition and centering would preclude many from being single item lots.

It will be interesting to see how the bidding goes. IMHO many of the estimates are reaching for the sky. Other lots such as Confederate postal history could see extremely spirited bidding.

One person made the notations, but I suspect that this was a generational collection, handed down. There is simply far too much material for one person to have done this. And so much of it is mounted.

There are also many spurious items amongst the 1st issue revenue imperfs and part perfs.

Absolutely. And the "Unusual" Revenue Collection is very mixed, to say the least. But some of the others have outstanding material in them.

The VAMP lot is also interesting. A few relative rarities and a large collection, but also more than few which look to be misidentified.

While I freely admit that the vending coils are far from my areas of genuine knowledge, there are certainly some that make me wonder. That is a lot that needs a LOT of certs, and only has a few.

Agree - a lot of certs. Curious as to why there are no Schermack Is and IIs.

They had to miss SOMETHING.

It would be fun. It would last me for the balance of my life to go thru it.

Noticed the same thing about the Waterbury cancels - many very nice ones that appear genuine, but also many clearly not genuine - so need to check closely.

I added up the Gatsby lots low estimates and came up with a total of $815,800.

If you had a collection that was expected to realize $800k+, would you want it in a sale mingled with a bunch of other consignments?

No.

It is a strange bird in that the value comes from volume, but it has a lot of material that is not often seen especially in such quantity. A lack of certs, much chaff amongst the wheat and overall condition problems brings it down IMO. And yet as presented the bidding may just get quite crazy. If it had been a name sale it could not have been lotted much differently since there are not many items that can stand on their own. There also would have been enormous cert costs and the risk of bad certs and faults noted. All of that of course takes a lot of time as well.

The story behind this is likely very interesting and I am dying to know it. It is evident from owner notations that he/she dealt with Posner for at least more than a decade. In fact, there are purchase notations regarding Posner from as recently as April 2020 and as far back as 2009. He would know who Gatsby is.

I love a mystery ala Dorothy Sayers style.

I agree Rogdcam. I'd never be in the market for something like this but the story of how and by whom it was created fascinates me. A couple times I've bought things on eBay where you can tell someone has spent a lot of time and love creating something - caligraphy hand lettering on an old homemade album page. I spent a lot of time wondering who that was and ultimately couldn't bring myself to part the stamps I wanted from the page. Too sentimental I guess!

I also have no idea how an auction like this works. Something like this, involving this kind of money would have to be live, right? Can you just go and watch? And a bidder would want to spend some time going through the collection in person before bidding? I think I'd want to spend several days if I was going to spend that kind of money - is that what people do?