February Rasdale Stamp Auction

Just looked at the upcoming listings for Rasdale's February auction as it seems like the large good quality collections are just not there as in the past. I wonder if they are having a hard time getting better material. I was disappointed in the listings as their are no $20-30K lots as in the past. Any opinions ??

Generally, I agree with your assessment. The upcoming Rasdale sale does contain a number of Country lots on pages that obviously came out of one large collection. They broke it down to fill the sale. We can't expect Rasdale or others to always have those large collections but IMO they are becoming harder to source. I am not talking about a manufactured collection created with the sole intent of being sold at auction but the real-deal lifelong labors of love.

I also have not seen good, quality, genuinely intact carton lots in quite a while. The best multi-carton lot I ever purchased came from Rasdale. Four cartons with a terse description of "Mongolia and topicals" that I paid $300 for. When they arrived and I dug in I was shocked to find huge quantities of high-quality Commonwealth and other European material on sales cards and other dealer sheets from one deceased Chicago dealer. There was modern Mongolia, but it was only on the very top of the cartons. It all ended up cataloging at over $70,000. It has never happened again, and I don't expect it to. That auction was packed with carton lots and Rasdale really did not dig into them.

Which may explain why they are having trouble sourcing good material.

With only a few exceptions, I am not seeing the caliber of collections that I expect to see in many auction houses' sales these days. Everybody's 'quality' is down. I think this is the 'downside' of the Pandemic Boom that the hobby experienced a couple of years ago. I figured at the time that Boom was temporary and reversible, and this may be that coming true. The people that took up the hobby because the couldn't go out to restaurants and parties are now resuming their previous lives of eating out and partying at the expense of the hobbies they took up. There is less demand. They may not be selling what they bought/accumulated during their 'imprisonment' because they have set them aside for now. They are out of the market, at least to the degree that they were in it in the first place, but are not yet 'letting go' of their 'newfound' hobby.

Convo at a cocktail party, among a group of acquaintances:
"Whew! Glad the pandemic appears to be waning. What did you do with your time during the pandemic?"
"Yeah, I am glad things are starting to get back to normal, at least a little bit. I took up stamp collecting! I could do much of my buying online, there is all kinds of support online - like SCF (see what I did there???) - and I found it to be therapeutic and fun to do."
"Really? Stamp collecting? How's the hobby going these days?"
"Well, I am here at this party, aren't I? How would you and Irene like to get together at The Outback tomorrow night with me and Laura?"
Sure you wouldn't rather be working on your collection?"
"Haha."
"Seriously, yeah. Let's all get together. It's been too long!"

People used the pandemic as a chance to clean out the closet. Once it is empty there is nothing more to consign,

The culture in the stamp community has drifted away from building those large massive collections . It has changed over the last forty years . This also has changed for dealers also ,you don't have the huge inventory that the retail stores had .

What we see now is , buy it on Saturday and list it on the internet for sale on Monday .

In the past collectors HAD to go to established auction houses to reach large numbers of potential buyers. But nowadays, with the numerous online options, perhaps more collectors are breaking up and selling their collections themselves on EBay, Hipstamp etc. I'm in the process of doing just that with several country collections since I've decided to scale back and specialize more.

Philatelia 7 ---- Agree ,more collectors are selling parts of their collections themselves . I have two local friends who buy at the auction firms but sell off their duplicates and unwanted material . One sells off enough to continue buying collections without needing to spend savings .

Recently I've noticed the auction houses are breaking up collections and selling them by area or country. I have seen this with DCA, Rasdale and Kelleher. I think this practice is beneficial for the consignor but I hate it, I want the big collections.

There's a few Latin American country lots of interest in Rasdale, but not much. Agreed seeing less of the big worldwide collections. I typically buy country collections so it works for me - however, not much interested in the country accumulations I've been seeing a fair number of, where everything to do with a country is thrown into a box. Have enough of those in the spare room already!

Speaking of big collections, did anyone notice the last lot in the latest DCA auction? It was a 48 volume Scott and from the pics it looked pretty good. I would have been interested but we are moving from FL to NY and I didn't want 12 more boxes to move.

It sold for $2150 which I thought was huge bargain.

Once you are in NY it won't be so far to visit DCA to peer deeper into such lots.

I love going to DCA, always a pleasant experience. The last time I was there a collector bidder actually went after a ebay dealer bidder because he thought the dealer bought too much and bid too high. Always a laugh!

Did the collector end up overpaying for the lot, or did they make he dealer overpay?

I suspect that there have been many discussions about that particular dealer on this board over the years.........

Does this dealer have a name ?