World Largest -Biggest Stamp Collection

A large worldwide collection is going up for auction at Rasdale's next month. The entire collection is opening for over $200k if you add up all the individual lots. From the auction catalog:

Lots 167-399 are from the Manchester Estate. This collection was built over the past 40 years primarily through purchasing large stocks, advanced country collections and smaller lots with specialty items from auction houses in Chicago, Detroit, and on the east coast. To display his collection he constructed his own pages using country specific specialized catalogs and literature obtained from the APS library. These pages run to 1960 and have the look and feel of a Scott Specialty Album page, but contain spaces for shades, paper and perforation varieties, overprint errors and varieties, etc. as per the specialized catalogs. To help ensure consistency of presentation and to facilitate the incorporation of new material, the collector cut mounts for most spaces, whether or not he had the stamp. Please keep in mind while viewing these lots that empty mounts do not necessarily indicate incomplete sets, as they are commonly placeholders for minor varieties and do not indicate removal of a stamp. The collector was a stickler for quality, constantly upgrading the centering, freshness and NH condition of his stamps so NH will be found for many of the best values and even in the 19th Century. The result is advanced, nearly all mint, collections of exceptional quality. A few countries did not have specialized pages made; these exceptions will be denoted in the description. Please note that there are also additional lots in the United States and United States and Possessions sections.

https://stampauctionnetwork.com//RA/ra4679.cfm#18

That is a nice collection, the effort is amazing.Like the effort of going beyond the regular catalogs .

Looking forward to watching the Manchester Estate collection tomorrow , didn't see anything that I wanted . A lot of the lots would be close to what I already have .

That is the curse of all worldwide stamp collectors , you see lots that are coming up for auction and once you check you own collection ,you find very little that would advance your own collection ,so you get the feeling your spending a high percentage of your purchase dollar for duplicates .

As most already know ,I prefer to buy complete sets ,this also in a small way gives me lots of duplicates with the cheaper low values of the same set which I already have .

VERY solid prices on a lot of that stuff.

Quality still sells well.

If I did my math correctly, the Manchester Estate sold for a total of $341,180.

At Kelleher's April 14-15 Auction #837, there was a large worldwide collection housed in 86 Scott Internationals that covered the years 1841-2016 (Lots #4636 and #4637). It went for a total of $12,750.

It illustrates the vast divide between quality versus quantity in the stamp market.

Agree with ZENDO 59 , QUALITY sells well .

The difference between the collections has to come down to what they were buying and how well they presented it on their pages .

Not to take away the entertainment value over the years of building their own collection . That is more important than the 28X difference in price .

I was looking at the sold price for the stamps. They were definitely good quality that sold well.

That was an impressive collection. This collector had to the harder to get stuff and these lots were loaded with better stamps.

I have a question regarding the "selling collection as whole" vs breaking up by country . Seems much better prices for seller if break it up

When I leave my collection to my heirs I will instruct them to break it up by country to sell at auction firm

However for an auction house to do this, especially for heirs of a collection, especially if pages can't be removed from album… uggg

Do auction houses charge for this? Will they break it up for you when you want to sell?

Auction houses should determine how to make the most for the vendor and themselves. In some cases, this may mean leaving a collection intact. In most others, if it's worth the candle, they'll break it up - that's just part of their service.

As Geoff said, a good auction house will know how to proceed because they make more if you make more. I consigned 36 red boxes to Kelleher once which were frankly a mess as far as organization. They went through all of the thousands of 102 cards and organized everything in a way that would bring the most money. It was work but they are good at it and those extra hours meant extra $$$.

As for the collection that just sold for 340k, that means a catalog value of around one million dollars or more since the commission brings the total to over $400,000. Sweet money for the auction house since they avoided having to lot singles and sets and passed lots.

ORGANIZING 36 RED BOXES -----Spend a few extra hours ? It would take me a month to do that . A few hours each day .

If they spend only a few hours ,they only sorted by price and by contintent ,like guessing those cards over $10.00 and up . Then by area like Brit. Colonies ,Asia and South America . That is my guess . .
Each red box takes a full day if you want each country in Scott Catalog order . I can do 8 boxes a week if there isn't a lot of duplicates {like 10 or 20 cards of the same stamp }.

There is a important lesson here with this past auction .

It tells me there are still buyers out there for good material ,who are willing to pay for it . If country collections are not raped of the better material .

The right question that needs to be asked here is what is "A better country collection "

floortrader - In collections like this, I look for countries where I recognize which stamps are truly hard to find. If a collection has those stamps for a few countries, I know the rest of the countries are likely just as good, even for the areas where I am not an expert. Just about every lot went over the high estimate. Fresh, solid material.