Ebay's "What's Hot"

Edit: Changing the title of the thread because I find ebay's "What's hot" displays quite interesting! Please keep posting interesting items from ebay's "What's Hot".


What on Earth is this and is it really that valuable? The final price of $12,100 seems insane!






http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-EARLY-...047675.l2557

What the...???? That is UNBELIEVABLE!

Most curious! Bidding started at $500. Sure would like to know the story on this.

We call it "market games" .Do you really believe that ?
The pattern of bidding and the ones who bid make this all look like a scam.Create a high price for something and then sell a few dozen more at a great bargin price of half-price ,to those gullible to believe the original price.

Could it be that each time one of these is printed it has a unique serial number this one is baa001 which looks like it could be one of the first?

Does anyone here have an Automat stamp catalogue?

I looked through his feedback and it appears the dealer specializes in meter covers. Some of them sell for pretty good prices.

....I usually throw this type of thing in any kiloware I have to dispose of.........must start looking a little closer.

This was the first ATM stamp in the world, released in France in 1969. It was available from a single machine in a supermarket in Montgeron south of Paris. The stamp shown has the hyphen in "BAA-001" in the middle of the typed line - there is a later version found with the hyphen at the bottom of the typed line. This earlier version has the higher catalogue value. The last Michel ATM catalogue (as far as I know) was released in 2008, and my copy is a previous version released in 2004. At that time a MNH copy of this stamp was valued at €30,000.

The machine was immense, taking up at least 15 feet of wall space, judging by the photo in the Michel catalogue. It had troubles working properly and was often under repair. This first stamp with the hyphen style noted above was only available for a month or two - newspapers of the day state that the machine was installed on March 1, 1969, but a note from one of the French postal departments written on March 20 said the machine would be in use "soon". There are no cancelled copies known before March 25, so it isn't too certain when exactly the machine went into use. By April 30 the first examples with the moved hyphen were found. The latest known copy with the original hyphen was cancelled on April 21.

Ryan

edit: I should note, ATM here means Automatenmarke, the German term for machine-vended stamps. It's not ATM = automatic teller machine, the money machines at banks used for those Canadian or US issues that were available for a while on a limited basis.

Thanks for the clarification and information Ryan. I had no idea that this type of postage could be so highly valued.
It looks like it would be too easy to create a forgery- I couldn't imagine parting with that kind of money for it without some type of expertization!


You can say that again bas! I wouldn't have thought twice about flipping this into the dustbin!

Thank you, Ryan! I knew someone on SCF would be able to solve the mystery. Great information!




I couldn't agree more.

Brian

meter stamp collecting is an underated area and some bargains can be picked - I have a small but growing collection of them and just recently picked one up that is officially listed as being "Extremely rare, value unknown" by the International Postage Meter Stamp Catalogue for what I would call an absolute bargain - I am sure the Seller and other bidders didnt know the real value of the item

Here's a site for budding collectors

http://www.meterstampsociety.com/

I also saw this on the ebay main page and wondered what it was all about. Thanks Ryan for that great detailed report. Very interesting. Not sure I would ever want one and I know I would never pay that price when I could get several wonderful classic stamps (which I cannot afford) for the same amount. But again, it's a lesson that the beauty of stamp collecting, and collecting in general (not to mention life) is all in the eye of the beholder.

That's why I love this site - always learning something new.