Stamps At Local Auction Last Night

I saw in the local paper during the week that our auction house in town had stamps (to be sold as one lot stamps,postcards etc) if the powers that be in our club do not provide "club lots" for our meetings the membership will drift off..so I went to check it out at the preview at 3 pm yesterday. It was the usual..my grandmother left me a collection bit..remainder albums..stockbooks of U.S. in multitude...covers and postcards...Hungary CTOs on graph paper pages...i told my wife lets go theres nothing the club would bid on here...if I had the room I would have bid two hundred dollars tops...but I do not have the room...i received an e mail around 9 pm from a member who attended the auction..he said the lot sold for Twelve Hundred Dollars...now either an antique dealer purchased it or I know nothing about stamp values !

Wow. Someone is going to lose money on this speculation!

$1,200! Cripes! You know we all can gather up our philatelic mish-mash of leftovers and submit it to auction places like that, but we would feel so guilty doing so.

I've used AuctionZip.com to track down local auctions with stamps and so far it's been disappointing. Most of the collections I've seen are exactly like Phil has described, usually a kid's collection or some collection of first day covers that the original subscriber overpaid.

The sellers and buyers in these auctions remind me "the blind leading the blind". Occasionally something of interest might turn up. I usually tell auctioneers not to throw out collections of old mail, especially since many say they do throw it away. I had one admit that he threw away over 100,000 used postcards from an estate because it was "just paper". These are the same folks who come across those gold replica stamps and think it's big bucks. We really need to get together and write a book for non-philatelic auctioneers and antique dealers about stamps and covers.

Hopefully the buyer will something worthwhile - Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.

Now you have a place to unload all the stuff you don't want around the house or that doesn't fit your collection needs .

Where is the town you live? I'm packing up my stuff and I'm going to get rich while there is still time!

Floortrader...the auctioneer is a furniture guy.he knows nothing about stamps and hates them..he always sells them as the first item..so at least stamp collectors do not have to wait around...the scary thing is if people were not bidding them up..he would have sold them for $75.00. that would be my luck..if I brought a few plastic tubs of stamps there would be one bidder !

1847Bill I live in Northern Dutchess County New York..surrounded by Vanderbilts, Livingstons,Roosevelts and Cole Palens World War 1 Aerodrome..google George Coles auction site !

Sometimes we do find surprises. I bought a box of Italian modern issues, all in blocks for 4s as if the owner bought them directly from the post office in Italy, about 25 year ago in Laughlin, Nevada, at $200. I honestly did not know what I was buying; they just look so beautiful and may worth 200 bucks. I was going to put that $200 on San Diego to win on the Super Bowl game. (That was about 25 years ago, am I right?). That shows how much I love the stamps over the Super Bowl, especially my team San Diego Chargers were playing. Guess what I have found, years later, when I checked that "junk" box laid aside in the closet, a #834a, the stamp was withdrawn because the error made on the map of Peru. I remember it had a big catalog value years ago. I don't honestly know how much it worth today.

We are so used to seeing and buying great deals that someone not in the circle may think he scored. Theres something alluring about treasures you don't know but you'd need a crowbar to get $1200 out of me on a trasure hunt. I bet everyone who reads this has an idea of where to hit a general auction (ME TOO)

I hooked up with a guy who does clean outs, when a person dies the family calls a guy like this in and they clean out the contents of the house to sell, he comes across boxes of items stamps old letters etc... I have several boxes that I need to go through to see whats in there.I get a lot of stamps that way.

I went to an estate sale yesterday where they listed stamps as an item, I went through the books and looked, the prices were for the stamps in the book, first book was US 1920's to 1950's stock all used nothing of value, nothing at all......... Price? $85

Had another book for $425, all current Canadian stamps.

I offered $20 on the US book but he laughed. Some people think that they have gold......

True Joe. I go to estate auctions when ever I can. Dropped into one a few weeks ago, on a whim, not knowing what there was and found a couple of boxes with old envelopes and some bundles of very very common stamps. There was really on one cover I was interested in, but I waited.
The boxes finally came up and wouldn't you know they sell for $60...each!
There was a bit of eye rolling in the room.
I approached the buyer after and asked if he'd sell me one cover. He looked me up and down and said no, he had go through the boxes first.
Obviously, from what he paid, he should have gone through them before he bid.