Question About Bidding On A Stamp At An Auction

Eastern runs many different types of sales. In order in terms of cost, it goes like this. 1) Premium Auction - held at the Lord Nelson Hotel, the best material they have goes here. Expect to pay min 70-80% of cat value. Add in the 15 pts of pts of Buyer Premium, and HST, and you end up paying min full cat or more. Some items sell above Unitrade Cat Value. The upside here, is when you go to dispose of your collection one, you might get more than what you have paid. Most of these items come on the market rarely. 2) Selected Offerings For Selected Clients - rare items that are sold for cat value or above. Again, items that are difficult to find in VFMNH, or material that is difficult to find in used VF condition. Again material that has value when you dispose of it. 3) Circular flyer comes out every 10 weeks. Items you find that are usually pretty good, but slightly off centre, it is usually NH or Very Lightly Hinged and Classified as VF and F-VF, but not full cat value. Most of this stuff you will find at good local stamp dealers, that turnover lots of material. Discounted from the catalogue. 4) Newspaper Sale - every 10 weeks - material that is F-VF some of it NH, lots with heavy hinges and some with no gum. Items have no faults such as tears or missing perfs. 5) Mail Bid - no premiums - items are the same you would find with dealers at all shows. This is stuff that they buy to get the really good stuff, that they sell at a premium. Basically what does not fit into the top four. If it does not sell this time, write a new description, display different photos from the lot, put it into the future isssue. Some items stay of upwards of a year here to be sold. Sometimes, you find the odd VF cheaper item on its own. Collections are full stamps that are small ticket items, that for Eastern, too time consuming to breakdown and sell. So they pick out the cherries, and sell it off. Have been dealing with Eastern for awhile. Vance almost the same, except they sell all of their stuff in the mail sale. Even there really best stuff. And yes some of it sells for above Cat Value, with no premium. The mail sales for both have a reserve on every item.

jr1960 - face. catalogue is essentially irrelevant in the buy - sell business.

Thanks xyyz. Although I don't go too crazy about condition, that one looks a bit too low for me. I don't like the large hinge remnant on the side and it seems somewhat washed out. As well, I try to go for VF centering whenever possible.

I was willing to go to about $150 for the stamp so I was surprised when it jumped to $475, with an estimated value of $800. It actually was #45a but I don't worry about varieities. I didn't check but there might have been a couple of guys who really wanted this.

No Problem Tom. I hope we are looking at the same stamp. It said it was MNH. I didn't dig into it very deep though. I am sure you did.