Question For Big Blue Experts

That was a good price for that collection ,more than what I said . That encourages collectors to continue building worldwide collections .The danger with that kind of sale is that if 10 or 15 volumes would of exceeded the combined bidding price .Then the collector would of been stuck with 30 extra volumes which didn't sell.

KRelyea, thanks for the detailed info. Sorry you didn't get the volumes you were after.

I have never bid at auction for a multi-volume collection, but I might guess that if you were keeping a running tally of what the individual volumes were selling for, and you had some confidence that these were reasonable prices, that you might feel encouraged to bid for the entire set at a reasonable markup, especially if you intended to resell some of it.

$26,000 is too rich for me, and if I want to spend serious $ I would have to see the item in person. As for buying the combined items I'll tell a little story.

My friend operated a small old fashioned stamp store in Albany NY for over 30 years. Every 3 months he would hold an auction with 400 items and about 30 of us locals would attend. He got excellent prices for US and WW singles and sets but rarely had any big collections. However 1 time a few years ago he was consigned a beautiful 13 volume Minkus Supreme collection with about 100,000 stamps. I got the bright idea that I would buy this collection in Albany and then sell it in a bigger auction and make some money. I was one of the volunteers who helped him with the auction and in spite of my begging and pleading he would not include a "Take it all". I decided to try and buy all 13 albums but I knew that once I got started I would need to win every lot to keep the collection intact and maximize resale value.

I sat in the back of the room to try and be discrete and all went well for the first couple lots and then he got to the China volume and I had some opposition. After a few bids people started to look around and see who was bidding. By the 5th or 6th volume people started to figure out I was trying to run the table and a few decided to make me pay, and they did. Eventually I got all 13 for about $5000. I drove 300 miles to my favorite auction firm and consigned it. A few months later it sold for $5900, but after paying buyers and seller's commission I made a $60 profit, which almost paid for my gas.

Great story KRelya and "ouch" too! I've always wondered why there are agents for actions and I can see this would be one reason to avoid revenge bidding. Of course they could have revenged the agent too!

The photos from the Noble Spirit collection are tantalizing enough, but for 625K They need another 1,000 photos and paying an experienced philatelist to note highlights.... A couple good paragraphs would be enough to know what major runs are there. Canadian Jubilees to.. One dollar? How complete is the 1933 Falkland Islands set? Just some info like that would give a better idea. Just a count of number of different stamps would be fun :) Nonetheless, there's plenty to like what I can see.

KRelya --That sounds like you were trying to flip that lot for a profit[NOT WISE when your paying juice on the purchase and juice on the way out ] . My way of thinking would be to buy a huge volume collection that is sparse on stamps .Then spend two or three years filling it up from new acquisitions and extra material .Then match that whole volume set up to my main collection for missing items and better quality items . After that consign that whole set of binders to auction .
At the top end of worldwide collecting your no longer buying individual stamps or sets your trying to work in terms of hundreds of additions to your collection .

KRelyea, great story. Thanks for sharing!

Is anyone familiar with the Scott Stamps of the World Albums published in 1969? How do they compare with Big Blue?

Thanks,

Ken

Scott"s Stamps of the World 1969 album has spaces for 11,000 stamps.
Big Blue has spaces for 35,000 stamps.

I don't recall if I said this before, or just thought this, but the Noblespirit photos show a collection missing many high values, at least for the Commonwealth countries. Both Falklands and Sierra Leone are pictured, and neither shows a single stamp from the 1933 sets of either one.

Now, based on the apparent incompetence of the writer/photographer, they might be there and were excluded, but it seems far more likely that the stamps aren't there. For most colonies, the stamps are there through the 2/, maybe the 5/, but that's it. No 1-pounders, not even the GB 1929 PUC.

Unimpressive. Missing the heavy hitters makes it hard to part out the country collections. Again, no offense to the original collector. Lord knows, you'll all make fun of my assemblages when my heir(s) decide(s) to sell.

Thanks that's helpful.

KRelyea, you didn't ask, but there was also a Scott album titled the Grand Award. I suspect it was intended to be a competitor to the Minkus Master Global. Grand Award albums used to come up on ebay with some regularity but I don't recall seeing one recently, but then I'm not looking. One very useful feature is that the album gave Scott numbers for all of the included stamps.

The reason I asked is Kelleher Auction #662 Lot 857. The 2 volumes looked a little thin to be Big Blues and when I asked they told me they were Scott Stamps of the World Albums with slip cases. I think this makes a big difference to me if I'm going to bid.

From the images on Kelleher's website, I cannot believe these aren't Blue International pages. I think what is throwing them off is the pages are housed in custom binders and the collector preferred to title them Stamps of the World instead of Scott Internationals. You might ask Kelleher if there is a title page in the front of the first binder.

KRelyea wrote on December 14: "personally, I was relieved." I take that in a different light, as bidding on something, sending the bidsheet off, and then deciding I really didn't want that afterall. ;-)

As for the current Kelleher auction, I was really drooling over #857. But that amount of coin is not in my personal budget right now. I ended up bidding on one of the "caboose" lots in the same section. Naturally, I won't say which one.