Question For Big Blue Experts

I just meant that I had screwed up by not registering for the auction but I really didn't miss out on some bargains because the "take it all bidder' would have won it anyway.

Here are the questions I asked:

1. Is it bound or loose leaf?

2. What year were the albums printed?

3. Are they International or International Junior albums?

4. Are most of the countries well filled or are there sparse areas?

5. Do you have an estimate of the # of stamps?

6. Are there any/many stamps in the Colombian States ie. Antioquia, Bolivar etc.?


Here are the answers;

Bound volumes

1969 printed

Scott Stamps of the World Albums with slip cases

There are no U.S. stamps, other than that it appears most countries are at least half to three quarters full

Best guesstimate would be several thousand

Nothing in Columbia States

They are a little sparse with their information but to see the 1969 print date they must have looked at the Title page. It's a huge difference being 1/2 to 3/4 full in a Big Blue versus a Stamps of the World Album.

The nice Kelliher collection sold for $7000 to a floor bidder so he must have liked what he saw. I wish I could have seen it.

KRelyea, thanks for posting the selling price for the Kelleher collection. What they responded to you just can't be accurate unless there were some valuable stamps that the buyer noticed that Kelleher missed. Based just on stamp count, I would say $7000 would be enough to buy a Scott International Volume One (which I am convinced this is) with 25K+ out of a possible 35K stamps. Average selling price in recent years of complete or nearly complete Blues is 50 cents a stamp. If you assume that several thousand stamps estimated by Kelleher means 3000ish, then this album sold for over $2 per stamp.

If I had the nerve to make 1 more bid I might have been able to answer your questions. I decided you were right and it was an International. It looked like it was comparable to the 1933 International Junior which I bought for $5700 and in fact for the pages shown it was a bit better than the Junior. Based on this and the fact I was going against a floor bidder I was 2nd high bidder but I just couldn't go any higher. There were too many unknowns and the risk was too high.

Speaking of price per stamp for collections, 8 years ago I had built a 19th Century collection using Steiner pages. I was building it one country at a time and had about 1/2 the countries printed out and I had just broken the 4000 stamp mark, when I decided to quit collecting and become a part time ebay dealer. I sold the collection country by country and realized a little over $12000 with France the highest bringing in $1700.

So, in other words, 19thc stamps went for $3.00 a stamp, which is probably comparable to the .50 a stamp for Big Blues that are 2/3 20thc rather than exclusively 19th?

Care to give us any idea how much your 4,000 19thc half-the-world collection cost you to assemble? It's understandable if you'd rather not, but curious minds would like to know.

Somewhat related to Hieronymus' question, would you say that you realized more by breaking the collection up than if you had sold it entire?

That is a story in itself. When I started the Steiner collection I was buying WW collections and selling country collections. I started setting aside 2 or 3 good countries from each collection I bought and printing the Steiner pages for these countries and transferring the stamps. Each time I bought a new collection I'd add a couple countries to Steiner and add stamps to the countries I'd already printed. In this way over 5 or 6 years I built a beautiful collection using Steiner pages printed on Scott Specialty blank pages. The cost was minimal but there was a problem and that was my US collection. Some of the proceeds from my country collection sales were spent on the US singles, so by the time I sold the Steiner collection most of the proceeds went to the credit card. This is when I realized I would have to give up collecting if I was going to succeed as a part time ebay dealer.

I am certain I got more selling the collection by country than selling it as whole. Buying collections and selling by country has been a part of my business from the start and I didn't think it made any difference just because it was my collection.

The Noblespirit collection sold for the asking price of $625,000, last evening. At least it is sold and the price is given as $625,000 rather than "best offer accepted" or "item withdrawn"

ebay item 291294768343

So, at least someone has more money than he knows what to do with.

I hope they went and actually viewed it in person. A grand or so for airfare and a hotel is a drop in the bucket compared to the total expense.

When I look at it, I see that the listing is ended. Did it definitely sell?

It also says "sold" in a diagonal across the lower right of the photo. When a lot is pulled it will usually say "This listing is ended because the item is no longer available" or something like that. I always thought that sold meant sold even though in this case I have trouble imagining anyone paying the asking price.

If you search NobleSpirit's sold listings, it also shows up in there.

Off to Rasdale this week to view stamp auction lots .Looking for a set of Internationals with some stamps ,but want a set in good condition .Over the past year ,I sold at auction one set of Internationals which took me three years to fill up with stamps . After mounting thousands of stamps over three years ,I matched it page for page next to my main collection .
I do this to reduce wear and tear on my main collection of Internationals . Always surprised how many cheap stamps get transferred during this process. What takes the most time is the watermarks and perforation checks .Added a few hundred shade differences also .
If I don't find what I am looking for or it goes over my price then will attend the Regency Auction next month . My weekness is I always find something else that will be fun to work on or something to start another specialized collection in a separate album .

That's a feature, not a bug. Happy Hunting.