More Ebay Weirdness

I'm sorry, but I'm a little confused by the listing. And I'm not trying to criticize, Kevin, and I agree, no one is being forced to buy, but how can anyone come to the conclusion that is a #104, or ANY number for that matter. How was it determined to be Canadian?
I mean, I have a couple of perforated blanks in my collection (albeit un-gummed). How can any expertiser determine it's origins?

jamesw....
As I previously stated.
This was purchased in a very advanced ERROR collection.
Since it is from Canada...I have no clue about it.
It was included with a note that stated the following:

CANADA 104 var??? MISSING COLOUR ADMIRAL.
Reportedly found with some Admiral sheets.

I have no darn clue what a Admiral was.
But...the link above states that Kasimir Bileski
purchased these sheets.....just like the note stated
about the Admiral sheets.

This is a stamp, unprinted, with attached selvedge.

I tried to get a cert...please read my earlier post.
I assumed these would be a listed error?? I dont know.

Value??? Seems there are 700 around???

I know US material....Canadian not!

Perhaps you should submit it to the Canadian expert service (Greene - someone here can supply the info)

thanks....I have the Greene info....
Will be next.

Thanks for sharing that article Watermark. According to the article, a block of 4 sold for $35.50 in 2003.

The article also explains why Bileski was of the opinion that they had to be Admirals although he does admit that it is not possible to verify this.

Unitrade however does not list this as a variety.

So the story is that, at some undefined point in time, but doubtless on a wild and stormy night when the Dominion was much younger, a dishonest employee of the Canadian postal service noticed something awry with seven sheets of stamps. Rather than destroying or returning them, he swiftly hid them in a dusty corner of the Post office. Later that day, when his colleagues had left, he purchased them with an eye to augmenting the meagre retirement funds available to public employees. As they had been obtained by dubious means, he could not sell them on the open market. He or his associates were thus drawn into the murky world of the philatelist who asks no questions. At some point, a stamp collector named Bileski bought them. Mr Bileski did not state from whom, and he is also the only source of the crooked postal employee story.

Mr Bileski also suggested that the blank material might have been used for training purposes. He did not explain why the Canadian postal authorities should use blank pieces of paper, rather than, as in Great Britain, cancelled regular stamps, to aid staff training. Nor does he, or anyone else, appear to have tested this theory with the postal authorities, a forbidding, KGB-style organisation not given to answering unsolicited correspondence or telephone calls.

In terms of verifiable public buying history of this "error", a block of four sold on ebay for $35.50 in January 2003.

The ebay waters are now being re-tested @ $1,500 for a single, margin copy of what may be one of the "Bileski" stamps.

And stamp collectors sometimes wonder why they are the subject of raised eyebrows. I love this thread!

Completely! Philately gets a very bad name when things like this are offered for sale.

GeoffHa, I think you are on the right track. There is no way that 7 sheets of 100 could have been missed. Someone would have to be blind to miss that many. If you were to argue that a sheet got stuck to another sheet then maybe you could argue 1 sheet of 100 slipped through but for 7 sheets of 100 then it has to be through unscrupulous means.

Kasimir Bileski was a Philatelist and Stamp Dealer. He is best known for his discovery and promotion of the famous "Seaway Inverted" stamps of 1959. He dealt with varieties and errors and promoted philately as a noted author of several books. He brought a great deal of attention to many aspects of philately including stamp catalogs and handbooks. His obituary and more information is available at: http://www.saskatoonstamp.com/prs_bileski.html
He was a great asset and contributor to the hobby.

Please don't send it to the Greene Foundation for certification. We will simply mail it back with a letter stating "no opinion".

GJP

that is a very honest statement Garfield...Just out of curiosity, what percentage of these types of returns does the Greene Foundation send back to people..?

Robert

I own one of these Bileski Admiral blanks. I purchased it on ebay for about $15 some time ago. I was also provided with a copy of the usual typed explanatory note that comes with many Bileski items. I have compared it to a variety of mint Admiral stamps (both sides under various lighting devices) and it seems to be quite legitimate to my eyes.

Of course there is no way to prove this. In my opinion, the Bileski name provides good prominence to its philatelic origin and we can only go on his judgment for the accuracy of the prominence as the stamps were sold to him. It could be a forgery. It could even be based on some other printed matter or Admiral scraps that originated from the original Admiral printer. But the argument for finding it in a "pad of 1¢ Admiral sheets" sounds plausible to me. Either way, it makes a nice curiosity to go with an Admiral collection and I am pleased to have one.

It is unlikely that the Greene Foundation or any other reliable certification service would validate an item such as this since its very existence has never been documented and there is not one copy with the required prominence to compare it to.

Paying any more than an hour's worth of wages for this stamp does seem foolhardy to me given its unproven heritage, but sellers are free to charge what they want. ebay is full of overpriced and underpriced items.

Note that although Kasimir Bileski promoted and sold many forms of Canadian varieties, he was also a proponent of exposing those which he judged to be fraudulent. See the following ebay link for an example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/291350979041

I ordered and received many interesting things from Bileski over the years he promoted stamps. I remember getting an offer to purchase some of these blanks. I decided even then, and with the information he provided about them, that they would be little more than a novelty to add to a collection since there was no way to prove the provenance and source of the blanks. Therefore, I never purchased any of these for my collection.

What!?! How could it then be list it as 'With Cert' even when the cert simply says 'no opinion' or 'not real'?

I'm with you. In reviewing those offered by Gibbons I could never get the story "The Emperor's New Clothes" out of my head. And I've imagined that there is a database trigger set up to send alert e-mails around Gibbons when an order for KGV blanks comes through at £2000, so they can all sit around snickering, "Can you believe it? The dunce bought blank stamp paper ..."