Did This Guy Get Taken?

I have a handful of various stamps like this with receipts north of $500 tucked in the back. Same buyer, same seller. I'm thinking someone was taken for a ride. The receipt calls the stamps a Railroad Misprint. $400ea stamp x2...

being an ex model railroader and a lifetime stamp collector(still a novice) I imagine the fellow got off at the wrong stop. but they are cool.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SCOTT-2265-...em5b0bf504ee

I would say he got taken on a world tour of wrong stops.

Loving the "wrong stop" references. lol

WOW Someones gonna steal that thing! lol

If that place ever existed, it doesn't seem to now. I tried to find a storefront at that address with Google street view, and couldn't find it. There are a couple of structures that might have housed it at one time, but not now.

I sure wouldn't pay that kind of money to a "collectibles" dealer for philatelic items. And anybody who would gives new life to the old saying "a fool and his money..."

Well, I guess the old saying is true; something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay.

I don't see that these were misrepresented necessarily, howver, I wondered if this brings into question any dealers code of ethics that may have been broken, if any such formal code exists. But I think blcjr may have answered that question, as it appears the seller may heve been a "Collectibles Dealer" and not a Philatelic Dealer.

The sad part is the buyer was fairly elderly... But I suppose, if it made him happy... He wasn't taking the dough with him anyway...

The good news is, if I stated what I paid, in the form of a percentage of what he paid, it would start with a decimal.

GETTING TAKEN ? It all depends on his goal. If this fellow was a life long topical collector of trains on stamps and he was looking to improve a exhibit. Then no!

A percentage that starts with a decimal point would be less than 1%, eg, in this case, less than eight dollars. Nice!

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who is, in this case, being 'pickey')

Q/ How often are these outrageous over-payments part of a money-laundering scheme?

ikeyPikey you are correct. You've earned a gold star for the day!

well, it's a nice misperf. I don't know what the rarity of it is.
The version in the ebay link is not it's equal. I wouldn't judge the value of one based on the other.

It's not so much better that it is likely to be worth much more than $10. They are freak perfs, a pretty common type of EFO, especially in the recent modern era of the last 35 years. Charging $800 is legal stealing.

LOL I read that as, "not very rare"...

This stamp is known with the mis-perforation all the way from one side to the other. A pair as shown above would not be worth 8 dollars, let alone 800! With a plate number on a strip of 5 ( PS5 ) it might be worth $8.00. These mis-perforated stamps have been used ( among others ) by Greenpeace,
but even used on a cover they are not especially rare or costly!

Peter

All the way from one side to the other like this one?

This one doesn't have a receipt but it's from the same group. He probably only paid $1200 for these.

One detail we may all be overlooking is that the invoice in the original scan is some 13 years old (2002). When did the Scott 2265 misperf first come to market in any quantity? Could it be that someone bought these when they were first "discovered" thinking they may have a valuable item and later on when substantial quantities hit the secondary market, the value diminished? It's happened with a lot modern EFOs that are later found to be more common than first thought.