Rant: Why I Despise The Professional Grading Of Stamps

The word you are looking for is 'mat'.

Start with a black-backed stamp mount large enough for the whole block of stamps.

Cut a hole in the back piece large enough to show the target stamp(s), complete with generous margins.

Place the block of stamps inside that mount - backwards, please - and place that whole arrangement inside of a second mount.

Presto!

Matted and unmutilated!

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

The discerning buyer of an imperforate wants to know that it is genuine. To achieve that assurance, at least for imperforates that have a corresponding perforate issue and therefore could be faked by trimming off the perfs, the buyer told the market that they wanted a pair so that the gutter "proves" imperforate status. So the market started supplying pairs. Buyers next told the market that wide margins are attractive, so the market started supplying the widest possible margins and prices went up for that format. Now the tables have turned, and sellers are telling buyers that having a pair showing 95% of the theoretically possible margin is not enough, they ought to have 100% margins around the pair. To fulfill that perceived demand, sellers are offering these contrived pairs with maximum margins. And some sellers and buyers may even find the cut surrounding stamps exotic or even attractive; I'm sure there's a dealer out there marketing this as a "showpiece". Moreover, there are "naturally occurring" postally used examples of classics where senders trimmed stamps to include edges of other stamps, resulting in maximum margins, and these have always carried higher value, and thus contribute to market prices and demand.

The only way to correct the market would be for buyers not to buy these, and to buy a pair with 95% margins. It is no more difficult to "create" such a pair from a sheet than it is to create these contrived pieces. And dealers could still sell the adjacent pairs, with narrower margins, to those who want to pay a little less.

I agree with HungaryForStamps 100%

The logic on this should have been the absolute entire margin that included the entire margin of the adjacent stamp on all four sides would get a 100J, without requiring any portion of the adjacent stamps to show. 0.5 mm less, only a 100, and so forth. Then destroying stamps would be less of an issue, though there would be many average no margin examples extant they would still be collectible.

Two reasons this is an odd phenomenon. 1. Financially, the Scott values of the uncut multiple might act as an upper limit on the value of any 100J stamp. Looking at the 314 100J pair, three NH blocks of four are worth about $400 (my 2012 Scott has them at $135 each). So $500 might be right for this pair, but what would the block of twelve have been worth? Maybe about $500! Similarly, a set of 756-765 as 100J should be worth no more than a set of plate blocks. 2. Common sense versus insanity. I would be embarrassed to show a non-collector any of these. You would almost always have the question asked why were the 8-10 surrounding stamps like that, wasn't it worth more before being cut up in such a way? Shaking my head.

Whenever I am completely baffled by the outer limits of human behavior, I think of one word...

Marmite.

While some dealers and stamp repairers have been condemned and censored for repairing and fixing up damaged stamps, one wonders about those who wreck and destroy them in the quest of creating one or two perfect stamps.

I hate it too, but there is no market if nobody buys this garbage. Supposedly there are people out there that collect this nonsense.

Thought experiment: would you cut a perfect John Hancock (signature) out of a ratty copy of the American Declaration of Independence?




Maybe we collectors should give ourselves more credit. Dealers can be sheep, too. One sees that The Other Guy has something for sale, has a FOMO attack (Fear Of Missing Out), so he offers one for sale, too. And it is a trend! And then the customers start having FOMO attacks ...

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Poor analogy. His signature on the poorest grade imagineable of the Declaration of Independence would still be worth more than on any other document or by itself, regardless of condition, simply due to the overwhelming context and value of the document in question. The document's value, even in tatters or pieces, would far exceed that of his signature.

A better analogy would be isolating a pristine piece of antique furniture or silverware from an otherwise flawed set.

The stamps in question are not inherently more or less valuable than the ones surrounding them, which is NOT the case in your document example.

It is their material so I guess they have a right to mutilate other stamps if they choose

Re: signatures on documents---agree completely with revcollector. The content of a document will almost always trump the value of a signature except in the case of the most expensive and rare signatures or in a truly one of a kind document such as the D of I where the value would be incalculable even if all of the signatures had vanished--as it almost is today.

You would amazed how many historic documents have been mutilated in the past by the removal of the signature. Certainly the document would be more valuable if the signature had been retained but in the case of unqualified rarities like William Shakespeare and Signers Button Gwinett and Thomas Lynch jr, I would say a genuine signature clipped from a document or letter would far surpass in value the document it came from unless the content of the document is outstanding on it's own or completely in the hand of the signer and with good content.

sdtom wrote: It is their material............." Indeed, there is that. But look what else this grading craze has done, like taking common 3 cent commems from the 1940s and 1950s, with boardwalk margins, and then charging astronomical prices for them because they "grade out at 100." People get ripped off enough by this scheme, lose interest in stamp collecting, and what does that do to our hobby. It's not a matter of being afraid of "modern advances." The question must be does grading ultimately add value to the hobby. I think not.

I refuse to buy any stamp that has either a PSE or PSAG, certificate. For me, that is the same as not having a certificate. I count my blessings that the stuff I generally collect; like Portuguese colonials and Mexico, have specialist philatelic societies that offer their own expertizing, and then there is also the APS.

Well-done! I surfed my memories of Antiques Roadshow, but just could not come-up with a decent analogy :(

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Destruction of philatelic items for a manufactured 100? Disgusting. Items like this are just stupid IMO.

Although it's worth pointing out that one of the owners of PSE has stated elsewhere that these manufactured 100s carry little premium and that the premium on classic stuff (Say 1851s) is small enough that manufacturing one of these out of a block is very foolish.

As I've said elsewhere, grading makes sense for valuable classics, but stuff like this is just idiotic.

Related to the topic of this thread, the attached is from a recent auction and is still available for sale at $1,600 with a PSE cert graded 85 VF-XF. Unless this has been faked somehow, why would someone ruin the sheet that contained this stamp just to isolate this error? Not being familiar with this particular error, I am wondering if the full sheet, or at least this stamp with the surrounding stamps in their entirety wouldn't be worth more than just this single stamp with only small portions of the other stamps?





Also offered is the following for $260 with PSAG cert graded 100: