Erasing Bad Stamp Memory

Yesterday during the Kelleher Auction in N.Y.C. I think I finally got rid of a previous sad experience in my stamp collecting experience .
It started back about ten years ago, during a spring stamp auction in St. Louis . There was a nice collection of Spanish Colonies up for auction . As most worldwide collectors know the Spanish Colonies is one of the hardest areas to find stamps for ,that doesn't mean you can't find individual sets or stamps but it is hard to find collections for sale and they rarely pop up in general collections that I purchase .
Well at the time ,I wanted to fill in a lot of pages in my Scott Internationals .
During the floor bidding ,I got cold feet and dropped my paddle to quick and went home with out that lot. That dropping my paddle bothered me all summer while I was having the best year with my business both in the asphalt business and trading the Futures markets . The thought of losing that lot and always fighting that ghost of naked Spanish Colonies pages stayed with me .
Well yesterday ,I had a chance to kill that ghost of a weak showing in my albums ,so I killed that ghost and won a nice series of lots .
See.... now you understand how I collect stamps .

floortrader: Congratulations on finally getting them. It is good that you have finally been able to fill in that gap since missing an auction opportunity can sometimes result in a wait of many years before something (re)appears again. As such, I try focusing on the stamps that I have even though the holes in the album of what I don't have can sometimes stand out more. Also, I try to be careful not to miss getting stuff that if I don't get, it can take a long time to come across again.

Congratulations! Guess we know what you'll be doing in the coming weeks...

Were all the stamps Spanish Colonies?

Congrats floortrader. What goes around comes around. Something similar happened to me with an Eastern Silesia collection I regretted giving up bidding on. A couple of years later I lucked out on a better one for a cheaper price.

Floortrader

By a truly odd coincidence, I'd sent you a PM about some forthcoming Spanish Colonies lots a couple of hours before you posted this!

Geoff

He didn't say that any were Spanish Colonies. He said he killed a ghost - whatever that means.

Well done, floortrader ... and thank you for posting this anecdote, even if not everyone caught the subtleties of:




A number of times, posters in this forum have reported examples where catalog value does not correlate well with availability.

Q/ Is anyone keeping a checklist of elusive-though-not-expensive?

Learning from y'all, these days, when I rut thru the bargain boxes, evaluating one item after another, I often ask myself if its the kinda thing I can count on seeing again real soon, or if its the sort of thing that I won't likely to see again anytime soon. Thanks!

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

BEE SEE ----Oh my gosh !! Was the EASTERN SILESIA lot at a Kelleher Auction about 3 years ago ? I bought it ....But when I got the lot it was not EASTERN SILESIA ,it was UPPER SILESIA ,yes UPPER SILESIA .... they wouldn't take it back. I raise hell with them and finally they refunded my money .

GeoffHa ---Yes got your email ,thanks . I don't do business with firms I am not familiar with their staff and been to the office .

Well, this one's in England, so a long trip! Good people to deal with.

It is interesting that it's not what we have but what we don't have that plays on our minds. In other words, one might have 99.99% but it's that 0.01% that one doesn't have that is affecting them even though we can understand it more better when one has 0.01% and does not have 99.99% as a contrast. This can be applied to anything.

Floortrader - No you did not "steal" my Eastern Silesia lot, it was an online auction and definitely not Upper Silesia, as there were plenty of pics. Glad you got your money back.

I agree it's the one that got away I remember most. Several years ago I bought a US #112 with a beautiful blue star cancel on ebay for about $60. It arrived, I unpacked it, I admired it and never saw it again. I searched everywhere and it was just gone! We've moved twice since then so it's definitely gone but I still think about that stamp.

Corollary: We regret the things that we did not do more than we regret the things that we did.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

KRelyea, if that stamp ever surfaces (and it just might), you'll be like a kid on the last day of school. I have lost several very nice stamps for long periods, and then they have appeared...always where I would have least expected them to be.