Urban Legends Of Philately

Years ago, I remember reading an article in Linn's (or did I dream this?) about a man on his way to work who passed an older house that was being emptied out by a work crew. Perhaps the owner had recently died. They were dumping boxes out the upper window into a dumpster. He stopped and looked, and he saw they had thrown away piles of paper, including boxes of envelopes with stamps on them.

Here's where I can't quite remember what happened next. Either he skipped work -- or he went to work but hurried home later in the day. In any case, he asked the workers if they'd mind if he climbed into the dumpster and took some of the old "paper" they'd been throwing away. They said they didn't care, and he was welcome to it.

He stayed in that dumpster for a few hours into the evening, pulling out piles of old envelopes with very old stamps on them. Again, I don't remember how old they were, but since this story was supposedly from the 30s or 40s or perhaps earlier, maybe they included older Columbians and before that. Add your own fantasy "finds" to the story. I always do. Every time I see someone emptying an old building, I think of this story which might be true, after all. Or is this my own fantasy dream? I've never been sure.

Mystic displayed mint NH sheets of 100 of all the Columbian values from 1 cent to 1 dollar at their booth at NY2016.

Edit: I was told at the booth they were all NH. They were definitely all unused.

John Brennan showed pictures of some of his Columbians in Facebook a while ago, but when I went to look it seems he's deleted them. I know he had full sheets of most of them, but I can't remember if he had a full sheet of the $5.00.

I vaguely remember someone making a challenge 20-30 years ago on showing them a pane of $5.00 Columbians and I sent them a picture of a clipping that I had found but I never heard back from them at all. I can also recall that the pane was from someone in Japan at the time.

The article I referenced earlier, about the $2 Columbian sheet, said that at the time, no $2 sheets were known.

STAMPS FOR DRUGS --------It was the summer of 1970 and the guys in the neighbor played football in the park on Sunday afternoon at Marquette Park on the south side of Chicago .It because popular with a lot guys and soon we had three or four games going at the same time . We always had someone make a run to the liquer store to buy quart bottles of beer which were wrapped in a brown paper bag and each guy had their own bottle sitting under the bushes because the policy was if the police don't see the beer ,nobody was drinking in the park . Policy worked fine for all parties .
One nice Sunday a few druggies/burned out Hippies stopped by and noticed a Linn Stamp News under my bottle of liquid refresher . As I took a break , one of the burn outs asked if I collected stamps ,I gave a positive respond to which he said his dad had a collection and if I was interested in buying it and the respond back was sure ,bring it to the park and I will give him a price .
He showed up 2 weeks later with a leather satchel, it was filled not with a collection but full sheets and half sheets from one of the Baltic countries ,as I try to piece the story together of where it came from .Slowly it came out that his father was in some kind of German military unit that was on the run after the collapse of the unit as Russian Army was moving West and these stamps "were saved" from the RED MASSES". Here we stood in the park in 1970 and his dad didn't want to sell them because his dad was worry about being found out about and shipped out of America and send to Russia for war crimes .
We got around to the "sell them to me and nobody will know were they came from " it started at $300.00 and got up to $600.00 on price . But the problem wasn't the money ,he wanted to know how it can be done with no chance of his family being found out about and his dads war time activity and his Dad not aware the son sold the leather case .
This went on for another two weeks with no hope of me getting the stamps . Then he approached me about buying the stamps for 300 hits of Purple Micro Dot LSD . Where was I to find LSD in Chicago ,I have not seen any since I left college in Denver the year before . I was working at the Chicago Board of Trade and started to ask around for LSD ,most people seen or heard about one or two hits floating around but 300 ! Soon found a supplier thru a employee of another firm . Went after work to the North Side and purchased $600.00 worth of LSD ,which this dealer never heard anyone buying more than 10 hits .
Got the LSD to the park and made the exchange for the whole case and it was a huge profitable deal . The only sad note was the drug-head was trying to start a business and got caught selling LSD for $10.00 a hit . He disclosed my name to the police but that is another story .
STORY TRUE ? who knows ? but I still got a decent collection of margin blocks from a Baltic country .

The most disliked collector in philately passes away.
The only two attendees at the funeral are the proprietors of two prominent stamp auction firms.

One has to wonder how many times scenarios similar to this have played out throughout history.

If it isn't true, you can spin stories with the best of them.

Enjoyed the tale.

I thought a good Penny Black in a bag of kiloware was an urban legend until I found one myself...
told a guy at the local stamps club and he told me a guy he knew had found a Penny Blue (colour trial) in a box of junk from a nearby auction.

I am nvus.

When I lived in Chesterfield England From 2009 to 2014 I used to buy stamps from a dealer who had a stall each thursday in an open air market. One day the dealer suggested I might like to scour the street downwind of the stall as a penny black had been blown out of his wallet and lost amongst the people and other stalls, Fortunately it was a rather poor specimen. I used to think that his outdoor market stall as a place for selling stamps was unique, but I believe their is an outdoor market for stamps in Paris
I was told that at a stamp club meeting in North west England they had no frames to display stamps that were the subject of lectures, so the stamps were passed from hand to hand round the audience. Some of the audience would smoke while inspecting the material. One burnt a hole in a £5.00 orange with spilling ash!

I recall this myth from my childhood, it even got it's way into Ripley's believe it or Not. It didn't happen, yet there's at least two links on the net referring to the story as if true.

https://blog.arpinphilately.com/a-p...der-mystery/

Here's a screen shot