What Is Your Worst Philatelic Purchase?

Not quite philatelic, but I often find that large postcard lots bought at auction prove rather disappointing, and that it's difficult to recoup what I paid.

I bought half a stamp once.

It was from an auction house where people that cut up multiples off-load the scrap. This was the only time I ever bought there - but in all fairness, even the auctioneer was surprised that I was bidding on it, and he made sure that I understood that it was 1/2 of a stamp.

It was a US #7 1c Ty II - or about 1/2 of one - cut off at the top vertically. But from the bottom label, it just seemed as though it had to be a plate 3 (a scarce plate I was trying to reconstruct).

Naturally I was never able to plate it (seeing as 1/2 of it was missing!!) and it sat in my album for years just really making that page look bad.

My new stance is never buy less than 2/3'rds of a stamp now.

Not expensive, but taught me the importance of knowing the nuances of philatelic terminology and how they differ between Britain and the USA.

Bought a set of the Falkland Island Dependencies Overprints from 1944 (the 4 8-stamp sets overprinted for each region). Description said "Unused" and the price looked good so bought it. Forgot that in the British Sphere, Unused = No Gum and Mint = has gum (and unmounted mint = Never Hinged). Again didn't cost me much but taught me to avoid anything listed as "Unused" unless they state there is original gum on the stamps (or they were issued without gum) or have a picture showing gum.

Another good candidate for worst purchase would be those stamp bags we used to buy at the mall as kids. They cost 99 cents or whatever, but that was when postage was 6 or 8 cents. Those bags contained kiloware of the absolute worst kind -- only worldwide standard letter rate stamps. In my family we still talk about the "2 Espana", that mauve stamp with Franco's bald head.

Agreed, those bags were a lousy stamp value--but they provided some priceless philatelic memories. Sort of a good news-bad news joke.

Wow, I loved those bags of treasure and still consider them the best buy of all! I remember those Franco's and the Netherlands numerals, those stamps are loaded with varieties too. Also received many nice blue 2Berlin postal tax stamp varieties in those bags! They were/are a trip around the world. The old adage holds true...One mans treasure is another's ...

My worst buy was the Stanley Gibbons swatch of color chips. I can't blame anyone but myself, the dealer told me they were "of limited value" which is Queens English for useless.

Not so much a worst purchase but more then once i've brought stamps from ebay and they've been well packaged and been too eager to get the stamp out i've torn the damn thing in half !!!

Luckily they were always cheaper items, but sometimes sellers wrap the stamps better then a pass the parcel.