With Wingate Only A Week Away, The Health Of The Rare Stamp Market Will Be Tested

The lines are blurred. Many of us consign material to nice auctions, and also purchase from same.

Few of us have the means to easily purchase most of the lots in an entire major sale.
[As an aside: Some might ask - Why does that matter? Well, if I wanted to collect Black Jacks or Postal Cards and I had substantial means, I would do everything I could to purchase those two upcoming collections for sale as intact as I could. Those are one of a kind collections in their respective areas. The other option is to try and take 40 years, and grind it out, hoping to recreate what is there.]

The sale of high dollar material absolutely helps keep sellers in business who provide real value to all collectors in terms of producing quality, well-researched catalogs, that advance the state of the art. Many sellers also publish in journals as well, not to mention, providing a quality venue for many of us to sell our collections. There is a rich infrastructure that money helps build, in the hobby, that would not be present if the most expensive stamp only sold for $1,000, for example. Stamp collecting would still exist, but would look very different.

Watching session one today one can say that prices were very, very strong. Most items hit full cv and quite a few hit multiples of full cv. Quite a few singles that were not sold as graded were in all likelyhood purchased with the intent to grade and resell given the many multiples that were paid. The weak segments were multiples, some of them quite spectacular. They tended to draw relatively weak prices and a few did not sell. Session two should be just as entertaining. A great day for philately overall.

Re the Wingate auction:




I only had time to look at the first 100 items of the approx. 260 that crossed the block today. Of those, 95 sold and by my calculations those 95 had a cv of $1,212,970. Price realized for those 95 was $603,955.

Based on that sample I don't think I would have said "very very strong" or "most hit full cv." I concede however, that I only looked at 100 items.

Dennis

There were a few very big ticket items that did not hit near full cat and thus skew the percentage. The overwhelming majority surpassed full cv and did so strongly. There were also a few lots with large cv that did not sell which further brings down the percentage. Overall it was a strong confirmation of value for classic United States material and given the rarity of many of the items the new sale price will affect upcoming Scott catalog values significantly.

I do not see how comparing sales to catalogue value as a bar. The methodology to set catalogue values is not that precise - nothing likely you see on say Coin dealer gray sheets.

Just like in the art community, the stamp community has its highly influential and well-connected individuals that favor some stamps over others even though some stamps that are scarcer or more significant than others do not always get the recognition or merit that others do. This is a fact of life that applies to many different things. Someone can invent something great, yet the commercial powers don't give a damn about it while others come up with some little b/s that is promoted endlessly by the commercial powers so that everyone notices it and goes after it. It has always been a numbers game and popularity contest out there and this includes stamps. Ask any stamp expert out there and they each can probably tell you what stamp they think is underrated and what stamp is overrated and why. Sometimes, it's the stamp that no one notices that is a true gem that is hard to find. It is usually dealer stamp discoveries that tend to get the fastest stamp catalog recognition and this may be due to dealer advertising and advisory clout in such catalogs and their related publications. For others it can take years, if ever.

These were very strong sale hammer prices at the Wingate auction yesterday. I bid on 6 lots and got none of them. I usually am able to get what I really need and want in a Siegel auction but these prices were up in the clouds. There were another 3 lots I was going to bid on but they went up so fast upon opening they were way beyond my comfort level before I could even bid on them. I will be bidding on only 3 lots today so I may get zippo in this sale; that would be a first for me in a Siegel auction where I was bidding!

I took a look at some of the realizations. It looks like a very strong sale for the top-end stuff in quality, of which there is a lot there.

Some of the rare stuff that has even the tiniest fault, gets killed in price - which is the nature of the market these days. Also, the large multiples seldom are appreciated for what they should be worth -- since mostly specialists & dealers would go after them. They don't fit in normal albums.

All in all, it looks like a very strong sale, pretty much as expected.

Update: I won 1 lot today in the Wingate sale out of the 3 lots I bid on. So for the 2 days, I won 1 lot out of 9 lots upon which I bid. As I previously said there were also 3 other lots I wanted to bid on yesterday where the bidding was already out of my league before I even had a chance to bid. Very strong prices at this sale; I will take solace that perhaps what I already own of comparable quality is increasing in value!

I went 0 for 4 in Wingate sale. Actually I am 0 for 9 in last 2 Siegel auctions.
2 years ago I was batting over .500 winning average with Siegel.
Prices were strong. I think provenance drives up price along with stock market performance last year

Yes it was a great auction but let's not get carried away. There were 472 lots and about 460 actually sold. By my count, of those ~460 lots 186 met or exceeded cv; less than half.

There were 112 lots with a cv of $10,000 or more that sold. Only 7 met or exceeded the cv.

Dennis

Yes, I did get carried away. But, WOW, what great realizations. If an item did not surpass cv it came darn close to meeting it. Onward and upwards!

StamperMA, when you say less than half the sold lots met or exceeded CV, are you considering only the hammer prices? If so, I think that underestimates the true cost of the lot to the buyer, who will pay 1.18 to 1.31 times the hammer price when the 18% buyer's fee is added and the state sales tax is applied to the entire lot amount for the 4 states for which Siegel collects compensating use tax. I happen to live in one of those states so I am acutely aware of that additional cost for some buyers. The hammer price is the main part of the cost of a lot but it is not the only cost.

It certInly does under estimate the cost to the buyer, but I think hammer price is still the best estimate of value (at least on that one day). Hammer price is the number that tends to get reported (for example it's the number Siegel reports on their website). Buyers's premium, taxes, etc. are the cost of participation.

StamperMA, we will have to disagree on this. Siegel reports hammer prices to the hobby because they represent and serve both the buyer and the seller and the hammer price is the only transactional point common to buyer and seller. But you can be sure that the total income from a sale is reported in Siegel's financials! For example, even if I were to brag about getting a hotel room for $99 a night, my actual cost, and therefore the value of that room to me, could be $135 a night after all the fees and taxes.
New subject: It would be interesting to know if multiplying the hammer prices by 1.18 would move the needle much on the comparison with CV. It would also be interesting to know what the norm is for the comparison, i.e. in past Siegel auctions what is the % of CV represented by the sales? 30%? 50%? 70%? That would give us context by which to judge this auction's performance.