The William Gross Sale Siegel October 3RD 2018

The reprints were issued in a pane of 50 - they did not issue the top half with the crack. There was also a small crack at position 91L on the reprint pane.
http://www.cgpostal.com/locals/slide2.jpg
Chip

I personally think all of the Groaa material will bring moon money, so I am not sure that "waiting" will necessarily afford better opportunities. My advice to serious bidders, is put your best foot forward on anything that piques your interest.

I received a response from Siegel regarding my request for a larger image of lot #32 and lot #48. They supplied both images to me at 1200 dpi. I am ecstatic. I will be able to upload all of the images to the database. Kodos to Siegel.

Jaxom, I just received today high res scans of the L1 pane (Lot #32 I think) and the block of 42 of #35 that I'm trying to plate. I am just as excited! They are gigantic files, however (almost 2GB). Anyone have recommendations for software to open and manipulate files that large??? It crashed my computer trying to open them with windows photo software.

Siegel is a class act.

Ah. I was wondering why lot #48 was included on the link. I had asked for lot #32 and you asked for #48 so they put them both on the same link. I opened it with ExImage. It is in tif format, that is why it is so large. I took the 1.6g image on lot #32 and turned it into a jpeg file and it only takes 56mb but still very hard to work with. It got larger in physical size to the point I almost could not open it. It is over 27k pixels tall (max is 30k). I cannot copy off the page because clipboard will not hold the images, so I cropped the first row. I can work with that.

Do you want me to send you a jpeg of that #48 lot? It is only 45mb and has the same resolution.

PS: Those two images are marked as 1200dpi but they are actually 2400dpi. I just compared the image to an image I took at 2400dpi and they are the same size image on an individual stamp.

I was going to do something similar--compress the image by switching to JPEG. I plan to keep the TIFF format for plating the #35 block, but crop it into multiple smaller images so they can be manipulated. I'm at work currently, but before I left home, I did find a program that can open the original files: FWTools, which is an opensource program designed for massive image manipulation. It apparently was designed for topographical type images, such as in astronomy or mapping. It did open the file, but I haven't had the chance to play with it. It is "clumsy" to use--for example, you have to type the location thread of the image you want into it's "open new" function, but might allow me to get the images compressed down to a more manageable format.

I am beyond pleased with Siegel providing these images and their willingness to contribute to our pursuits. Although I have bid on a few of their cheaper items in the past, I have yet to win an auction from them. So they did this for someone who is not a "VIP" or high-roller, and without any fuss. Much thanks to them!

Siegel are the BEST. They contribute more to our hobby in shear resources than any other for-profit entity in the philatelic arena. In addition, they protect the consumer (at all levels) by accurately describing lots, standing behind their descriptions/attributions and selling in an honest and non-manipulated auction venue. They are the one auction house that I would NEVER hesitate to leave book bids with, as I know they will always be faithfully and honestly executed. Kudos on their first rate presentation of the Gross treasures-From cataloging to the actual auction, no one does it better!

Good going on asking Siegel for scans. These will definitely help.

For hard cases, its often the minute, almost invisible little scratches often found on a plate that can make the difference between making a definite plating or not. You need 'great' scans for that.

I agree about Siegel having given back a lot to the hobby. That stimulates the hobby, which helps everyone, including them.

I have completed the full pane image that Siegel sent me.
All images have been added to the database in the first position.
Here is the link:
http://www.stampsmarter.com/feature..._Plates.html

Select Right Pane Late to see the images.

Thanks to both you and Siegel for that. Those are nice images.

It also looks like you did something particularly smart on the image cropping, by including the full margin to the left and right of each stamp, including part of the adjacent stamp. That way we can see relative vertical alignment left+right and also distances between stamps - at least relative. Thanks!

Rick, thanks for all your work on this.

We need more collectors like Gross to recycle their treasures. It is truly a treat to study and analyze these type of infrequently-seen items. I only hope that when this aforementioned 1c blue pane does resurface, it is still intact.