Days Away From The William Gross United States Stamp Treasures Sale

My Comcast Internet decided to sh*t the bed at about lot 10, so I haven't been able to watch and listen the way I intended. Based on the ETC from Comcast, the auction will be long over. Sigh. Mobile phone and cell data doesn't cut it for listening/watching in this neck of the woods.

Looking at the results posted, they've been "ok" but certainly not stellar IMO.

Comcast =

A lot of money being spent.

I was definitely surprised by the Caspary/Vogel 7R1E cover passing, and even more so by the 90c cover. The Beaver cover passing wasn't as big a shock (to me), but still noteworthy.

The #2 block of six did well at 500K - even though that's low estimate, it still seems pretty good to me.

edit: on the Caspary/Vogel 7R1E, although its a very nice item, I suspect the fact that its very slightly in at UL probably limited its potential. I know that Ray really liked this cover (as do I). He told me that if it was good enough for Caspary, it was good enough for him.

Fancy cancels strong.

The 24 cent pictorial invert block, lot 89, went for well below low estimate. Kind of shocking given the expectations.

hard to predict retail for items like that, I'd say $625,000 ain't bad. Not feeling bad for them

Not really. That invert block has always had a very thin market given its price.

Its a terrific item, of course, but I recall at the Ishikawa sale, where it was featured on the front cover, and low estimate of 750K, I think - Scott was the only bidder on it I'm pretty sure, circa ~500K.

Selling it where it went was very predictable. The only way it would have gone higher, would have been if numerous new top end collectors of the same area were in a feeding frenzy. That doesn't seem to be the case.

$135,000 net bidder for the $2 Pan-Pac block - I wonder what the highest dollar amount ever spent at the push of a button online is?

Looks like bidders at this auction would make the list at #10
https://blog.privatefly.com/top-10-...ne-purchases

The Caspary/Vogel 7R1E cover just re-opened and sold for 62.5K. Reasonable.

That was fun to watch. Now bring on the singles!

Given the buildup for this sale it is not a barn burner. I am looking at prices realized vs estimates and the missed commission on the large dollar passed lots and items such as the invert block not even approaching low estimate. Take the emotion out and look at what was realized as opposed to what was expected and it is not a financially historic sale. That the items were on the market is fantastic. Great, great stuff. Siegel will not go poor but they had a whole lot of consultants of different types working on this one and the cost of some of their promotion/display efforts must have been quite high. I cannot wait for the next Gross sales that have the material that will pry my wallet open.

My two cents based on my notes. I may have a few mistakes but I think this is close,

3 lots were passed (all of these were removed for calculations made below - UPDATE and these three lots had total High end estimates of $1.35M).

Given this was expected to be a contested auction I used the high estimates for all my calculations.

The Total Amt bid was about 82% of the estimated high total Amt which was roughly $10.2M

With the premium added it was roughly 98% of the estimated high total. Total with premium was just a little shy of $10M

11 unique internet winners (winning 16 items)
8 absentee winners
4 different phone bidders (with 2 winning multiple items)

50% of winning bids were below the estimate high
44% of winning bids were above the high estimate
6% matched the high estimate

I agree the fancy cancels went well above the estimates. The two lots doing the best against estimates based on percentage -

1. Lot 67 Clown in Top Hat of Waterbury, Connecticut
$15.5K against High Est. $3K

2. Lot 77
Rose Blossom of Waterbury, Connecticut--a beautiful strike of one of Postmaster Hill's most intricate carvings
$22K against high estimate of $5K

Bargain of the night based on percentage of high estimate
Lot 42 - One of the most beautiful 1851-56 Imperforate Issue covers extant, with a perfect sheet-margin block of five of the 12¢ 1851 paying the double rate to Württemberg via the Prussian Closed Mail route $32.5K vs $75K high end estimate. (~43%)

Fun to listen to - it seemed the buzz in the room was high but it did fluctuate at times.

Hobsun

My take, as a participant, is the cheaper (under $200K) material did fine....and in some cases, extraordinary. But the real marquis material was soft. In all, with buyers commission, the sale was just a hair shy of $10 mill- not shabby. I was the under-bidder on one lot, and jumped in on the $2 Trans-Miss block when it looked like it was going to fire-sale, but neither to any avail. Bottom line, I got skunked, and overall prices IMHO, were strong.Today's market cannot be compared to the big sales of 10-20 years ago, and I think, ATC, this sale was a very strong indicator of the health of our hobby.

Extraordinary items (relative to my expectations) were the 2 Lincoln covers and the Valentine. I expected the fancy cancels would bring moon-money.....