Not Just Another 594 Post! What Did Ernest Fairbanks Do With His 18 Stamps?

Evening. First, let me confess that I'm not really into stamps. But I am very much into research on someone who was. I've been working on a bio of Ernest Fairbanks and know him mostly as a mineralogist and photographer. I've realized that he is relatively famous in your world for having found 18(!) 594's on several returned envelopes and cards that he mailed from Madison Square Post Office in 1924, ten years earlier. Ernest E (for Emerson) Fairbanks enjoyed a successful career in science both before and after his brief foray into photography (he thought he could create a photo agency devoted to scientific imagery, but...). In the middle 1930's, he opened an office for that purpose at Madison Ave and 42nd Street and made it work for a couple of years. He took a cut of the revenue for photos both coming and going, but he moved relatively few images and never seemed to achieve the volume of work needed to make it go. I'm wondering if those 18 rare stamps played a role in his change of career? Does anyone know what became of them? Did he sell them, auction them, sit on them, or what? Did they help fund his ill-starred project? Any clue what they would have been worth in 1935 or 6? (Unless I've overlooked them, Siegler's auctions show no sales of that stamp during that period, and Scott's catalogs for the era do not estimate a value.) I'd welcome more informed speculation (and it's all more informed than mine) or any comments anyone has about Fairbanks and his 18 stamps. Absent any wonderful facts and figures, suggestions about where to look for this sort of information would be great, also. Thanks for the loan of your forum!

Check out Lot 2335 from a 2002 Siegel sale at the following link. It doesn't answer all your questions, but perhaps it is a start.
https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...6&page_no=36
Some more info from Lot 797 in a 2000 Siegel sale.
https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...6&page_no=82

Sc 594 earliest documented use Mar. 25, 1924.

1938 and 1941 Scott Catalogue value $2500 unused & $300 used.

2016 Scott catalogue value $35,000 unused & $11,000 used.

Thanks! The auction links confirm some of what I teased out here and there. The Scott Catalogue estimates had eluded me --the 1935 catalog to which I had access had no numbers ("---" doesn't help!), so I'm guessing the 1938 / 1941 values are based on sales during exactly the era I need to know about. Excellent!

$2500 in 1938 is equal to $43,500 today, so it's actually worth less now then it was then.

If you want to compare the value of a $2,500.00 Commodity in 1938 there are four choices. In 2017 the relative:
real price of that commodity is $43,500.00
real value in consumption of that commodity is $102,000.00
labor value of that commodity is $94,400.00 (using the unskilled wage) or $127,000.00 (using production worker compensation)
income value of that commodity is $222,000.00
economic share of that commodity is $557,000.00

The 1936 Specialized "Exhibition Edition", has a dash for mint, and $200 in italics for used.

From the intro sections "The prices in italics are tentative and represent approximate values. They have been based on sales at public auctions and other sources of information ..."

Remember that Scott was an actual retail price list up to about 1940.

Lastly, the 1942 Specialized catalog maintains the 2500/300 values, and adds a value of $400 on cover, all in italics.

RevCollector... Thanks for the perspective. By any standard, Fairbanks was holding quite a valuable handful of paper and glue. One very specific and pragmatic measure of his stamps' worth would be to compare the Scott catalogue estimates for his stash to the cost of rent in his neighborhood in those years. Classified ads and the 1940 census can help with that: he had at least several years' of rent (100 months would not be a bad guess) in those 18 (used) stamps. That's way more than I knew this morning. Whether, when and how he actually turned any of them into cash remains to be found.

John -- I can't "remember" anything about Scott since I'd never heard the name this time yesterday<g>. This is all new to me and great fun to learn about. These estimated values and the rationale for them are really amazingly useful to have. Thank you.

The known supply has not remained steady but grown beyond the original discovery of the variety and then Fairbanks' find. The current Siegel census has 121 records, some being pairs. This certainly dampens the price growth against various calculated indices. Also adding 18 stamps (or 9 pairs) to the small known supply in 1934 might fairly well saturate the market for Fairbanks selling his.

Versus a financial study of C3a, which has had essentially a steady supply of 100 since its discovery.

John, et al. Points well taken about the supply. Last night, I located five accounts of sales of 594s in syndicated collecting columns in newspapers contemporary with and just after Fairbanks's big find in 1934, also a classified ad offering one for $500. These accounts describe sales of half a dozen stamps, mostly singles, one double, one used but uncancelled. They appear in 1935 through 1937, and the prices reported do (to no one's surprise) support the estimates in the 1938 and 1941 Scotts catalogues. So now that we've got the going price set down pretty well, it would be interesting to know how and when Fairbanks's stash came to be known. His find was not publicized before May 1937 when a pair of 594's was thought to be unique. His name does not appear in this context in contemporary accounts in the general press. I'm guessing --and it's only guessing-- that Fairbanks was being careful not to bomb the market, selling anonymously or through intermediaries one or a few stamps at a time. So I'm wondering when and where the details of his find came out (like the summaries in Siegel lot descriptions which JLLebbert pointed out above). In fact, the summary included with a 1999 lot description is the earliest I've seen. [ETA: now have this back to 1983, see post below] All those details had to come from somewhere. Can anyone suggest where --in what specialized literature? It's a fascinating bit of his bio, at least to me, and it's firmly stuck under my skin.

FaifbanksHound....you might try contacting Scott Trepel at Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries and see if he can answer any of your questions. As I understand it, he has written the majority of Siegel's stamp descriptions over the years and might know where the information in the 2000 sale came from. Be forewarned, though, that Mr. Treppel is a very busy man and you might not receive an answer.

Coastwatcher... thank you! In fact just as I asked if anyone knew the answer here, I used the contact form at Siegel to ask there. If nothing has come back in a few weeks, I'll try again by name<g>. Later!

I've just found remarks in "OPINIONS Philatelic Expertizing --An Inside View" ed Elizabeth C. Pope, 1983. In a contribution about the Scott 594 titled "Less Than A Millimeter, Thousands of Dollars" by Brian La Vane: "In 1934, 18 copies of this stamp were discovered by Ernest E. Fairbanks, on some covers which had been mailed by him on October 4, 1924, from Madison Square Station Post Office, in New York City. These covers had been returned to him as undeliverable for various reasons. This was by far the largest hoard of this issue ever to be found." So the Fairbanks stash, its extent, and circumstances were all known by 1983. The author provides no footnotes or references. So... still looking for earlier mentions of Fairbanks's find.

See pages 133-136 of Gary Griffith's "United States Stamps, 1922-29", published by Linn's for text and reference list with mentions of 594 in the 1920s and 1930s.

Well... I've apparently led myself down a primrose (side)path. Like that never happens around here. I just found the broad strokes of the Ernest Fairbanks story in "United States Postage Stamps of the 20th Century, Vol III" by Max Johl, published in 1935(!). So, however he worked the market, the existence of his 18 rare stamps and how he came to have them was not much of a secret; it was published within a year.

FYI: Another reason to contact Mr. Trepel at Siegel's is that he worked with Ms. Pope there for many years.

I've learned a lot from this thread. I was unaware of the #'s of 594's. Given what has been said here, I assume Mr. Fairbanks bought a bunch of sheets of stamps for some mailing that he had to do. Who knows how many sheets, and who knows how many of those were 594s? Whether he bought 1 sheet of 70 (or 100), or he ended up with 100 sheets at the PO, I find it amazing that 18 of those letters were returned to him as undeliverable. I suppose he could have mailed 1000 letters (or maybe 500), and 18 were returned. Unless, of course, he mailed 18 letters, all of which had some problem, like being overweight for the postage, causing them ALL to be returned. Assuming that wasn't the case, and that he actually mailed 100's of letters, all of which had 594's on them, and 18 got returned, where did all the others go? Were a few of the others part of the discoveries that happened years later by other people? Again, assuming the 18 were part of 100's of others that got away, I understand that a TINY fraction would end up being saved, even in the heyday of philately, but where are ALL the others? Did Fairbanks somehow serendipitously buy the majority of the supply of 594s?? We may never know, but did the total supply amount to 2 sheets (1 for Fairbanks, plus another somewhere that accounts for the non-Fairbanks copies)? Or like 50 sheets, and Fairbanks bought, say, 25 of them on that fateful day (and 18 out of 2500/1750 were returned) and the other 25 were bought by others? Also, was there a single release of this issue, or were there multiple releases over the lifetime of the 2c Washington, because 'they' kept making them, as coil waste became available?

As a comparison, the CIA invert has one source - the CIA. Since no others were ever found, it is assumed that the guy that bought that sheet that was used at the CIA, bought the only existing pane. It appears that we know the story behind the CIA Invert, as far as numbers, source, etc. But then the CIA invert is CLEARLY different from all the other $1 Candle stamps, and the 594 looks identical to the common stamp made by the billions. Anyway, it would be interesting to know the full story (numbers, dates of release [if more than one pane], purchasers, etc) behind the 594. I expect the story has been lost to history.