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

Mootermutt... sorry, I looked away for a moment while chasing a different wild goose. Fairbanks found his 18 stamps (2 each on 9 letters) a decade after he mailed whatever he mailed from the Madison Square Station in 1924. As far as I can tell, nobody knows how many letters he sent out or why. A decade later, there were stories in the popular press about other 594 discoveries and sales, which may have motivated him to check the 1c green fully perforated stamps on the old returned letters. So it's not as if he knew what he had in time to go buy up more in hopes of expanding his stash or even alerting his recipients that they might have won a small lottery. I'd bet much that he wasn't a collector at all; if I have the right guy, his father was a mail carrier for 36 years, so it wouldn't be suprising that he was at least tangentially aware of the sport. When he saw and recognized the stamps, he apparently cut the corners off the envelopes before offering any for sale. Estimates for the number of Scott 594's printed range from 10,000 - 50,000, but they disappeared among the over 6 billion stamps that so closely resembled them. Furthermore, the 594 variety wasn't noticed until well after production stopped, so ALL the rare variants disappeared into general circulation. At this point, with a little help from our friends here, I've chased down quite a lot about their early value. Now what I'm not 100% certain of is whether "your" Ernest E. Fairbanks is "my" Ernest E. Fairbanks. There were a couple of others of the same name at the same time --I can say that it makes sense that mine was the same guy. He had reason to be in midtown Manhattan at the right time, and the discovery date fits the rest of his biography. But "makes sense" isn't the same thing as being sure. Still hunting!

If anyone's following this: Yes! Same guy for sure, thanks to the enthusiastic services of Marian Mills, reference librarian at the APS.