1948 Great Britain #268 - Block Of 6

I recently purchased a stamp collection from a lady that had no idea as to the collection's value. It was really pretty large and I too was unable to promptly establish a value. I offered $320 which she accepted. I think that I hit the jackpot with this collection. Aside from an incredible Israel, Romania and French collections with all sorts of high catalogue value items, I stumbled across this gem in a bag stuffed with all sorts of loose stamps. In fact, there are three of these plate blocks of 6.

A single #268 stamp alone is a $30 catalogue value and I see the for sale at various prices - some as much as $20. I see absolutely no pairs or blocks for sale.

What the heck is a block of 6 like this worth today? Any thoughts?

In 1948, this block of six had an unused face postal value of 6 pounds! That is 70 years ago. In today's dollars, that is like $450 in postage. Who the heck sent something at a $450 postage cost back then???? Amazing.

And I have not one, but three of these blocks.

Comments please.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/My-Greates...AOSwPT5ckRyo

You have valued it at at least $165 so why ask? Even graded it yourself. It is one of your most prized items in your 50 year old collection. Right?

Very nice piece!

Scott 2014 Specialized cat. value $40. Ebayers trying to get around $15 per stamp or best offer. None sold.

Can you show some French stuff?

Wow......just wow.

Let me establish a real price on a very fine block of 6 ----$110.00. There you now got a real price today or next week . Sellers can ask any price but it is a buyer who makes a actual price .

I put it up for sale at $160 on ebay just today in order to see if that would help establish a value. The $160 was a total guesstimate. See below. I do not expect it to sell for $160 as the highest price I think I ever got for a single stamp on ebay was $30. I once got +$100 for a stampless cover. While this block is listed at $160, I am trying to figure out its appropriate value. Once I have ascertained the correct value, I can lower the price on ebay if necessary. If the block is worth a lot more than $160, then there should be some bidding for it. If the block is worth around $160, I may find a buyer but I am not holding my breath. If the block is worth less than $160, I will find no buyers and eventually have to lower my price. My analysis was that there were single stamps on ebay that recently sold for $24 and some for roughly $15. Most stamps currently listed are around $15-20 as far as I can tell. At $15-20 per stamp, a block of six is worth $90 - $120 broken apart, giver or take. But a block of 6 intact stamps like this must be close to impossible to find. I have not found a single such example for sale. As such, I figured that there must be some meaningful premium to having an intact block. It has to be really rare to have six of these stamps in a block used postally with cancellations. That is 6 pounds of postage in 1948, or roughly $450 in today's dollars. So my guess was a premium of 30-60% as a guess for ebay pricing. My post of this chat board is to seek out assistance, particularly as it pertains to value. I would not need to do so if there were other examples of this block for sale somewhere, but I can not find any. My ebay listing is the only example. I would add here that this chat board has been extremely helpful in my pricing stamps from my collection. I always grade my stamps as it helps establish a pricing point versus other stamps. There has been much commentary about this practice on the stamp board. All I can say is that if I sell something, the buyer knows what they are getting. In many cases I get prices well above what simple visual inspection would achieve because I have graded the stamp's centering.

As I have mentioned many times on this chat board and on ebay, I am selling over time my +50 year old stamp collection. I can not take it to the grave with me. Some stamps I have owned for +60 years, some have been in my family for 150 years, and some are recent acquisitions. I have collected for 60 years.

I very much appreciate everyone's input.

perf12,

I will see if I can get some pictures of French stuff for you. I already have a decent pre-1930's French collection, but this latest acquisition has a lot of more recent stuff, with many items of decent catalogue value.

A block of 20:
https://britishstampsamerica.com/pr...dding-sheet/

A block of six of the 1pd RSW in used condition would certainly be scarce.

If you really want to know how much it's worth, list it on ebay UK with a starting bid of 99p with free/nominal postage. Run the auction for 10 days (assuming you can still do this) and you'll know what the current market value is

floortrader,

as you say, "my Price" is only meaningful to the extent that I have made a decision not to sell below a set price. It certainly does not means that I can find a buyer at my minimum price. I am interested in finding a fair price. If I give stuff away for nothing, there will usually be at least one buyer. I once listed a coin set on ebay for a starting price of $0.01 and figured that buyers would come out of the woodwork. Well, no other bidders appeared and the coins of significant value were going to be given away. After that, I decided that I would not "underprice" anything I sell on ebay. If I do decent pricing analysis I felt that I could get reasonably close to fair value. The same applies here.

As to $110 for the this block, that would be a small premium to breaking the block apart and selling them as individual stamps. My experience is that blocks like this should probably be at a decent premium value to 6 separate stamps. I can always bust the block up into separate stamps, but that has to result in the destruction of value.

Sewell - As Bobby stated, start it at nominal opening and let the market tell you what it is worth. All of the calculations, assumptions, variables assigned and other pricing gymnastics are unnecessary.

Opinion: Forget the flowery hyperbolic description. It likely turns off more folks then not.

Finally, you asked for value opinions at the start. Do you only wish opinions that validate your $165 or opinions that say greater or do you want genuine opinions that may not fit your predetermined thoughts?

perf,

thanks for this link. The price for the page of 20 unused stamps is $40 per stamp. One can buy an individual unused stamp for like $25 on ebay. Therefore this sheet is being priced at a 60% premium to that of a single stamp. If 60% premium is a reasonable premium for a full sheet, then maybe my block of 6 should be valued at a 40% premium. On that basis, I would guess that my stamps are comparatively worth between $130 to $170. Take 8-10% off of that for safe measure and we have $120-$153.

SewallH, I believe your reasoning is sound.

Markets/demand is often very tricky to gauge.

The RSW issues were unpopular with collectors at the time - the use of an expensive stamp in each set of two made their cost prohibitive, and they did not, I think, do well. A complete omnibus UM set would go for around £800. I haven't done the sums, but I suspect that this is way less than their original cost, taking account of inflation.

Dealer price for an individual used GB £1 is around £15-20. I suspect that a modern block of this kind only carries a premium if it has the cylinder number in the margin.