Where Are All The Faulty Rarities?

The tete beche of CL1 - that is one I wish I had

I think here you have put your finger on it. This is particularly the case for the most prominent and successful houses who do not wish to lower the opinion that their principal clients have of them - reliable sources of quality material. They compromise that reputation by pandering to the tastes of the hoi polloi (i.e. "the many") who more readily seek to buy compromised material.

When lower grade rare material comes to the prominent houses, they may use it to "salt" the albums they will sell as whole collections. Or they may sell it off by private treaty with no fanfare to the "secondary" market.

Which brings me to my main point: we must not forget that there is a strong "secondary" market which operates primarily in direct sales and private treaty rather than auction. Counterintuitive as it may be, it is not to their advantage to broadly advertise that they have rarity "seconds" in their stock by means of a public public announcement. THEIR clients want no attention drawn to who is buying what from them. Not every collector with the means to buy second tier rarities wishes to advertise the fact that this is being done. In some cases they don't want anyone to know they collect stamps at all. Privacy is a first cousin to security.

Agree with you on first part essayk. The last paragraph rings like some Illuminati level bunk.

So folks are slinging second tier rarities behind closed doors because they don't want the word to get out? If these folks have the means to buy rarities why go 2nd tier? The money ranges are not significant enough for the discretion you speak of. It falls far short of other hobbies like fine artwork. How many US single stamps price over 1M? A z-grill that will chop value from the other 2? The missing Nixon invert?

From what I understand about treaty deals, is that the buyer has little control over price. Which means that if these deals are happening, the expectations around the receivable are going to be high end stuff, not items that trade at smaller percentages of cat. While there may be collectors seeking the cheapest specimen, treaty is not the way to do that.

Thank you all again. The Buffalo Balloon is a good example. Yes, I had those thoughts about auctions houses as well. When I started this thread I did not think that those damaged rarities are really that hard to find and show. In the US market, we don't only talk about a handful of very expensive and rare stamps, there are many, so there should be many damaged ones. Is there no damaged inverted stamp, no damaged expensive grill, no damaged compound perforation variety, no damaged bluish paper stamp? It seems like that.

I would imagine that because of their level of rarity these types of stamps have had significant "work" done and no longer are presented with their most serious flaws evident.

Canada / Newfoundland has its damaged rarity, too.

No US stamps known like this...?

I believe there was an inverted Jenny (C3a) that was dug out of a trashcan after being vacuumed and disposed....

Apparently from position #78, and was sold to Zoellner in 1985 from Christies, after being vacuumed by a housekeeper of Hermann Schnabel of Germany! (thanks to Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries, Inc. for some of this information! The rest is folklore!)

They are all over, if you look at the stamps and read the descriptions. From the Bill Gross sale:



The Celebrated Lord Crawford Block of the 5¢ 1847 First Issue

The fold across the top row is clearly visible.

The third stamp in the second row looks to be damaged at Franklin's nose.

the bottom left stamp is only a two margin copy.

From the looks of it, it has a couple of blocks of four that are not damaged.

But with all those points of damage, it is still the largest 1847 First Issue multiple

Or we could look at the The Only Known Unused Block of the 5¢ 1856 Imperforate, with a large tear that affects the design on one of the stamps. The bottom left stamp is damaged as well. And the whole block has a vertical crease. Again, from the Bill Gross collection:




I could go on, but it is clear that there are plenty of damaged material among the great rarities of stamp collecting.

Gee, I guess I'm going to have to go back to the Rasdale brothers, Richard Champagne, Stanley Piller, and a few others and tell them they are full of hot air. Either they are or you are. But really, I did not say why some well heeled collectors do their collecting on the q.t. Fact is, my informants reassure me, they are not embarrassed to buy what they are buying; they just don't want anyone to know they are in the market at all. But not all of these people are at the top of the financial food chain.

The fact is your reply makes a lot of fallacious assumptions, not only about what I was saying, but also about the kinds of people who buy rare stamps. I'm not made of money, but I have literally dozens of items in 19th century US philately that are unique (only known). "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Polonius."

Since we are on the topic. Can anyone share a description that was used by a major auction company on a faulted stamp as colorful as this,

Private treaty sales are a large part of the stamp market, nothing conspiracy-theory about it. A lot of unusual properties -- mundane ones as well -- don't go to auction, but instead the auction house will act as a sales agent and make a direct sale to a client they know will pay $$$, taking some agreed-upon commission on the transaction.

To use a hypothetical example: say I had a copy of that Equatorial Guinea Sapporo Olympics gold foil wallpaper set I talked about in the other thread, and I consigned it to an auction house in the USA. They likely wouldn't want to list it in their upcoming auction. It probably wouldn't reach the right buyers if they did; most American collectors do not collect the stuff (and indeed, might be amazed that there are people who do). However, the auction house might know somebody in Paris or Dubai who wants the set desperately for their massive Olympics collection -- you know, the kind of collector who throws around crazy money and owns a few actual gold medals from the Olympics -- and who is willing to pay double Michel value and a finder's fee for the damn thing, because they're stupidly rare. If you have a buyer like that already lined up and willing to pay top dollar, it makes the transaction much faster and easier.

Or we can talk about the 1875 special printings, for which they are almost all damaged:




with very kind descriptions of the faults:

Here is the description in the Scott catalog about the Hawaiian missionaries. As described above, they are all damaged and have been repaired at some point in their life:

Thank you all again. Indeed it's interesting to read those descriptions of the damage from the auction houses.

alub: Of course for blocks it's a different thing as there it happens quite often that not all stamps are sound. Also, in auctions lots that sell the balance of a collection or stock albums, there may be damaged stamps.

But this topic is about single lots of damaged rarities at auctions, to know more about the reputation of them. Of course there are many stamps with some minor faults, so I think more about stamps where you can see the damage directly in the photo without reading the description. If you know plenty of them, I will be glad to see them here in this topic, of course.

The Continental special printing is a special case, indeed :). Of course the stamps are damaged, and they could be a nice example so, but on the other hand they are scissor cut just because they are special printings, so it's part of their identity, and many of them even have a good appearance as not all perforation tips are damaged. But I did not think of them and you're right that they (or some of them) are good examples of damaged rarities (although not as the Newfoundland stamp above...).

singles too. From Cherrystone: