The Philatelic Foundation Grading Upgrade

A search of Scott #9 with PSE 95 or greater yields 73 lots on powersearch alone. Those stamps are derived almost exclusively from multiples. Willful ignorance is the only way to conclude any different.

"Those stamps are derived almost exclusively from multiples."

If you say so Winston.

The population of exceptional 12c 1851 multiples has been devastated by grading but who cares about the facts?

Yea the nice part India paper 12c block got whacked.

Obviously people are not willing to realize that their personal gain hurts the future in the long run but this type of thinking is why this thread is now 12 pages. It's a money grab and nothing more than that. The PF had to make the play or continue to risk losing business in an already thinning market.

Your enjoyment or even the enjoyment of our eminently impartial rogdcam, should not deprive all future collectors of what they would like to enjoy. There is no amount of new money or collectors that can justify ruining the very stamps we collect. If this is all OK, at what point is it not OK?

P.S. Thought I knew the meaning of impartial... going to have to look that one up.

Supposedly the three existing part India blocks came from the same sheet. I haven't tried to independently confirm that claim. When the pair from the block of nine showed up, I expressed my doubts here on SCF that they were actually on part India paper. Fast forward to this spring and another of the blocks became available in the Gross sale. I couldn't inspect the pair but I didn't miss the opportunity to examine the Gross block. It is not easy to examine part India paper with gum on it, so an absolutely definitive answer cannot be given by me. My opinion is that it is highly unlikely those three multiples are on part India. The problem is the block exhibits none of the requisite characteristics.

If you own a used stamp you are guilty of supporting the practice of destroying postal history because it was removed from a cover.

What is being lost sight of in the hyperbole is that the market for those early imperf jumbos is thin, very thin and there really is little incentive to cut up multiples. If the market was all agog over these jumbos you would not have to search for them with any effort, they would be on every auction catalog page and every major dealer would be falling over themselves to create them and sell them. Multiples of those issues are sought after and true jumbos that were not created by the hand of man after they could be purchased to use as postage are desired at substantial premiums.

We all agree that sacrificing multiples is wrong and it does and has happened and shame on those that took part. The practice however does not account for any quantifiable percentage of graded material.

You cannot denigrate an entire large segment of the stamp market that trades in graded stamps and find the thousands of collectors that find grading beneficial guilty by association of being callous towards philatelic history because an early multiple was cut up but they collect Grade 98 airmails. It is illogical.

It would be nice to see those early multiples of significance preserved and curated and owners such as Bill Gross have done so. In a free market however if you pay you can do as you please unless there are government regulations/laws/rules that set ground rules such as when you own an historical property. That has more to do with public benefit than anything else and it takes political will. It also changes the financial calculation for buyers and sellers. All some people want is a well centered Grade 95 Scott 595. Nothing more and nothing wrong with it.

Check Downeast stamps for whenever one of the 1/2-stamp remainder alleged part India stamps shows up. Since its already largely destroyed, soak the gum and find out.

Really??? Where did I ever condone ruining multiples for future collectors?

I simply stated that I found Rogdcam's posts more impartial than some of the other impassioned "save the multiples" counter-punches.

I think there are plenty of nice stamps in the marketplace for all of us to procure, and if that situation does reverse itself, wouldn't that hypothetically increase the value of each of our holdings? On a related note, I have bought some wonderful multiples over the last decade, and not one has been sacrificed for grading. Deferring back to the Gross sale, I don't believe that I'm alone in this quest either.

"If you own a used stamp you are guilty of supporting the practice of destroying postal history because it was removed from a cover".

Except that almost all of that with regard to the classics is 75 to 100 years ago or more, not in the last 20 years.

And when it happens matters why?

Because the hobby was totally different at that time. Very few people collected postal history in those days. So saying people today are complicit in what was done then is irrational.

So is trashing grading because a few multiples were cut up. You do not burn your house to the ground because the sink has a leak.

As I said above all this discussion is only possible as the definition of grading (for stamps) is just completely wrong.

How could this happen? Aren't there people at Siegel, Scott, PSE and PF that know something about stamps? Weren't there task forces and papers about grading? How can it be that there are stamps sold for thousands of dollars but without any definition base?

Grading for stamps is - in terms of value - only and only and only based on CENTERING. So all discussion will never end, as some people like it and some don't - but this is not the real topic of the grading discussion. The real topic is: how could it happen that everybody talks about grading (and this is the reason for the castles in the air, for example common stamps sold for thousands) but it is only centering?

Does nobody understand that a word was sold to the philatelic world but the content was not as the word described?

I could imagine that back to that time some people looked at the coin grading and wanted to copy it. But it can't be copied as coins are not made out of paper and don't have centering as most important issue.

As long as centering is not named centering, no discussion will ever end.

(to explain: of course the artificial creation of jumbo singles would also not happen that often if "grading" would be called "centering", as the word "grading" give the creators of singles much much more reason)

---
For sure: a "gem" stamp of 100 has not only good centering but also nice quality overall, that's clear. But: Will a common stamp with perfect color, paper, perforation and impression, but "only" a very good centering ever sell for thousands of dollars? No. This is the point about "centering" above.