Another Scott 5 On Cover Is Discovered

I'm a little skeptical of the "tie to F/L."

I can understand that as well.

A stamp like this creates an interesting market scenario. A conundrum, essentially, for both buyer and seller.

This certainly appears to be a perfectly legitimate, genuine 7R1E, #5. Almost all collectors do not have this stamp. From that perspective, this is a pretty big deal. Additionally, one of the really major selling points of 7R1E is the full bottom plumes that it possesses. Interestingly, many, if not most copies extant are at least slightly cut in at the bottom, if not very cut in. This one shows the full bottom and then some. That is really cool, from a purist/specialist point of view. One doesn't see that every day.

Now, of course, it is essentially an average condition stamp. We, as stamp collectors, tend to like pretty things that are fun to look at. Some collectors are ok even with major faults, as long as the stamp is pretty.

Back when I was researching and studying 1c stamps, I built up a pretty substantial reference plating collection, in addition to my main, more condition-conscious collection. Many of the plating reference copies were faulty stamps, but I was willing to pay a certain amount for them, as it helped me advance my knowledge and ability to plate 1c stamps. The point is I got a lot of enjoyment from having some 1-margin stamps.

At some point, the question I guess is, where does price become the limiting factor in a stamp like this? At what price will the seller find a buyer?

I guess we'll see (assuming it sells this time).

An extremely rare bird on cover to find for sale. One was sold in January of this year by Harmer Schau (see scan below) for $20,700. Other than that a search of SAN and Siegel records turns up few results with mostly combo strips turning up and the same cover changing hands repeatedly. If are a collector that wants/needs one you must bid because it could be a very long time before another one presents itself.

I'm familiar with the cover you just posted. It was offered to me numerous times, several decades ago. I declined since it does not show the bottom plumes, really, at all. The current cover for sale, is kind of the opposite of this one, short at top, long at bottom.

I meant to follow up on this.

Looks like it hammered for $18,000 + tip.

revcollector - There is a hole under Ben's eye. So much for undamaged.

Siegel has added the cover to their census (a continuation of the Wagshal census).
https://siegelauctions.com/display_....php?cid=290

Siegel's image doesn't show the apparent hole seen in the image posted earlier, so for a sound copy,
the $18000+ hammer doesn't seem surprise me.

What is the source of the high resolution image of just the stamp?

So, thanks to Don, we have a PSE record of this here:

http://stampsmarter.com/PSE/highres...01371702.jpg

That is a link to the PSE scan from the PSE cert #1371702 for this.

Here is that same image reduced and uploaded here -



I certainly noticed the hole in the original scan, but I hadn't really paid much attention to the lower quality auction scan.

When one posts here a lot, things tend to show up in one's email, as the 'hole' scan did.