Siegel Offering The Edward Morton US Collection In April

Lot 126 is a wonderful stamp. Lot # 1 is a great cover that I thought went very reasonably. All the unwatermaked first bureaus are pretty to very tough in really VF condition.

Keep in mind, you have no idea how high the winning bidder was prepared to go. While it ended at one increment over your top bid (which is always going to be the case if you are the underbidder), they might have been prepared to pay significantly more than they won the lot for.

While I have never been able to play up in the stratosphere like the lots in question, there have been plenty of cases, both on ebay and with major auction houses, that I won lots well below what I was prepared to have to pay... it all depends on who's bidding and what their focus is at that particular moment.

Rogdcam, you started this post but you are not telling us anything you acquired. There were many good buys, so surely you didn't let the whole sale pass you by. I've deduced from many of your other posts that we are collecting the same kind of stamps, so please satisfy my curiosity. Maybe you can sell some of your gems to me in the future.

Lots 1 & 2 may have gone a bit lower than expected. However, there are a fair number of Bears covers out there and the three-margin examples on cover don't go for as much as full four-margin examples.

I did get one cover for less than I was prepared to bid.

Great cancel!

And therein lies the "key". An auction price realized represents not necessarily what an item is worth in absolute terms, but rather what it is worth at "that particular moment". An event does not dictate a trend.

With that said, I think the Morton prices realized were overall VERY strong, especially given all the limitations that Siegel, and society in general, are dealing with.

Look at what the Omaha issues fetched. A used 2 cent (lot 484) fetched $600 for a supposed grade 98. To me it's a well centered stamp that is not scarce even with that centering.

I am jumping on this thread somewhat late, so my comments may not be exactly "timely"

To your point ROGDCAM (which is very well articulated) I say, the savvy philatelist should recognize the opportunity that exists in collecting early multiples. Perhaps more than ever, this is what the smart money should be chasing, especially given how many of these "sacrificial lambs" are getting slaughtered to create high-grade singles. At some point, the supply and demand curve will dictate that there are no longer enough of these items to supply collector demand, hence the prices will be driven up.

"They don't fit on an album page the right way".

That is the excuse I have heard. Some people will pay a lot more for a jumbo single then for a multiple. I can't understand why, but that's how it is. Destruction is the result.

Unfortunate

I, too, feel it borders on criminal to break some of the rare multiples in order to get a high-grade single. Collectors should consider themselves to be caretakers on these items - just one owner in a long line that started 100/150/175 years ago.

Perhaps the grading companies could start to grade multiples in a new way - 'potential' grades on individual stamps within the multiple. A block of 9 of an imperf would result in the center stamp (assuming it is sound) would get a grade of 100J. Any individual perforated stamp in a multiple could be graded. There would, of course, be a very prominent caveat that the given grade would be the maximum possible if the multiple were broken - poorly broken multiples would cause the grade to go down. Perfs can be unevenly split between stamps - one getting the lion's share of the perf and the adjacent stamp getting a 'short' perf. They could sensibly take into account where a row of perfs would 'likely' split if the row was weak. The upside is that one could get a highly graded stamp without the risk of breaking the multiple.

There are all kinds of details that would need to be ironed out. Does one pay for one grade when sending in a block? Perhaps the collector could pay for one grade and 'pre-ordain' which stamp in the block is to be graded. Perhaps he could pre-ordain two or three particular stamps in a large multiple and pay two or three times the single fee.

Perhaps the grading companies should adopt the philosophy that any stamp that can be shown to have been broken out of a multiple would receive an incremental reduction in grade. After all, they have reductions in grade for all kinds of other 'faults'. Isn't breaking a scarce multiple in order to attain a single, high-grade example a 'fault' in itself??

What would be the point of getting a grade on the center stamp of a block? Would it not be self-evident?

Well, isn't it self-evident if one destroys 8 surrounding stamps so that the center (single) contains 1/3 of the 4 adjacent, plus 1/9 of the four adjacent corner stamps??? Yet we see those all the time, each with a 100J cert. If people HAVE to have a 100J cert, why should they have to destroy 8 stamps to get it?

Of course, the best answer is to eliminate the market for high-grade stamps made from multiples. Good luck with that.