Gem 100j Scott #550 Sells For $9,500 At Siegels ???

I know some collectors like graded stamps and think they are good investments, but to pay $9,500 for a stamp that catalogs less than $100 just because it has been graded GEM 100J by PSE... Am I missing something here? (and I thought the perforations on the left look 'strange')

Siegels Sale No.1224, lot 214:

https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...ly+1%2C+2020

Not so sure that these buyers are doing it for investment purposes. Maybe bragging rights? I think it is nuts but it is their cashola.

I am thinking this stamp is a good example of what I was talking about when I said: "PSE is popular among collectors that don't know any better as well as those who care little about the stamp so long as the market accepts the cert now, and just as importantly, in the future."

Now I didn't have the opportunity to actually examine the stamp but does anybody really believe that it is perfectly OK for three rows of perforations to be very similar with one row of perforations having a completely different look?

Incorrect.

This Scott number catalogs $75 (in 2017) for VF-80, mint never hinged. Like coins, whether one likes the comparison or not, stamps which are Good, Very Good, and Fine will be cheaper while XF, Superb and Jumbo grades will rightly command higher prices in the marketplace as Scott does with its "Specialized by Grade" section. This stamp did just that. AND it took at least two bidders to achieve the $9,500 bidding level.

This stamp has been a hot topic on another forum regarding the apparently re-perforated left side. An email was sent to Siegel about this and Scott Trepel replied and vehemently denied the allegations. He claimed that they analyzed it in their software and found it to be authentic in every way. He even got snippy about the thread on the forum.

Reply from Scott Trepel

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. The stamp is absolutely genuine, and we double-checked the perfs using our Photoshop technique.

If I allowed online chatboard nonsense to influence my decisions, I'd be bankrupt, demented and picking through garbage cans for my next meal. The bulk of comments have more to do with anger at other people for spending money the way they wish to than anything substantive or meaningful.

Regards,
Scott

An easy way to settle the controversy would be to send it to the PF for an ungraded cert. There would be no upside to getting another graded cert, so if it comes back clean, the new owner would have two certs from different organizations saying it is as good as could be. If the PF were to grade it as, say, a 98J it couldn't be returned AND its aura of perfection would be dashed.

As for Scott Trepel, if he says they looked at it hard and concluded that it was legit, I would believe him completely.

As for whether this is worth $9500, I am going with: No way, Jose. Nice stamp, but all we need is someone to unbury a large block, or a sheet that has one equally large and well-centered stamp, and the value (uniqueness) of this one would plummet. This is modern enough that there should be plenty of sheets out there. Just one other, and this 100J (and the other) is suddenly worth a third as much AND everybody would be wondering if there was a 3rd example out there. Until the 3rd one is unburied, of course. Nice stamp, but I just don't see it as rare.

To me, this is like owning the nicest Yugo in the world. It's still not worth what a 'run of the mill' Lambo or Aston Martin is worth.

In reply to mooter, I am curious if theoretically the other stamps from the sheet that this came on would all be relatively the same, at least in terms of centering? Most likely those examples may have been postmarked, damaged, or not as well kept, but more just in theory with regards to the centering?

Didn't use photoshop, just a simple graphics app. Looks odd to me. I also wonder about the short perf at left and the blue ink smear over much of the stamp. Do these not factor in to a 100 stamp?






Here is a second image showing the top and bottom of the design is lined up.

The distance between the stamp images on a sheet are fixed, so if you have a jumbo (like this) then that means the adjacent stamps probably got short-changed with their margins. This stamp could have come from anywhere on the sheet, but personal experience has shown me that these jumbos tend to come from one of the corner stamps, or perhaps next to the plate #.

So, in short, I would expect the other stamps on the sheet to be not as well-centered or large as this one. It is certainly possible, but not likely. My original point was that there are probably many, many sheets still in existence - one of those may also have a corner/plate-#-single that equals this one.

Used stamps with these lofty grades (and used contemporaneously) can also bring big $$$. At these high grades, one must spend plenty of $$$ to get such a gem - the collector needs to decide whether he prefers collecting used or mint. Either way, one must dip into the Trust Fund. Still, $9500 for a USA #550???? I guess one person was willing to spend $9500+ AND a second was willing to go as high as $9000. Don't care how big my Trust Fund gets, I would never spend this much on this stamp.

This stamp may have 100J on the certificate, but I'm not quite sure how it got that grade. The top and bottom margins are at least 0.1 degree out of alignment with the frame, and that is quite noticeable to me. Specifically, it results in a significant difference in the width of the left side of the top margin compared to the left margin.
There is always a spectrum in the quality of the stamps within any particular grade, and 100J is no exception. If this one meets 100J criteria, it is, in my opinion, at the lower end of the spectrum.
On the question of reperforation - the bottom perfs are the ones I don't understand and would question. They are irregularly spaced and not all the same depth.

stammps101 - mootermutt is correct that the rest of the stamps in the sheet this one came from are unlikely to be as well centered or as large. Back then there was a large variation within a sheet.

Mr Trepel might be more likely to convince the doubters had he provided a rationale, rather than an assertion. Although why worry about someone prepared to pay $9,500 for this?

Of course he's going to defend it. He made $1,710 on the stamp + whatever the seller premium was. Multiply that by however many lots in an auction and KA-CHING!

Whenever a dealer or auction house wades into an issue with snippy/snarky responses rather than reasoned and measured tone and analysis, that sets off alarm bells to me.

And yes, PSE may still be the market leader when it comes to graded stamps, but outside of catering to a market that chases numbers, their expertization has been shockingly bad in other areas. Some of the buyers of U.S. revenue items that have come up at auction recently with current PSE certs are going to be in for rude awakenings down the line.

P.S. While the owner of that other forum is a complete douchenozzle, he isn't wrong when it comes to his criticism of PSE and numeric grading.

Looks clearly re-perfed.

Some people engaged in "online chatboard nonsense" patronize Siegel. Or did.