Bill Langs Passed Away

Lot 1245 "plate number 4 strip of 6, o.g., never hinged, clean and bright, the strip additionally showing the "gap in bars" variety (listed but unpriced in Datz)"
More equine droppings. These 1901b imperf plate strips always show a gap in the precancel bars at the joint line and Datz does price the plate strips. [what Datz does not price is an unnumbered gap pair - such pairs are located 12 stamps away from the gap that is in the strip in question]

Lot 1251 "dark blue omitted (Scott 1943 var), block of 4, o.g., never hinged, Very Fine, unlisted.
Estimate $300 - 400"
So we have an unlisted color missing error with no cert, estimated at only #300-400. Why am I skeptical?

I could go on, but I have better things to do with my life.

This RB1d was sold by Siegel in March of this year ( Lot 1458) and here it is in Langs sale:
https://db.kelleherauctions.com/php...745&lot=1698
https://siegelauctions.com/lot_grd....nwwin=qhwwep

Lot 1292. Had to be changelings. With b valued at 6000, a cert would have been persued if confident. Way to sell $1.16 worth of stamps that sat under the lamp. Red is first color to suspect changeling as it fades/erodes away first

Did anyone read the description of lot 1199?
"never hinged, perfectly printed on pristine paper, Fine to Very Fine, a pensive playwright perplexed by the paucity of perforations"...

So I misinterpreted how many sales there are going to be. I think 7, not 3. 3 parts to the category. This sort of fits into his regular stuff he flips on ebay.

3 flagships sales:
3 specialized sales
Error sale


I question this being his very best/private stash. Guess the other two will be better as this is a way to work the sheer amount of material coming to market and manage prices.

I do like the lot-ing. It allows for cherry picking. Was afraid of the combo lots that can be used to bury material in. Due diligence still an extreme must.

Next

My review of kelleher sale 1 of Lang's stock not dissimilar to my thoughts of many of the items offered on ebay previously: many scarce but faulty items, others that would be expected to be offered with cert, unaccountably absent. Two other comments: I don't understand Kelleher not showing image of cert mentioned. Case in point is lot 269–very presentable unused NG 70b with cert stated but not shown or even cert number listed if you wanted to look it up yourself. The second point is that many of the 2020 certs that are listed are Crowe certs.
Was this a decision by the family, Bill Langs himself or kelleher, a timing issue, or maybe an assumption that there were going to be faults.

This is by no means meant as a judgement on William Crowe and his acknowledged expertize but more a commentary on the general and historical impression that non graded stamps offered with PF certs bring better realizations at auction than PSE or PSAG and with various opinions regarding the market impact of APS, Crowe, Weiss, etc certs (even if their opinions are correct). It is my feeling that Scott Trepel would pick PF every time EXCEPT those he deemed worthy of an updated GRADED cert in which case I suspect PF and PSE would be a toss up. I doubt anything else would come up in the conversation.

Just one man's opinion

Funcitypapa - Well spoken. You read my mind overall (scary). I would tend to think that the choice to go with Crowe was a timing issue. I respect Bill a great deal as well but the Crowe cert, right or wrong, does not have the same amount of gravitas. And yes, the material is the material, no hidden fault free rarities discovered in the coat closet. It was his ebay stock and that is that. Lots of very outdated certs and many stamps that should have a cert and do not. As I stated elsewhere there are but a small percentage of say the dollar value Columbians that made the cut to be lotted singly and I fully expect the balance to be listed as large groups later on.

In general Kelleher's estimates tend to closely follow Langs ebay retail numbers. The openings of course are half of that number and in most cases probably will be what the lots sell for.

I think rismoney, funcitypapa, and rogdcam have framed this series of sales up very well in their latest comments. I would only differ on one thing. In his ebay listings Langs had several classic NH stamps (e.g. Columbians, Trans-Miss, etc.) that were extremely well-centered and only had really old PF certs. These have not been listed in sale 1 so I am hopeful they are being sent to PF or PSE for a current graded cert and will then be listed in sale 2 in December.

Lot 1292 Why would anyone pay $1 for changelings let alone $100?

All,
Given that some folks might be looking up PSE certs, be aware that the original Stamp Smarter site is still suffering from poor PHP performance. (This only impacts the 'Advanced View'.)

I have had no luck in getting the web hosting company to fix their issue so I started migrating to a new hosting company a few weeks ago. Stamp Smarter is a huge website with over half million files so it is taking me some time to get things switched over.

Additionally, I have gotten a new update for the PSE database and have been adding over 4000 new certs (going through July 2020).

So if anyone would like to access the PSE Advanced View, you can access the new PSE database at this link http://stampsmarter.org/public/PSECertFUSA.php

(Note that this link is stampsmarter.ORG and not stamnpsmarter.COM). This link includes the latest updates and should open in under 12 seconds.

Also note that the PSE Advanced View supports a 'Compare' feature which allows you to select/flag specific certs and then compare them. It pays to invest a few minutes in learning how to filter in the Advanced View; in the near future I will be putting together video instructions on how to get the most out of the Advance View tool.
Don

Don, that's awesome. Thanks!

To Mr. Don:

Thank you kind sir for all that you do.

V/r

Rajah

Am I missing something... lot 37 have a tear repair on the middle left?

https://stampauctionnetwork.com/V/v7452.cfm

It certainly appears to have a major repair done.