What Was In This Sparks US Collection Lot That Fetched 7.5 Times Estimate?

Lot 1339 was estimated at $3500 and ending up selling for $26,000 + BP.

https://stampauctionnetwork.com//IK/ik3467.cfm

Can you see what prompted a bidding war? Perhaps an in-person viewer left a bid?

Wow is all I can say. There was more than pictured apparently, but the stuff I saw was nice. Not sure it was $26k nice.

The same person also had a hankering for Italian colonies and Agean Islands. Lot 1250. Estimate of $500 sold for $1050

My guess and it is only a guess is the shade varieties in the very early stuff.

That selling price almost looks like a mistake to me. Maybe they meant to bid $2600, not $26,000? It's pretty weird. It should have sold for what they estimated it at -- or maybe for a thousand bucks more if the bidding got hot.

It's true you could almost make about four very decent early U.S. collections out of all those multiples, but why does that drive the value up that much? Quite a few "key" stamps are missing even if there are many very good stamps, as well. No Zepps that I saw and no higher values in some sets, the kind of things that might drive the price up a lot.

It's a mystery to me . . . unless it really is a mistake. Maybe someone fell asleep with their finger on the "bid" button? I'd love to know what happened.

Drew, if you hit the button, to the join the auction look at message board, it states going for 24,000, going for 25,000, etc until sold to paddle I275 for 26,000. Must be correct. Oh well its only 75% of that in US Dollars.

I looked through the scans and my impression is that the estimate is very low. Without an in-person inspection, though, it is hard to know about condition. There appears to be lots on early mint, lots of $ values, too, and duplication up the ying-yang. Although the description says that they didn't photo the whole thing, it looks like they covered the pre-1920 stuff pretty heavily - perhaps there were more pages of earlies (it's have to be dupes) that didn't get photo'ed? I think the $3500 estimate is low. I think the $26K realization is high (but I am not seeing the whole thing). I could see this going for $15K, though. It would make a great lot to break down for ebay and cherry-pick individual lots for Seigel/Kelleher/etc - assuming there ARE things to be cherry-picked. From the front, and from 5 feet away, though, it looks pretty decent. To me, it all comes down to condition - maybe condition was better than often seen on a lot like this, in spite of the descriptive disclaimers.

Maybe their were 2 squirrels fighting over the same nut and got more into the fight than keeping their eye on the prize. Happens all the time. Glad it's not my money.

I bid on that Italian colonies lot, the estimate seemed too low, but $1050 was too rich for what was in it for me.

Overall, good activity but was able to find 8 various country lots for what I thought were reasonable prices. The Canada & French area collection lots went high, but for other areas the bidding was fine, even subdued in a few cases (I left before the US came up).

Just based on the scans I thought it should bring about 14K, but as already pointed out, there are possibilities that can only have been known by an in person viewing.

The possibilities could be as I said earlier in the shade variety ,could be plate variety . There are interesting cancels some could be Newbury Conn. or NewYork foreign mail . Maybe even the Wash-Frank has something interesting . There is enough to keep a collector studying it for a long time . My guess is two sharp collectors fought over it .

I agree that the estimate looks low at $3.5k. There looks to be some nice items, but I also see some landmines assuming the identification is correct on many of the earlies. Especially the 10/11's. It is a very nice collection to separate and sell, but at $26k it will be tough to make decent profit. I would be curious to know what people saw to drive the price up that much.

There are so many possibilities, from misidentified 1851's to W/F's, to unwatermarked dollar value first bureau's.

Unless the successful bidder is a member here and tells all on what he / she saw we can only speculate. There are quite a few unused banknotes but we don't know the condition of the backs of them. Were there scarce grills? Any of the expensive 1¢ 1851 Franklin's? Too many question we'll never know the answer to.

It comes to around $19 per stamp.

A person could set up a nice bourse table with this material (if shows & bourses return). That est looks way low ... I think a lot of people are assuming the material is faulty but still ...Quick look shows mint 63 a few 292s, 293, $2 Madison marked vf. Lots of mint small banknotes. I know I'm still drooling over this.

I would have paid 4-5k max. US collections have been going for 3-5x what I'd be willing to pay as an ebay seller. The market is just nuts. If this is someone trying to build a new business they is going to lose a lot of money.