Petersen Sale At Siegel Listed

If you look at the balance lots you can kind of deduce that the first generation of this multi-generational collection effort did not have the means that the next generation had and thus the at times split personality.

Rodg: I'm not referring to the balance lots, which I haven't even looked at. I'm just looking at a collector of significant wealth collecting certain rarities and not others and wondering why? Trepel in his introduction of the sale mentions the number of items with less than 100, 50, 20, etc known. The no grill pictorials appear to be between 20 and 50 and certainly 271a is not far behind, certainly in unused condition.

I don't have a clear idea of the true census of certified 78c.

Regarding the Petersen collection, do we know that this is the full collection? Maybe why we don't see certain items is that they were pulled by heirs for their own collections/investments and the auction is what they decided not to keep.

If you read the intro in the catalog, they describe the collection as a 3-generation collection. Son/Father/Grandfather. And it sounds like the current Peterson was the one that made the lion's share of the money. My guess is that some of the stamps that are being questioned here may have been obtained by one of the earlier collectors and they remain in the collection for sentimental purposes. I know I've got some of those that were handed down from my grandfather - nothing rare, but I'd have bought better condition. I hang on to them because they are a tie to my past. Just a guess, though.

Clearly, there are some stamps that only someone with money would buy, so maybe some were not purchased by Dad or Granddad. Perhaps the current Peterson isn't as obsessed with condition as many of the rest of us. Or, perhaps some are purchases early in his stamp endeavors and he has just hung on to them --- maybe even that is motivated by sentimentality.

Gob stopped by the amounts several of the rarities hammered down. Thought I had a chance for the 321 pair, but $1.25million is too rich for my blood - especially given that the last one sold by Cherrystone in 2019 went for, I think, $720k. Granted, Petersen's pair looks like the best one available, but wow. The 294a invert block (78.5k over cat), 295a invert (30k over cat), 389 Orangeburg pair (34.5k over cat), and the 21 (40k over cat) all did well.

On the other hand, seeing the inverted Jenny go for $290k is telling. The 482A is a pretty sad example of a Schermack and at $10k (15% of cat), other buyers seem to have agreed. But on the whole, the up and down prices seemed to accurately reflect the mixed quality versus rarity of the collection.

I can't stand the line "ONE OF THE KEYS TO A COMPLETE COLLECTION OF UNITED STATES STAMPS". Every stamp is key.

A stamp that anyone can buy dozens of at any decent sized show is not "key". Only scarce to rare stamps can be "key" stamps.

• 100% of 548 lots offered sold in 2 days
• 373 registered bidders and 135 successful buyers
• $7,877,345 hammer – 25% over the presale estimate and an average of $14,375 per lot
• A total of $9,295,267 invoiced for U.S. stamps
• The 2c 1908 vertical coil pair, Scott 321, realized $1,250,000 hammer

Craig - nice quote from Scott Trepel's debrief e-mail. HOWEVER, I would kindly suggest that the house's estimates - which are unpublished - are not a good baseline. Sticking with the low end estimates published in the sale catalog, across the first three sessions, 78% of the catalog was realized. Now given the mixed quality, that's not a bad achievement, but please don't forget the couple of lots that went way over the top and dragged everything else up. 75% (273) of the 365 lots in the first three sessions went for less than the low estimate provided in the catalog. 3% (10) of the 365 lots equaled their low end estimate. 22% (82) of the lots exceeded the low end estimate. Nice performance, but doesn't feel liked the suggested victory. Now if the house published their internal estimates, that would make declaring victory based on them feel like a real accomplishment.

For many (most?) of the lots, Siegel lists the Scott catalog value. Are you using the catalog value as the "low estimate"? If so, it is not at all surprising that they didn't hit "low estimate" since that number is for a VF example and quality in the sale was not uniformly VF. Also, for cases where the Scott catalog value is based on recent auction realizations, the catalog value includes the buyers premium, so I would think you would need to add 18% to the hammer before comparing to catalog value.

Yes, Siegel for the most part uses catalog value as the "estimate" and not some arbitrary value such as Kelleher often uses and rarely achieves. Given the percentage of catalog value that is so often realized in these types of auctions Siegel's results are quite admirable I think.

I would like to add an observation regarding the C3a sale. Could it be that there is such a thing as Jenny fatigue? Is the cache wearing off? The irony about the Jenny is that although rare there is always one regularly for sale. You do not have to wait years to find one and that is working against the value.

Rogdcam - liquidity does impact price. C3a is its own category and attracts people outside the hobby. Hard to know how this will fare on any given Sunday. But I suspect a buyer will be happy knowing they didn't pay the most.

There were only 135 successful buyers so you are looking at 4 lots per winner on average. At 14k per lot, (I think some data normalization should occur - ie 321 removed), you are looking at 50k per bidder spent.

Not sure how this compares to previous sales but it is not encouraging. It feels like consolidation, and I would suspect that the distribution is far more skewed toward a few buyers buying many lots, and 130 people buying 1 lot due to wealth availability. Pure conjecture.

As far as the valuations, something is very broken and has been. Markets are speaking and the prices of many things need serious adjustment up and down. Quality and availability are fighting forces. Quality items locked away in collections will drive prices up for lesser available versions. Sometimes you have to take what the market provides or you get nothing.

I believe a lot of smart money bought many of these these lots at "discounted" levels.

Any generalization about this auction is bound to fail. It was more like two auctions in one. On the one hand - amazing rarities commanding incredible prices. On the other hand many stamps found in a typical "US Stamps" auction. The average was over $14k but there were dozens of stamps that were sold for just hundreds and low thousands. There were more 6-figure sales at this auction than I can remember ever seeing in a single auction. 9.3 million invoiced is going to put this auction in the record books - top 10 ever - I don't know - but there is no way to make this out as a disappointment.

Sales data shown below is for the first three sessions. Standard distribution points appear.


I am missing a buyer for one lot so my count of buyers could be off by 1.

Removing real outliers in the auction (Sc 82 to a 1-lot buyer T $660K; 3-lot buyer who got 321, 394a block and 389 pair totaling $1.78mill) changes the stats as follows:


Overall % Cat realized drops from 78% to 65% which just shows how much the really big lots can raise overall auction performance. But what I'd really like to see is Siegel's own internal estimates as they would seem to be far more accurate than Scott - surprise, surprise.