Paradise Valley Stamp Co. Sale S111, Provenance Sale

I was looking at the Paradise Valley "Provenance Sale" S111 on SAN . I usually don't fish here, but do look. The offerings are all graded and provenance provided and priced accordingly. The disparity in pricing over the years of the same stamp is surprising. For instance a Scott 95 at Spink sale 96 11/1/2007 brought 4800.00 . The same stamp at Siegel 219 brought 1534.00. The deepest discount I saw was the Scott 379 that brought 5700.00 at Spink 96 lot# 570, but couldn't rise above 384.00 at Siegel 1231, 2/9/2021. It seemed there is no rhyme nor reason to the "value" of any of these issues....... Is it just me?
m

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

You have to look at the time when those sale prices were realized. Look at any auction results from 2007 and a part of 2008 and you will see crazy amounts being paid for everything. I research Russia now for my collecting efforts and stamps that regularly fetch $500 now were fetching $1500 and even more in 2007 and early 2008. Stamps with flaws that go unsold now were eagerly snatched up. I have traced the path of a lot of Russia issues through auctions and the value drop is at times pretty precipitous and it is all tied to what the economy was/is doing. You can see it at Siegel and Cherrystone that have good search capabilities. It applies to virtually all stamps.

I am a SAN fan but the "Provenance" feature is a misnomer. It is a sales record database. Ownership is very much secondary if not completely irrelevant. (unless Gross owned it or someone like Gross)

Demand has gone down (real old timers and baby boomers dying off and far fewer new collectors to replace them) and supply has gone up, combined with several other factors like perceived investment value, online sales ( ebay), increased number of direct non-professional sellers.

correction? replace supply with "availability for sale" really :-)

I do not see how the number of collectors can be quantified in any meaningful way beyond anecdotally.

How has the supply gone up? The number of stamps produced for any given issue is what it is. I believe you mean that availability or access to these items is broader now?

I appreciate the comments. I don't SAN or ebay but I do research there.
Annectdotaly I have 2 friends, one who deals in Duck decoys, and one who deals in handguns. Both have said the same thing at different times, "the Internet has democratized" their dealings. John, gun collector told me that EVERYONE knows the value of a Navy Colt now. Jeff said anyone can look up the value of a Ward Brothers canvasback decoy.
So it is with stamps. I agree "provenance" is a misnomer, sales record is more appropriate. Having said that it's helpful to all the buyers to have an idea of realized prices over multiple sites over a time continuum. AdditionalInformation will democratize the hobby more and more.
Interesting.
m

Yes, the interweb provides copious amounts of information. Now the task is to find out what is real and worthwhile and what is not.

Just a side note to the large decrease in the stamp market . It is due to collectors are building smaller collections ,what we see now is a more specialized collecting interest plus nobody today is shoveling money into material that they are thinking values are going to continue to rise .

I see stuff now at auction that 40 even 20 years ago would sell at much higher levels ,one area that years ago I never could find selling cheaper than full catalog was German Colonies but in the past three years I watched and purchased many collections selling between 1/3 to 1//2 catalog for better stuff . Same with Swiss Canton issues now selling for 1/2 of 1990's prices .


The one area that I see that has gone up are low value stamps mounted on album pages or on stock sheets ,years ago it would be a surprise to see this stuff sell at 2 cents a stamp but now these same pages sell for 8 to 10 cents per stamp and sometimes sell at higher levels on ebay . Those prices have climb higher . I am crying now on how many sets of Scott International and Other W.W. albums I cut up to get them into my $12.00 mixture boxes ,each had 300-400 stamps on cut up album pages .