Sterling Lot Estimated At $100-200 Sells For $3750 Plus Tip

Hy-Brasil and Geoff - Thank you for the insight. I was wondering if there was a disconnect between cv and reality. The last Kelleher sale was what really amazed me. There were a large number of MNH fresh sets of 1920's and 1930's Italy that were scooped up one at a time by one bidder at 10-20 percent of cv. No other bidders seemed interested. I see that time and again. To my eye they are beautiful designs with great appeal. MNH Russian sets of the same period consistently fetch strong money and lots of competition. There are many American collectors of Russian stamps and I assumed that Italy would likewise be extremely popular.

GMOT ---Looked at Dutch Country Auction and didn't see much in their country collection lots .To me it looks like mostly made up lots by country ,not really specialized single volumes maybe taken from larger w.w. collections .

What surprised me was the prices that Kelleher was getting for those large w.w. multi-volume collections back in December sale ,some of those prices were too high for resellers who break those countries down into seperate sections .

Rogdcam - I wasn't aware of the particular significance of Stowlow relative to Soviet material. I just know that in general is considered meaningless (I've been told this by multiple people).

Eyeonwall - I can understand the viewpoint in general. Many of the stamps I seek are "signed" by dealers whose imprimatur has taken on pseudo-expertizing significance as the years go by. The Soviet Philatelic Association (SPA) stamp lends credibility to many items but they also would mark stamps that were genuine only to have an unscrupulous player add an overprint. Then buyers would look at the overprinted item as if the SPA had blessed it.

There are a number of Russian consular overprint stamps floating around that as the story goes were created by Stolow in the 1920's using the original cliches which they "obtained" from the SPA. This was discussed in another topic. Ink analysis is the only way to tell the difference since the 25 stamp settings are identical in form to the original printing.

In the case of Stolow one problem is that when the last brother passed away somebody found and used the Stolow stamping device to mark all types of things that were then sold.

Luckily people like Zagorsky and Liapine provide tremendous reference works for these things. And then there are the marks of Dr. Jem and Mikulski which have been extensively forged as well. Russian philately has been the wild west for a long time and the shenanigans started with Mother Russia itself.

I recently saw a valuable overprint signed Romeko that seemed genuine but all of the other material had recent Hovest certs. You have to ask why that item did not have a Hovest cert. Perhaps it was a negative opinion and so not presented? Who really knows.

Hovest and Ceremuga certs are popular and respected but it is a process that takes much time. I wish that the PF could do this material competently but a number of their opinions on consular overprints have been overturned.

@floortrader - it's not huge, but certainly enough for me from the countries I'm interested in right now - only looking to pick up a couple lots in any case. We'll see what the bidding is like in a couple days...