Kelleher Stamp Auction-Collections December 2022 Now Listed

Good to see a large listing of worldwide collection lots . Some interesting lots .

Kelleher has a new schtick now, a "holistic" lot describing philosophy otherwise known as BS. Or somebody was really smitten by their "word of the day".

To clarify holistic as opposed to atomistic.

I guess this "Holistic" is a laugh because dealers and resellers care not one whit about the whole; only about what small pieces can bring them treasure.

Synergy and gestalt are about building up from the parts, collection buyers are not interested in the advantages of same except where the synergy or gestalt masks the treasure they wish to pocket. Or to summarize in a single sentence, "Greater greed trumps greater good."


(or is it?)

--redwoodrandy



--via University of Cambridge. , no not really

I disagree with your idea that this word "holistic " is just a word creation .

You have to understand the collecting enviroment today and how the stamp describer is using it .

First you need to understand today's auction activity , collections sells and these new buyers want collections .

Let's look at the recent stamp auctions , the one area that has increase in price are the massive all different worldwide multi-volume albums sets . We are seeing stronger prices today ,that is where the stamp describer at Kelleher is using the term "HOLISTIC " , that is what he is saying the large the collection the higher the price . Catalog value doesn't factor into it ,

Let me

Let me explain it this way .

you can buy 100 different stamps for $3.00 , but if you mount 1000 different stamps it is not $30.00 it could sell for $50.00 as a collection . Now we are seeing mounted collections at auction of 50,000 different going for $3,500.00 . The price at auction is strong for collections of 100,000 different stamps increases further to $10,000 in mounted albums .

So we are seeing the same stamps selling from 3 cents each per 100 going up to 10 cents each if sold as 100,000 stamps ,I believe this is what the Kelleher describer is stateing . The total is worth more than the smaller parts

I have to believe a 200,000 different stamps would still increase the price to 15 or 20 cents , of just the more common stamps that would be about $35,000 at auction . Now there has not been a 400,000 different collection on the market but if one did go on the market it surpass $100,000 maybe even $150,000 .Again the whole will surpass any selling of the parts .

If I am understanding...
So instead of folks buying collections, breaking them down, and selling off singles... they should be assembling collections, salting a few better stamps in it (including a few faulty ones), and selling the 'holistic' collection online. Then at the end of this cycle, go back to buying collections, breaking them down, and selling singles stamps. Then at the end of that cycle, flip back to holistic again...
Biggest winner in this game; suppliers of hinges, mounts, album pages and binders, eBay, and a handful of other auction houses?
Don

This kind of makes me wonder 'what if'...
Crypto touts 'block chain' capability which is basically a tracking history of that coin. Imagine, if you will, what a tracking history would look like for all these stamps that are getting handled, mounted, sold, resold, remounted, re-resold over the generations. Would probably cause some of us to become pretty cynical about the hobby.

Manufacturers of albums, pages, mounts, hinges etc are always the winners. Not only are stamp collectors irresistibly drawn to redoing someone else's work, they also relentlessly redo their own work.

"Not only are stamp collectors irresistibly drawn to redoing someone else's work, they also relentlessly redo their own work. "

Ya got that right. I've bought a few collections which arrived in old rundown albums and eventually reorganized and remounted them in shiny new albums, as well as upgrading my own older collections to better albums. Probably spent more for the albums than the collections in some cases; appears irrational on the surface maybe, but I'm enjoying my stamps more, which is what it's all about IMHO.

Can anyone opine on lots 2675-2693 in this auction? They are all groupings of large stock cards with very high estimates, and (to my newbie eyes) they contain some very nice material but also plenty of utterly common material, and very disorganized. I'm wondering if this is somebody's collection or if it is a dealer stock. It seems like a really odd manner in which to organize and sell these stamps.

The problem with this is that the larger the collection, the smaller the potential buying audience becomes. It's all well and good to say that a collection of 400,000 different might bring a $100,000 sale, but the number of possible bidders at that level is very small indeed.

Kelleher is just listening to its customers. If collections sell for strong prices without stating all the catalog numbers represented in the collections, why do that work?

At most, they are testing the market—-skipping a bunch of descriptive work, and seeing whether it affects realizations.

Kelleher seems to take the "holistic" approach selectively if you read through the catalog. The WW lots still detail catalog numbers that draw collectors' attention. I think that the "holistic" lots in this sale are prestidigitation to draw attention away from the lack of strong individual items. In any case I hope that the "holistic" approach does not become the norm because that would mean having to view the lots unless you REALLY like gambling. Of course, not spelling things out works in the House's favor if a buyer is unhappy. Can't complain about an item in a large lot if the House did not mention it.

I suspect that they all came out of one lot originally. Possibly from an "accumulator" type collector, and possibly from a specialized dealer of some kind who put everything he didn't have a real place for on any card he happened to have available. Over a long time he wound up with this mess, and they broke it down.