Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

stampgreendragon, how did the bidding go on those Kelleher lots? Were both sold to the same bidder?

stampgreendragon - "The hint to figure this out is to look at the bidder and how they bid. If the bidder only bids one time through out the auction, then there is a chance that the collection stays intact. If the bidder bids on multiple lots in the auction, chances drop significantly, as you are likely seeing a dealer buy it."

I hadn't realized that stamp auction houses still showed the screen name of bidders. That's pretty unusual these days with coin auctions, which make all bids anonymous.

I'm trying to recall a case where someone bought a very large collection and kept it intact. I can't say that I remember any that I know of. The closest I can come up with was a fellow who worked at a stamp store and just couldn't resist collections and would buy them whole and and add it to the stamp room, then the second stamp room, and then the stamp basement.. He would sell sometimes and then miss what he sold and would try to get it back!

stampgreendragon, how did the bidding go on those Kelleher lots? Were both sold to the same bidder? - Did not attend. Maybe floortrader will chime in.

I hadn't realized that stamp auction houses still showed the screen name of bidders. That's pretty unusual these days with coin auctions, which make all bids anonymous. - paddle number. Just keep track of them. The dealers are usually the ones bidding on everything. I am sure that every auction is different. But even if they did not show the paddle numbers you can still tell. Look at my other hints. There are always clues when a dealer bids. I just named a few of the big hints. Stamp auctions need dealers to bid. They need consistent cash flow and bidders.

The world of bidding at stamp auctions has changed ,for everybody agents , floor bidders and on-line bidders . Auction Houses will give each of these group a series of numbers if they ask for mutli-number so they can hide their bidding .

Hiding is important for stamp dealers also . Sometimes they are bidding against their own customers . A firm will give out 5 numbers like bidder 728,738, 748 ,758,768 are all the same bidder . There is all kinds of ways to hide your bid from other bidders .Even friends will bid and during check out you ask to adjust their books to another person .

GeoffHa said




Yes, Geoff. I live in NZ these days and it must have one of the worst climates for stamp collections anywhere. The amount of collections you see here at auction riddled with rust attests to this. You know it's bad when even the modern mint stuff is ruined. I'm selling off my own collection online so I sometimes buy it cheap for postage but no way would you want to be licking the back of any of it. 8-)

Every collector builds their collections their way . I always wanted a collection that was easy to follow page after pages . Never did I dream or plan to keep that idea going thru the many years of collecting .

To new collectors and readers of this chat board .

Many of you see a big number of 330,000 all different , that is not the way 99.9% of stamp collectors collect stamps . It is not a numbers game. When you see massive collections come up in major stamp auctions ,they almost never give a number of ALL DIFFERENT . because those collections have tons of duplicates or duplicate albums .
This all stems from when I was a pre-teen and all the kids in the neighborhood counted their stamps ,plus stamps were sold by major firms ran numbers of total stamps in their advertising to these kids all around the U.S. . Collecting in the late 1950's and early 1960's was a numbers game . Even the major department stores sold sold "all different " packets . All this was the enviroment I grew up in as many of the oldertimers here also grew up with this "numbers game "

Only I never quit ,it was what I enjoyed growing up and as money became easier to get and my stamp collection grew I was proud of the increases ,so after 65 years still at it .

I think there is still maybe a sizable number of us collect to count. I still look in old stamp sales books that say things like "50,000" different. Imagine getting ahold of one of those as a kid. Even a 10,000 different packet was hard to afford. I think I have seen up to 80,000 different. Wonder what is the largest "packet" of all different stamps sold? Of course, many of these were back in the 40s and 50s when 50,000 different stamps had to include at least some stamps that catalogued $1 or more (back then)

I could be wrong, but my sense is that a substantial percentage of the large "worldwide" collections have a cutoff date, usually sometime in the second half of the 20th century. It seems that few worldwide collectors actively collect 21st century stamps.

How accurate is my perception?

Many collectors have a cut off point. I know one serious one stops at 2000. There are some very beautiful 21st century stamps and I like to include those. Canada, Germany, UK and Japan still have lots of fairly easy to acquire used stamps that don't cost too much. US does too but one has to leave those used ones on paper. The biggest problem is always storage.
I can definitely see the appeal of a cut off date of 1940, 1952 or 1960 though. It's more manageable.

As a practical matter, it's much easier to find older stamps than newer ones. This is especially true for postally used stamps from the less collected countries outside of North America and Western Europe. For example, I've been actively searching the Internet for postally used 21st century stamps from Colombia for weeks now, with no success.

Do you think it's bad for the health of the hobby for so many serious collectors to ignore the more recent stamps?

LANDOQUAKES --- I think you are correct ,there are still those collectors who count their stamps . I just remember more on this growing up and receiving mailings like this from Garcelon Stamp Co.