What's A Reasonable Price To Pay For "Space Fillers"

I'm from the thinking of never spending money on space fillers. I'll wait it out.

Just cut out a picture of one if that's all that matters.

One day

I think a lot of space-fillers out of broken down collections end up on ebay in a new vario, along with a fuzzy picture and the title of "unchecked".
pat

When studying pricy issues, super cheap spacefillers can be a good way to obtain reference material and help a collector learn. There's nothing like looking at the real deal. That knowledge will help when deciding to buy a good copy. I've also read that many expertizers keep spacefillers for just that purpose - to have something with which to compare.

So I'd happily pay a few percentage points to have examples to fill empty spaces. I'm a condition hound most of the time except for stuff like this, so I guess that puts me in the better than nothing group.

Philatelia: I guess it depends on your definition of "pricey issues." Can you please give examples of what issues you would be referring to? If I had a rare stamp that was regummed but otherwise with a clean cert, I would rather keep it than sell for "a couple of percentage points." I would sooner wash the gum off and resubmit. But that would depend on whether I really thought the stamp was indeed regummed.

Spacefiller is a gentle term for damaged. Sounds not so bad. Imagine an auction description of "badly damaged stamp" in place of "excellent spacefiller".

What would you pay for a C3a spacefiller?

For this particular stamp it would be all or nothing for me. Go big or go home. Virtually every example we see is clean, has a steady grade, and seeing as how expectations are already high in terms of quality/condition, it's probably the reason graders often lowball the score. I would guess the value of a space filler to be around 10k. Wouldn't pay any more than that myself.

Edit: According to the following commenters I stand corrected! Still wouldn't pay high percentage CV for a "butt-ugly" spacefiller when the overall graded consensus is above average..
Perhaps I'm underestimating the power of a stamp's pedigree + iconic status.

Funcitypapa (cool name!) I define a spacefiller as a badly damaged stamp with holes, tears and other nasties. But regummed is a different kettle of fish to me.

Rogdcam - your post made me laugh - can you imagine dealers actually using those descriptions? That reminds me of that movie where advertisers did exactly that - used brutally honest sales pitches. Hilarious stuff! Ya know, I'm tempted to list a batch of spacefillers with a description like "Butt ugly raggedy old nasty damaged stamps but priced super cheap!" on ebay the next time I have a bunch of duplicates to sell. Too funneeee

For perspective, a C3a owned by Robert E. Zoellner (Position 78) is the stamp that famously:




A 2009 P.F. certificate states "it is genuine, previously hinged, with creases and repaired tears".

https://siegelauctions.com/lot_grd....emailflag=on

Is it considered a space filler for the issue?

It last sold publicly for $185,000.

IMO it really depends on (1) the scarcity of the stamp in question, and (2) how you define "spacefiller".

On #1, if the stamp is legitimately scarce, with low populations, so-called "spacefillers" can still command a relatively large price (see U.S. Scott #R31c, the 6c Proprietary, for example). On truly rare stamps with populations in single digits, you might still be shelling out full catalog or close to it, if the examples extant are also faulty.

On #2, how detracting are the faults to the visual appeal? The nature of the faults may be as much a factor (or more so) than their severity. A heavily thinned stamp might sell for more than a creased or trimmed stamp, as the faults in the former don't detract from the visible aesthetics. A heavily but well-repaired stamp might sell for more than a stamp with fewer/lesser faults but the faults are apparent.

None of this applies to rank-and-file easily-found stamps, where <10% is easily the standard.

Good morning all,

Many stamps become "spacefilers" when they preform their given task of carrying an item in the mails. Others become so after they are removed from the item that carried them on their journey. Worse, most potential postal history items they carried did not survive as well as they did to the present day.

A significant number of natural straight edge copies of C3a have been fraudulently perforated.




After rogdcam echoed my C3a comment, it was addressed.

For the other stamp mentioned in the quote, corners have been cut off yet sells for full price as damaged.

An honest dealer should avoid ambiguous terms like spacefillers or floor-grade or fraudulently altered stamps, and simply write "damaged", especially if he offers a whole lot. If he went over all the stamps in the lot he can be more specific, like "no tears, no fraudulent alteration".
An intelligent buyer should assume the worse for any "damaged stamps" description and without further details should assume deep tears, missing parts, half stamps (not of the valuable type), chemical or physical discoloration, fraudulent product, and so on.

As for using damaged stamps, in my stock books, if a stamp has noticeable flaws, like the above plus brutally torn hinges (that can't be seen from the front), I place those stamps upside down to remember to replace them if I get the chance.

Reasonable price: 1% of CV.
Unreasonable price: 20% of CV (even after 10% sale discount).

Of course for some, any stamps which grades less than 95J is a space filler, any used stamp is a space filler, any mint stamp is a space filler, any stamp in more than two pieces is a space filler or any _________ is a space filler.

One really can NOT have a conversation on the subject until the definitions are worked out.

"NOT" edited in.