Auktionshaus Gärtner / Christof Gartner

Hallo! I'm an avid coin collector but helping a friend with his stamp collection. He's a German expat living in Canada and has a wonderful collection of modern European stamps, but, like many of us, he's retiring his collection. Most of the stamps are from Germany and dated from the 1950s to 1990s. The stamps are in Mint condition and stored in custom binders. I'll post numerous photos in another thread for posterity of the collection, but for now I wonder has anyone here ever consigned stamps for sale with Christof Gartner at Auktionshaus Gärtner:

https://auktionen-gaertner.de/philn...ndex_EN.html

This seems to be a premiere auction house specialising in stamps. Have you ever consigned stamps with them? If so, what was the process? Did you realize the prices you hoped to achieve?

To be clear, my friend and I understand that most modern stamps are fairly common, and that they generally achieve a fraction of their catalog prices, even in mint condition. So, based on catalog values (Michel Katalog 2023), what fraction of listed prices should my friend expect?

Any advice or other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

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

Don't bother. From what you describe, they won't have any interest in selling what your friend has to offer. Firms like Gaertner, Corinphila, Koehler, etc generally sell items they expect to go for multiples of catalog (if there even is a catalog value), not fractions of catalog. We're talking single items that would net hundreds, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of dollars; not a dollar here and few dollars there.
Had you said it's a collection of Germany and Europe from the 1850s to 1890s, you'd perhaps have something with which to work. What your friend has is, with all due respect his efforts over the years, all too common and, frankly, cheap. The best way of dispositioning these would be along the lines of ebay, or a firm like Daniel Kelleher.

Modern Germany ,it is all over the place ,expect 10% of catalog if you got some better.

Thanks for the replies. Wasn't expecting anything so fast. Please keep the replies coming!

Meanwhile, I'll forward the info about Daniel Kelleher to my friend. But same question: has anyone here consigned with Kelleher?

Ten cents on the dollar against catalog values hurts, sounds like baseball cards and beanie babies territory. But I'm not surprised.

Follow-up question: this collection comes in custom binders, and I've seen them sell for several hundred dollars on ebay. Was hoping the binders plus stamps would be worth a bit more. Thoughts?

Here's a photo of the binders and again I'll create a thread for the stamps later...

The three albums you show are labeled for "East Germany". Which, generally speaking, has minimal catalogue (in other words, resale) value.

Your analogy only partly applies: for a collector to expect "value," they have to buy "value." No one cares about a complete run of high-graded 1987 Topps; people care a great deal for a high grade T206. Philately is very much the same thing: a lot of something isn't important. Most modern stuff isn't valuable. The thing must be scarce or significant to hold value, generally.
The binders are beautiful (where are they from?), but be warned that most buyers will ignore them when bidding or offering a price. What worked for your friend, likely won't work for a buyer.

You sad they are in mint condition, but did not specify if they are never hinged or not. Collectors of Germany are some of the most pickies when it comes to pristine gum, and if they are hinged the value drops like a rock.

"Firms like Gaertner, Corinphila, Koehler, etc generally sell items they expect to go for multiples of catalog (if there even is a catalog value), not fractions of catalog. We're talking single items that would net hundreds, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of dollars; not a dollar here and few dollars there."

This is a mischaracterization of Gartner. While they would love items they expect to go for multiples of catalog (wouldn't we all?) they do sell normal stuff, but since they are in Germany, they will already have plenty of Germany collections available to them, and being a modern collection it probably isn't worth the cost and hassle of sending to Germany even if it does have some value.

"The three albums you show are labeled for "East Germany". Which, generally speaking, has minimal catalogue (in other words, resale) value."

There is value in DDR (E Germany) up thru about 1955 (if NH). Same for W Germany & Berlin. After that the values are much lower, but if it runs for enough years it will still add up to something. But there is a ton of Germany on the market, so the % could be 10%-ish (certainly less than 20%).

Yes.

You can expect the entire process to take from nine months to a year (or sometimes more). That is the time to get the material consigned, lotted and hammered down at auction.

Payment: This is where it gets interesting and potentially painful/frustrating. I have had it take almost a year, exclusive of the nine months to a year auction process, to be made whole when selling through DFK. Their internal policies may have changed but in my case, they did not pay until they were paid and that was problematic. That meant that from the time I handed over the goods until the time I received my last payment was in excess of one year. Not stating an opinion but rather facts. If considering DFK carefully read the T&C's AND understand that a Contract is one thing and enforcing the terms is another and watch for "outs" on the auction firm's behalf. DFK took the longest but expect all auction firms to take a long time from start to finish. It is just that some are quicker to pay than others.

My best payers have been Harmer, Raritan, Siegel, Cherrystone and Rasdale.

Lots of good info here, especially appreciate your experience rodgcam. Nice to know exactly what to expect.

Starting a thread in the world stamp section with photos of the collection now, so they're here for posterity.

PS: I'm a coin collector so I can talk your ear of about that, but I'm just helping a friend with his stamp collection so I'm still learning the terminology. Someone asked whether the stamps were "hinged"... well, I'm unhinged does that help :)

BTW: the DDR set is only part of the collection. My friend is from Germany so he has East Germany, West Germany, and Germany all from the 50s to 90s. Yeah, we all wish it were higher value but he has what he has.

I agree with eyeonwall.
I've never consigned with Gartner, but I've bought many collections from them.
They are an excellent auction house.
Last year I consigned some collections with Cherrystone Auctions, among them a Germany Third Reich collection.
The whole process, from consignment to receiving the funds, took about 6 months.

Description of stamp hinges explained in your DDR thread.
https://goscf.com/t/84617#782312

I saw the DDR good period for DDR and the is a mix of used and missing, so not a lot of value there.

In European auctions - and sending the consignment to Europe may proof extremely costly - expect albums not to add much to large collections. The rule of thumb is that any money spend on albums is a loss. (Not spending any money on albums is not a good alternative, as they protect your stamps.)

I posted above 10% if you got better ...... but the pictures you show had NO better , No auction house will touch these albums as a lot ,besides most firms have a minium and these pages you show don't reach that level . ,it is a mix of C.T.O and mint but not clear if it is MNH . or mint hinged

Same old story and many of us seen it a hundred times , Albums are more expensive than the stamps inside .