Siegel To Sell Bleckwenn Collection Of First Issue Revenues

I may wind up being dead of old age and long buried by the time this auction gets to any lots I'm interested in. The pace is horrific, all due to the podium. An hour and 45 minutes into the session and only 74 lots hammered.

The bidding was pretty slow with a number of phone bidders competing with the internet. I'm mostly interested in the essay material, so most of what I want to bid on has already sold. The prices for the essays that were also in the Langs holdings were pretty soft, but the unique or 2 maybe 3 known items got strong prices. The experimental overprint material pretty much all went 2x estimate and the hand-drawn models went for strong prices. I got the three lots I targeted, and picked-up another that was cheap. I bumped a few others a few increments, but was saving my money for later - in retrospect I should have gone higher.

Oy. Session just ended. Excruciating. It was like I was trapped in an episode of "Grandpa Simpson Runs an Auction."

As expected, high-grade and low-population items did incredibly well. Things like multiples, or items with condition issues, on the other hand, did not. I got shut out on the lots I hoped to bid on today, but picked up two consolation lots that were going too cheap, one in fact that Trepel lowered the opener on. Early in today's sessions, he was lowering openers on lots to get them to sell, but then later on he just started passing lots rather then lowering the opening, so I lucked out in the timing.

To be fair, there were not many passed lots overall.

I really wanted lot 1102, but got blown out. They forgot to mention the DT in that strip, too.

720K plus change total hammer

This was my first time sitting through sessions on Siegel's new platform. I really like the feature set and visual display, but MAN do they have to get the technological kinks worked out of the system!

1. As mentioned numerous times on the floor, tie bids hitting at the same time would cause one of the two bidders to think they were winning when they were not. I encountered this about a half dozen times over the 2 days, and ended up losing out on 2 lots because of it until I realized that the onscreen notifications were unreliable.

2. The audio was experienceing all sorts of problems, from cutting out entirely to there being some sort of crosstalk at their end with nearby cellphone calls. Refreshing the bidding window would *sometimes* fix it, but I think that was a false fix, as they were saying they heard it at their end at times (meaning refreshing at my end wasn't actually doing anything).

Bidding was very strong, and I got blown out on most items. I wound up getting my #1 and #3 priority lots for the auction, but had to pay well above estimate for both.

It felt like it was a party line, where occasionally another conversation, speaking in a foreign language would come in and take over the audio. Scott alluded to Vonage - possibly they use that. At any rate it was maddening. They have to figure that problem out, as it continued into the next sale today with John Z calling it.

Overall, I mostly like their new platform. I think the overall user-interface design of it is pretty good.

I've always appreciated the design beauty of the First Issue Revenues, so I snagged a couple multiples that weren't too expensive. Really pretty stuff.

I would have found it very frustrating if I had been bidding online. As it was I lost audio and real time video several times and had to refresh. Fortunately I can get to Siegel easily, so I just left the bids I had.