Kelleher's 'Wholesale Estimates'

I've bought from Kelleher auctions in the past as a collector but have found a few lots in their soon-to-be-hammered 'Collections, Stocks and Accumulations of the World' of interest from a seller's point of view (not that I need any more material...its that moth to a flame kinda thing...).

I see on SAN where these lots have 'Wholesale' estimates listed. Can anybody with any experience with these kinds of auctions/estimates be so kind as to comment as to the accuracy of Kelleher's wholesale estimates in the real world?

I personally find Kelleher's estimates to be high more often than not.

My two cents also says optimistic. I have bought very little from them, usually because I can't get to their estimate. For me to put in the work, it can't just be a break-even venture.

The estimates are prices they would like to get for the material . They are fishing for higher bids .

In the auction business you're dealing all type of customers ,your trying to get the best possible price out of the buyer .High estimates helps make some people happy if they get it for less.

Conversely, other houses may estimate lots artificially low, believing they may get more people interested thinking to get a bargain.

Two different schools of thought, and both relatively common in the industry.

Then there is always the one lot I want that goes for twice the high estimate - argh!

Estimates are rarely satisfactory for the seller and rarely satisfactory for the buyers. For sellers the sales price is okay some of the time, for the buyer, all of the time as that was what the buyer was willing to pay. Of course there is no living buyer who would be offended if they purchased the item for less money nor living seller who would be offended by selling at a higher price. Thus these types of threads regarding estimate just replay the same market tensions over and over.

Occasionally both seller and buyer are happy, but it may take a new record price. Lets see who is happy with the price of the 85A and more common stamps such as the C3a or 613 this week.

The auction all of you should of been apart of was the Kelleher Stamp Auction for EGYPT about 8 years ago .

I was bidding at twice estimates and thru the whole first half I was getting nothing .Then we got to the Back-of-the-book section . At that point it was 5:00 am in Hawaii and I didn't wake up at 3:00 am to watch a stamp auction and get nothing . So I step up ,that auction made a lot of new record highs and Kelleher made the announcement that 75% of lots went overseas with a lot going to the MidEast .

I never heard of a stamp auction come close to those numbers ,I don't think there ever was that much new record highs at one auction .

Since that auction ,the amount of cash in the world in 8 years has gone up by 50% ......so I hope to see this happen again but at a more expansive scale .

Several collections went unsold today, that is unusual and IMO shows the starting price was too high. Kelleher usually starts the auction at 1/2 the low estimate so I guess a lot of the estimates were too high.

KRELYEA ---- I believe the ebay sellers are starting to disappear at the auction houses . Stamp sales volume has drop a huge percentage on ebay.

Agree on some of the bigger lots because of less people starting out as new collectors in the U.S. plus overseas shipping cost are raising .

What do you base this on?

I used to have 8 or 10 sellers competing with me and breaking up collections and selling them by country, now it seems like I'm almost the only 1 left. On the other hand my sales are great.

The collections that didn't sell were pretty sparse and well filled collections just haven't been offered lately.

One cannot judge one auction by itself. This is an extraordinary week for philatelic spending with both the Gross and the first part of the Kugel hitting the block. Only so much money to go around and what did not go to Kelleher may have been held back for the two more noteworthy sales.

The people competing for nose-bleed items in the Gross ale are not the same ones competing for collections in a Kelleher sale.

The greatest US stamp collection of all-time will certainly go high. I am expecting above cat for most stamps.