US Scott #1390 Age Of Reptiles FDC By Fleetwood Sells For $1,613.00

Today you can find this clean unaddressed FDC:

on ebay for $3.10 or Make Offer with free shipping. ebay item number:355754965504

Take note of the red lines on the Cachet as well as the red drawn small critter. That was part of the original design.

Now moving on to ebay item number:136330864745
There are so many bids it took four screen shots to show them. Also not the high bidder had to more higher bids yet to go. Oh and of course it is unaddressed but perhaps not "clean."


What is the difference?












Doug Weisz (ID - Weiszcovers), used this listing title, "#1390 Age of Reptiles FDC - Autographed by John Williams Composer Jurasic Park" for his listing.


Who says FDC collecting is dead?

Isn't this just autograph collecting?

I agree with NSK - this is an un-addressed cover with John Williams' autograph. Nothing else about it is special. I would expect the same bid response to any such cover.

The gentleman's autograph tends to sell at or below $1000. Thus by being on the FDC there is a $600 synergy to the FDC + Signature. This came of a philatelist's, now dying, collection who also had various musical artists sign the music (Sc #1252) stamp FDCs. Here clearly the subject matter of the FDC.


Edit: The philatelist's collection of these numbered about 90 , with about 20 sold and 65 pending as buy it now listings.

ebay seller had same 6c Age of Reptiles FDC with signature listed as "Buy It Now" for $67.50 a week earlier. It's marked "Sold... similar relisted" now, which I don't see how that could happen above-board (exact same item, wrinkle and all). Experienced ebay sellers here might shed more light, but my speculation is the seller was somehow alerted to its signature value before someone clicked 'Buy It Now', and he bought it himself as another ebay buyer.
(Related to "ended but not really sold and delivered to buyer", I recall an Ontario seller 10+ years ago, refused to fulfill my won bid, claiming he could no longer locate item.)

The musical score might add value, but anyone paying extra for the FDC that has no true connection to the composer other than, remotely, touching upon a similar subject is a fool easily parted with his money.

This is what you do if you want to take your grade school exhibit about Dinosaurs on Stamps to a world class award winning exhibit. Instead of showing an ordinary FDC that would be tossed in a dollar box, the assertive exhibitor will show something rare and unusual.

When looking at that 6 cent dinosaur stamp, it is hard to not think about similar scenes from Jurassic Park, that 1993 movie that was the highest grossing movie of all time until Titanic passed it in 1998.

The music of Jurassic Park is one of the most recognizable and iconic movie soundtracks of all time (ranked number 11 by MovieWeb's "Most Recognizable Movie Scores", ranked number 4 in a poll of "greatest film theme of all time" by classical-music.com, and also getting high marks on IMDB's "Most Memorable Soundtracks", etc).

So instead of an ordinary FDC of the Dinosaur stamp, having that FDC signed by the composer of the iconic Jurassic Park soundtrack, including a hand-drawn musical score of the first few notes of that theme could be the highlight of the exhibit. It is this type of eye candy that propels an exhibit from "meh" to "wow!"

For comparison, Edward Bergen won a Large Vermeil Medal for a Disney exhibit last week at GASS. I was not at GASS to see the exhibit, but in the past Bergen has won gold medals for his Disney exhibits, where instead of just showing an ordinary mint copy of the 1968 Walt Disney stamp, for example, the exhibit also had imperforate errors, the scarce missing blue color error, and a FDC signed by Roy Disney among other rarities and oddities.

It is possible that the John Williams cover was purchased by an autograph collector, but I would place bets that we will see that cover again at a future stamp show exhibit. (I have no inside knowledge about this, just a suspicion). p.s. if you like paleontology and Dinosaurs on Stamps, you must check out paleophilatelie.eu the award winning web site by Michael Kogan and of course the SCF topical forum on Paleontology https://goscf.com/t/20964

^^^ What ZebraMan said. ^^^

This is in 6/4 time and B flat major. The envelope's in 4/4 time and C major, and (maybe) written in 1970.

Nah.

I thought maybe I was wrong about the 1970 date, but looking at some of the other autographed covers that date seems plausible. Such as Stowkowski, died 1977. Weird…

In 1970, john Williams had only composed a few themes to films. Jurassic Park was released in 1993.

If your suggestion is that it is highly unlikely he signed the cover in 1970, you may be correct. The connection between John Williams and a dinosaur - unless someone considered him a dinosaur because of the type of composer he was - did not exist for another 20+ years.

It is likely the cover was not signed for at least 23 years after it was cancelled. Is that relevant?

I don't think there's any suggestion that the cover was signed at the time of issue - simply an ancient, otherwise worthless, unaddressed FDC stuck in front of Mr Williams to sign years later because of a vague association.

I agree. That is why the relevance of Flightle_Bee's remarks escapes me.

Yeah, that's it. A quick image search showed two JW autographs where he added a phrase in 4/4 and C. One showed photos of him doing that at a convention. So that explains why the phrase has no connection to the Jurassic Park theme (Star Wars is in C and 4/4).

It's that which caused me to query the date- if it was signed in the 1990s why didn't JW write out the Jurassic Park theme? 'Cos there was a big queue in front of him, waiting.

The drawn music is not the opening of J-Park. The seller knew that as did, I expect, the buyer. Nor will you find in any of my posts a suggestion that it was.

Of course, this is the SCF way, if you don't own it, tear it down anyway you think you can.

If it's not the film theme, with its vague link to the cover, the cover itself becomes a meaningless base for the signature, in which case there's no added value from a signature on a blank piece of paper.

The "Jurassic parts" MS note suggest that the collector or a subsequent seller thought that was the music Williams wrote out.