Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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I am not interested in buying so the moderator doesn't cut me off although I have been watching the cut offs and think the whole system is ridiculous. In my area when I take tables at shows, I am buying mint US postage at 50% or less if under 10 cents face and hoping if I sell it to get 60 to 70%. UN postage is even worse. I sold a batch last year to another dealer at 35% of face and was happy to get it. This year I offered him another small batch at same price and he turned it down at any price. Said he can not find a place to sell it and make anything on it. UN FDC's are even worse. I bought a 1000 fr $25 at a show last year and they are much more recent and I still have them. I am going to cut the stamps off and sell them in used lots. There seems to be some market for that. Then I can use the shoe boxes they are in to put something out that will sell.
Jack
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With the plethora of first day covers out there, I am seeing just what you said you are planning. Namely, people are soaking the stamps off first day covers and adding the stamps to their collections or selling them. I have seen this for both the US and UN. However, recently I am starting to see this with newer stamps from Germany.
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I recently found an eBay seller who was selling US first day covers of the 1950s through 1970s in lots of 20 starting at 99 cents. As I recently decided to organize my USA collection, and I've always loved cachets, I bid low on a mess of lots and wound up with something like 400 covers at about 17 cents each including shipping!
And as far as postage below face value.... the lower value commemoratives don't even work as postage because there isn't enough envelope space to fit enough of them to make the current 49 cent rate!
So I guess just about anything from the last 50 years is virtually worthless?
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Forty-nine cents is nothing!
Try making the 85-cent rate in Canada. Five 17-cent stamps will do it.
Our store is in Ottawa. Most dealers like us are paying 40% of face for Canadian postage. Dealers in Toronto are paying less than 30% for values 17-cents or less, and 40% for values 20-cents and over.
David
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10:41:10pm
Somewhat better prices out there:
http://www.discountpostage.ca/buying
Roy
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Hmmm... I was thinking 49 cents as in 16 3 cent commemoratives and 1 2 cent stamp! Gota find bigger envelopes... but then that will add in an oversize surcharge... what to do? 
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Well if you lived in Ghana you could do this
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Bill:
I love covers with stamps on the back! I have covers like that for my Costa Rica collection.
David
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02:10:34pm
" ... UN FDC's are even worse. I bought a 1000 for $25 at a show last year and they are much more recent and I still have them. ..."
FDCs were a fad created in the days when postal agencies put issues on sale and seldom kept or published records of where or when. Collectors who specialized in those issues tried to find the EKU (Earliest Known Usage) and sought covers with stamps clearly canceled on that date or better, an earlier date, for their collections and displays.
The fad developed when agencies began to produce attractive cachets illustrating some detail associated with the issuance.
I have been warning new stampers for years that fancy FDCs have become little more than contrived souvenirs often having but a tenuous connection with the date and place of cancellation.
Some day in the future, after the glut described has dissipated due to the stamps having been removed from the cover, what remains intact may again become sought after to illustrate how things were collected a hundred years earlier.
The same thing is likely to happen to plate blocks from the 1930s on.
But probably none of us will be around to profit from it post 2100 CE.
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I saw a Buy It Now on eBay for discount postage, and it was offered at a 30% discount, free shipping. It was $49 face value for $35. It mentioned older commemoratives and that the values would be 3 cents through 10 cent stamps. Okay, I bit.
I get a plump envelope in the mail today and WOW! I didn't expect what I got. The envelope was filled with glassines, each marked like "100 x 10 cent = $10". It started out with 3 cent commemoratives of the late 1930s... it looked like they emptied some dealers mint stockbook into the envelope. About 10 each of each stamp, mostly mint never hinged, a few hinged and a few damaged stamps.
The next envelope was 3 cent commemorative plate blocks of the 1950s. Literally looked like they emptied someone's collection book. One of each, commemorative blocks for several years in the early 1950s.. equaling 100 stamps.
There was a third envelope of 3 cent commemoratives, as above but singles, pairs and blocks all mixed.
Then we got into the four glassines of ten cent stamps. There were literally two glassines that contained 25 of the same commemorative plate block each. Mint, clean, like they were packed up when new. And the other two were mixed plate blocks, singles and pairs and such of the ten cent era.
There were a few mixed definitives in there too. Nothing current, all either three cent or ten cent values.
As such, very little of this has been delegated to my postage box just yet. I culled out the hinged and damaged, that will be used for postage. But the 1930s-1950s clean mint singles went into my stock book. Those 1950s plate blocks and more will go into my USA collection.
Overall a very happy customer!
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It's easy to find such US postage for sale for 70% or less for older issues, 80% for more recent but not current, and 90% for current forever stamps. And that is with free shipping.
Sometimes there are hidden treasures that make it more worthwhile.
I also find it lends a certain charm to advertising mailers, and had a philatelist who received one of our mailers become a client because of the cleverly decorated cover. I also had someone ignore a copyright complaint notice because of all the stamps on the cover, so you have to decide when it is, and is not appropriate to decorate a cover.
Lars
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"It's easy to find such US postage for sale for 70% or less for older issues, 80% for more recent but not current, and 90% for current forever stamps. And that is with free shipping. "
I used to buy discount postage back in the late 1970s when I had a first day cover service. It made sense to get the 20% discount, and be able to add some stamps to my stockbook as well. Back then I was able to get full sheets of the 3 cent commemoratives of the 1940s-50s.
What took me back about the lot I received yesterday was that it was mostly plate blocks and singles neatly in groups of 10 each issue. Like I said above it looked like it was straight from a dealer stockbook or collection. Which gave me one of those flash forward moments, that the collection I'm now lovingly putting together is nothing more than someone else's discount postage in the future. Really a sad statement for USA stamps of the last 75 years that very few of them are worth more than face value.
And I'd love to know the circumstances that the late date postage makes it to market as discount postage. I see ads offering those Forever stamps that use a photo with tens of rolls of them. How does this stuff wind up being sold at a discount? Was it stolen from a post office?
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07:22:40am
" ... How does this stuff wind up being sold at a discount? Was it stolen from a post office? ..."
It happens like this, "Ben".
A few years ago a friend who owned a small used car lot showed me three sheets of the then newly issued 29¢ Elvis Presley stamp. " I read in the newspaper that these will be really valuable some day." he said.
I wasted several gallons of highly charges oxygen/nitrogen air trying to explain that everybody and her sister was grabbing up, just as he was doing, full sheets of stamps that were being printed and issued in a quantity of over 100,000,000 stamps ( Somebody will check the number. ) that will never be worth much more than they were that day when they could actually carry a first class letter from Bangor, Maine to Agana, Guam. Today an Elvis stamp will barely pay the distance to San Diego from Maine portion of that same trip.
Yes, today, some people do try to sell sheets on eBay for about $2.00 over face and dealers put them in their discount postage box at shows. The supply is almost endless and the only thing going for that stamp is that it combines easily with a 20¢ stamp to make today's postage. Another 2¢ or 3¢ postal increase and virtually no one will want them at ll.
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Charlie's explanation covers one conduit. Another is the way collecting changes. Think, for instance, of PBs. They used to be collected in blocks (4 and up) with stamps that were attached AT the stamp; today they are attached solely by the backing. I don't how many others, besides me, found that offputting and abandoned PBs. Similarly, PNCs have been changed by virtue of the now-meaningless PN. Ooops, there goes another one.
Then, of course, some of us (I don't mean you and me, but some others) are getting older, and as our collections go to dealers, and as tastes change, stuff that might once have been valuable, becomes less so, both because there are fewer of us collecting and because some desirable things just aren't any more.
Finally, if stuff isn't desireable, it often makes no sense to try to sell it individually, but only in bulk, discounted lots. It's not practical for postage (although it has its benefits, as Lars notes) and not necessarily useful for collections, so, voila.....
David
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"And I'd love to know the circumstances that the late date postage makes it to market as discount postage. I see ads offering those Forever stamps that use a photo with tens of rolls of them. How does this stuff wind up being sold at a discount? Was it stolen from a post office?"
Some years ago at a stamp show, I asked a dealer about this. He said that Doctors and other such professionals would buy sheets of stamps, write off the cost as a business expense on their taxes, then sell the sheets at a small discount to stamp dealers.
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"I saw a Buy It Now on eBay for discount postage ... very little of this has been delegated to my postage box just yet."
Sounds to me like you got (self-)robbed
Been there, done that.
"And I'd love to know the circumstances that the late date postage makes it to market as discount postage."
Thought experiment: Buy 100 rolls of any recent stamp. Now, try to get rid of them in less than one month.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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i have occasionally bought the remnants of rolls from which dealers have removed PNCs. I paid 50% for $300 worth of penny coils, free postage (and the package was mostly destroyed, so I got a great piece of damaged postal history to boot). PNC dealers are a great source, although that aspect of the hobby appears to be shrinking fast.
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05:36:06pm
" ... PNC dealers are a great source, although that aspect of the hobby appears to be shrinking fast. ..."
PNCs were a fad that developed out of collecting plate blocks and never had any valid need beyond noting that a stamp had a margin number.
Originally a hundred years ago Plate blocks had a use to anchor the various plate variations when someone was plating an issue.
Once presses became monitored by an electric eye scanners and almost every stamp in a pane was identical or nearly so, the need to seek and tabulate plate blocks dissolved. And so goes PNCs.
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yes, and no, Charlie
first, PNCs were as useful as PBs (or plate singles; PS) in that identified who printed it and on what plate. PNCs were often printed on mutliple plates by multiple printers, and one could follow them by virtue of their numbers. I always keep a PS WF intact, as it's the easiest way to ID what stamp it truly is; so too with PNCs, when other differences are minute. And, for guys who just like collecting numbers, well, there you go.
The nail occurred when USPS changed what PNCs meant: they would no longer identify the plate, in fact, they pretty much didn't identify any thing at all, although USPS said it might change a number when it changed PAPER, of all things. If all PNCs are now 11111, what's the point.
it wasn't the meaninglessness of plates, it was the absence of any corerlation between a number and its production.
David
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"cdj1122
I have been warning new stampers for years that fancy FDCs have become little more than contrived souvenirs often having but a tenuous connection with the date and place of cancellation."
To each his own, FDC's being contrived souvenirs is not correct here in Australia as far as I am concerned. Below is an example of 2015 Australian Antarctic Territory. Dare I say ART, art in the form of a photographer catching these images.
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12:48:49pm
" .... Dare I say ART, art in the form of a photographer catching these images. ..."
You certainly may, with or without agreement.
The four stamps are strikingly haunting, there is little dispute about that, nor should there be.
It is the generally misleading cancellation that, to the newbie, might imply that these particular four stamps were actually cancelled at, or near Antarctica, on or about the "First Day" they were issued.
In the past, say pre-1930 an envelope that bore such a timely cancel had a fair chance of recording or documenting the date and place of use.
Today, and in recent years, few such stamps were ever within a thousand miles of Antarctica and may well have been cancelled anywhere from a week to a month either before or after the indicated date.
As we all know, on February 4th, 2013, the painting of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo went on exhibit in New York.
Now suppose on the Friday before, I created an unaddressed cover while visiting Baltimore and affixed this stamp to it, and handing it to a friendly postal clerk who was leaving for the weekend, asked him for a cancel showing Monday's date, since Monday was likely to be either a chaotic holiday in Baltimore or a day of mourning.
The envelope has a cachet "First Day of Exhibit" and later a small hand made stamp claiming "The Ravens WON !!!"
What would be the philatelic significance of the cover ?
The beauty of the stamp image is undeniable, the events referred to did happen. But the cover was never within 200 miles of the Met, And Super Bowl 42 was held on Sunday.
Now for the sake of the illustration, suppose that two weeks later I return to the Baltimore Post Office and somehow convince the same clerk, to use the same canceller, with the same date adjusted in, to create five hundred more of my Mona Lisa "First Day of Exhibit" souvenirs to sell at a local Flea Market in Tampa, Florida, what is the significance, beyond the painting's re-created beauty?
Would they be worth any premium ?
That is what I meant when I wrote, " .... I have been warning new stampers for years that fancy FDCs have become little more than contrived souvenirs often having but a tenuous connection with the date and place of cancellation. ..."
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The reply to a posted want ad was not related to the offered swap. It was more of a general discussion. Therefore, it has been moved to the General Philatelic Discussion Topic.
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03:59:46pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
I am not interested in buying so the moderator doesn't cut me off although I have been watching the cut offs and think the whole system is ridiculous. In my area when I take tables at shows, I am buying mint US postage at 50% or less if under 10 cents face and hoping if I sell it to get 60 to 70%. UN postage is even worse. I sold a batch last year to another dealer at 35% of face and was happy to get it. This year I offered him another small batch at same price and he turned it down at any price. Said he can not find a place to sell it and make anything on it. UN FDC's are even worse. I bought a 1000 fr $25 at a show last year and they are much more recent and I still have them. I am going to cut the stamps off and sell them in used lots. There seems to be some market for that. Then I can use the shoe boxes they are in to put something out that will sell.
Jack
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
With the plethora of first day covers out there, I am seeing just what you said you are planning. Namely, people are soaking the stamps off first day covers and adding the stamps to their collections or selling them. I have seen this for both the US and UN. However, recently I am starting to see this with newer stamps from Germany.
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Approvals
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
I recently found an eBay seller who was selling US first day covers of the 1950s through 1970s in lots of 20 starting at 99 cents. As I recently decided to organize my USA collection, and I've always loved cachets, I bid low on a mess of lots and wound up with something like 400 covers at about 17 cents each including shipping!
And as far as postage below face value.... the lower value commemoratives don't even work as postage because there isn't enough envelope space to fit enough of them to make the current 49 cent rate!
So I guess just about anything from the last 50 years is virtually worthless?
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
Forty-nine cents is nothing!
Try making the 85-cent rate in Canada. Five 17-cent stamps will do it.
Our store is in Ottawa. Most dealers like us are paying 40% of face for Canadian postage. Dealers in Toronto are paying less than 30% for values 17-cents or less, and 40% for values 20-cents and over.
David
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BuckaCover.com - 80,000 covers priced 60c to $1.50 - Easy browsing 300 categories
04 Aug 2015
10:41:10pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
Somewhat better prices out there:
http://www.discountpostage.ca/buying
Roy
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Approvals
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
Hmmm... I was thinking 49 cents as in 16 3 cent commemoratives and 1 2 cent stamp! Gota find bigger envelopes... but then that will add in an oversize surcharge... what to do?
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
Well if you lived in Ghana you could do this
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
Bill:
I love covers with stamps on the back! I have covers like that for my Costa Rica collection.
David
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
14 Aug 2015
02:10:34pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
" ... UN FDC's are even worse. I bought a 1000 for $25 at a show last year and they are much more recent and I still have them. ..."
FDCs were a fad created in the days when postal agencies put issues on sale and seldom kept or published records of where or when. Collectors who specialized in those issues tried to find the EKU (Earliest Known Usage) and sought covers with stamps clearly canceled on that date or better, an earlier date, for their collections and displays.
The fad developed when agencies began to produce attractive cachets illustrating some detail associated with the issuance.
I have been warning new stampers for years that fancy FDCs have become little more than contrived souvenirs often having but a tenuous connection with the date and place of cancellation.
Some day in the future, after the glut described has dissipated due to the stamps having been removed from the cover, what remains intact may again become sought after to illustrate how things were collected a hundred years earlier.
The same thing is likely to happen to plate blocks from the 1930s on.
But probably none of us will be around to profit from it post 2100 CE.
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Approvals
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
I saw a Buy It Now on eBay for discount postage, and it was offered at a 30% discount, free shipping. It was $49 face value for $35. It mentioned older commemoratives and that the values would be 3 cents through 10 cent stamps. Okay, I bit.
I get a plump envelope in the mail today and WOW! I didn't expect what I got. The envelope was filled with glassines, each marked like "100 x 10 cent = $10". It started out with 3 cent commemoratives of the late 1930s... it looked like they emptied some dealers mint stockbook into the envelope. About 10 each of each stamp, mostly mint never hinged, a few hinged and a few damaged stamps.
The next envelope was 3 cent commemorative plate blocks of the 1950s. Literally looked like they emptied someone's collection book. One of each, commemorative blocks for several years in the early 1950s.. equaling 100 stamps.
There was a third envelope of 3 cent commemoratives, as above but singles, pairs and blocks all mixed.
Then we got into the four glassines of ten cent stamps. There were literally two glassines that contained 25 of the same commemorative plate block each. Mint, clean, like they were packed up when new. And the other two were mixed plate blocks, singles and pairs and such of the ten cent era.
There were a few mixed definitives in there too. Nothing current, all either three cent or ten cent values.
As such, very little of this has been delegated to my postage box just yet. I culled out the hinged and damaged, that will be used for postage. But the 1930s-1950s clean mint singles went into my stock book. Those 1950s plate blocks and more will go into my USA collection.
Overall a very happy customer!
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
It's easy to find such US postage for sale for 70% or less for older issues, 80% for more recent but not current, and 90% for current forever stamps. And that is with free shipping.
Sometimes there are hidden treasures that make it more worthwhile.
I also find it lends a certain charm to advertising mailers, and had a philatelist who received one of our mailers become a client because of the cleverly decorated cover. I also had someone ignore a copyright complaint notice because of all the stamps on the cover, so you have to decide when it is, and is not appropriate to decorate a cover.
Lars
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
"It's easy to find such US postage for sale for 70% or less for older issues, 80% for more recent but not current, and 90% for current forever stamps. And that is with free shipping. "
I used to buy discount postage back in the late 1970s when I had a first day cover service. It made sense to get the 20% discount, and be able to add some stamps to my stockbook as well. Back then I was able to get full sheets of the 3 cent commemoratives of the 1940s-50s.
What took me back about the lot I received yesterday was that it was mostly plate blocks and singles neatly in groups of 10 each issue. Like I said above it looked like it was straight from a dealer stockbook or collection. Which gave me one of those flash forward moments, that the collection I'm now lovingly putting together is nothing more than someone else's discount postage in the future. Really a sad statement for USA stamps of the last 75 years that very few of them are worth more than face value.
And I'd love to know the circumstances that the late date postage makes it to market as discount postage. I see ads offering those Forever stamps that use a photo with tens of rolls of them. How does this stuff wind up being sold at a discount? Was it stolen from a post office?
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
03 Sep 2015
07:22:40am
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
" ... How does this stuff wind up being sold at a discount? Was it stolen from a post office? ..."
It happens like this, "Ben".
A few years ago a friend who owned a small used car lot showed me three sheets of the then newly issued 29¢ Elvis Presley stamp. " I read in the newspaper that these will be really valuable some day." he said.
I wasted several gallons of highly charges oxygen/nitrogen air trying to explain that everybody and her sister was grabbing up, just as he was doing, full sheets of stamps that were being printed and issued in a quantity of over 100,000,000 stamps ( Somebody will check the number. ) that will never be worth much more than they were that day when they could actually carry a first class letter from Bangor, Maine to Agana, Guam. Today an Elvis stamp will barely pay the distance to San Diego from Maine portion of that same trip.
Yes, today, some people do try to sell sheets on eBay for about $2.00 over face and dealers put them in their discount postage box at shows. The supply is almost endless and the only thing going for that stamp is that it combines easily with a 20¢ stamp to make today's postage. Another 2¢ or 3¢ postal increase and virtually no one will want them at ll.
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
Charlie's explanation covers one conduit. Another is the way collecting changes. Think, for instance, of PBs. They used to be collected in blocks (4 and up) with stamps that were attached AT the stamp; today they are attached solely by the backing. I don't how many others, besides me, found that offputting and abandoned PBs. Similarly, PNCs have been changed by virtue of the now-meaningless PN. Ooops, there goes another one.
Then, of course, some of us (I don't mean you and me, but some others) are getting older, and as our collections go to dealers, and as tastes change, stuff that might once have been valuable, becomes less so, both because there are fewer of us collecting and because some desirable things just aren't any more.
Finally, if stuff isn't desireable, it often makes no sense to try to sell it individually, but only in bulk, discounted lots. It's not practical for postage (although it has its benefits, as Lars notes) and not necessarily useful for collections, so, voila.....
David
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01:36:07pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
"And I'd love to know the circumstances that the late date postage makes it to market as discount postage. I see ads offering those Forever stamps that use a photo with tens of rolls of them. How does this stuff wind up being sold at a discount? Was it stolen from a post office?"
Some years ago at a stamp show, I asked a dealer about this. He said that Doctors and other such professionals would buy sheets of stamps, write off the cost as a business expense on their taxes, then sell the sheets at a small discount to stamp dealers.
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
"I saw a Buy It Now on eBay for discount postage ... very little of this has been delegated to my postage box just yet."
Sounds to me like you got (self-)robbed
Been there, done that.
"And I'd love to know the circumstances that the late date postage makes it to market as discount postage."
Thought experiment: Buy 100 rolls of any recent stamp. Now, try to get rid of them in less than one month.
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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Auctions
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
i have occasionally bought the remnants of rolls from which dealers have removed PNCs. I paid 50% for $300 worth of penny coils, free postage (and the package was mostly destroyed, so I got a great piece of damaged postal history to boot). PNC dealers are a great source, although that aspect of the hobby appears to be shrinking fast.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
08 Oct 2015
05:36:06pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
" ... PNC dealers are a great source, although that aspect of the hobby appears to be shrinking fast. ..."
PNCs were a fad that developed out of collecting plate blocks and never had any valid need beyond noting that a stamp had a margin number.
Originally a hundred years ago Plate blocks had a use to anchor the various plate variations when someone was plating an issue.
Once presses became monitored by an electric eye scanners and almost every stamp in a pane was identical or nearly so, the need to seek and tabulate plate blocks dissolved. And so goes PNCs.
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re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
yes, and no, Charlie
first, PNCs were as useful as PBs (or plate singles; PS) in that identified who printed it and on what plate. PNCs were often printed on mutliple plates by multiple printers, and one could follow them by virtue of their numbers. I always keep a PS WF intact, as it's the easiest way to ID what stamp it truly is; so too with PNCs, when other differences are minute. And, for guys who just like collecting numbers, well, there you go.
The nail occurred when USPS changed what PNCs meant: they would no longer identify the plate, in fact, they pretty much didn't identify any thing at all, although USPS said it might change a number when it changed PAPER, of all things. If all PNCs are now 11111, what's the point.
it wasn't the meaninglessness of plates, it was the absence of any corerlation between a number and its production.
David
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09:53:17pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
"cdj1122
I have been warning new stampers for years that fancy FDCs have become little more than contrived souvenirs often having but a tenuous connection with the date and place of cancellation."
To each his own, FDC's being contrived souvenirs is not correct here in Australia as far as I am concerned. Below is an example of 2015 Australian Antarctic Territory. Dare I say ART, art in the form of a photographer catching these images.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
08 Nov 2015
12:48:49pm
re: Buying and Selling MNH Below Face Value
" .... Dare I say ART, art in the form of a photographer catching these images. ..."
You certainly may, with or without agreement.
The four stamps are strikingly haunting, there is little dispute about that, nor should there be.
It is the generally misleading cancellation that, to the newbie, might imply that these particular four stamps were actually cancelled at, or near Antarctica, on or about the "First Day" they were issued.
In the past, say pre-1930 an envelope that bore such a timely cancel had a fair chance of recording or documenting the date and place of use.
Today, and in recent years, few such stamps were ever within a thousand miles of Antarctica and may well have been cancelled anywhere from a week to a month either before or after the indicated date.
As we all know, on February 4th, 2013, the painting of the wife of Francesco del Giocondo went on exhibit in New York.
Now suppose on the Friday before, I created an unaddressed cover while visiting Baltimore and affixed this stamp to it, and handing it to a friendly postal clerk who was leaving for the weekend, asked him for a cancel showing Monday's date, since Monday was likely to be either a chaotic holiday in Baltimore or a day of mourning.
The envelope has a cachet "First Day of Exhibit" and later a small hand made stamp claiming "The Ravens WON !!!"
What would be the philatelic significance of the cover ?
The beauty of the stamp image is undeniable, the events referred to did happen. But the cover was never within 200 miles of the Met, And Super Bowl 42 was held on Sunday.
Now for the sake of the illustration, suppose that two weeks later I return to the Baltimore Post Office and somehow convince the same clerk, to use the same canceller, with the same date adjusted in, to create five hundred more of my Mona Lisa "First Day of Exhibit" souvenirs to sell at a local Flea Market in Tampa, Florida, what is the significance, beyond the painting's re-created beauty?
Would they be worth any premium ?
That is what I meant when I wrote, " .... I have been warning new stampers for years that fancy FDCs have become little more than contrived souvenirs often having but a tenuous connection with the date and place of cancellation. ..."
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