What we collect!

 

Stamporama Discussion Board Logo
For People Who Love To Talk About Stamps
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Stamporama Discussion Board Logo
For People Who Love To Talk About Stamps
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Stamporama Discussion Board Logo
For People Who Love To Talk About Stamps



What we collect!
What we collect!


General Philatelic/Gen. Discussion : What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

 

Author
Postings
cougar
Members Picture


02 Nov 2018
12:45:43am

Approvals
I will start with mine. About 2 years ago I came across a bulk lot of stamps on Ebay advertised as unfranked. I was looking for recent used stamps of this country, but in the absence of them, I was ready to fill the gaps in my album with whatever came my way. So I placed a bid and was lucky to purchase the pile of about 200g off paper.

Once they arrived I discovered there were many duplicates and not only that, about 1/4 were damaged. Creased, torn, thinned and what not. Still I got about 150 good quality stamps for my collection which was already a fair deal for the price. Then, I pulled out another good lot of maybe 120 stamps for my Dad.

And then comes the interesting part. I organized what was left into lots and put two of them back on Ebay. The first one fetched about what I had paid for all the stamps plus postage. And I had about 20 more lots left!

The interest was so high that a citizen of country X gave me a phone call to see what quantity I had left and what I was willing to accept. To my total amazement, even the damaged stamps that I almost discarded on day one sold!!!

At the end of this mini-deal, I had made about $450 and I had my stamps and my Dad's stamps for free. I bought one fishing reel to have as a token of that lucky find.

I know such things happen fairly often and the bigger the deal, the bigger the advantage (or loss) can be. My estimate is that the profit to capital investment ratio in my deal was about 40:1

So what was your best, or your worst deal?
Like
Login to Like
this post
DaveSheridan
Members Picture


02 Nov 2018
12:57:12am
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Once in a lifetime? Definitely a Falklands and Gilbert & Ellice collection I bought for $5k. CV was in the vicinity of $200k. Just lucky to meet the right person at the right time.


Like
Login to Like
this post

"www.globalphilately.com"

www.globalphilately.com
Jansimon
Members Picture


02 Nov 2018
05:08:00am

Auctions - Approvals
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

About 20 years ago I bought a box filled with weird Russian material from my local stamp dealer. All kinds of civil war era stuff: Far east republic, Ukraine, Turkish and Chinese offices, Wenden, Georgia and other caucasian republics... the works. It cost me 60 guilders, which would now be around 25 euros. I thought it was quite expensive at that time (it was double the amount of what I normally spent as a maximum) but I thought what the heck, let's see if I can make a profit with this lot.
I started sorting the stamps and put it on ebay in small amounts. Ukraine trident overprints and some of the Turkish overprints and the wrangel army overprints quickly sold and I had my investment back. After that it really went wild, with a bunch of Ukraine Field Courier stamps being the best items of the lot. These sold for a few hundred dollars each. I had no idea what was happening and was also not even sure if these were real or forgeries, but the end of the story is that that year I went on holiday to Italy from the profits, bought myself an mp3 player and a bunch of other goodies.
I have returned to that stamp shop many times and bought a lot of things. Some for my own collection, some to resell. It was always worth the money, but never again like with this Russian collection. I think it must have passed the radar somehow and I was lucky.

Jan-Simon

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.

www.pagowirense.nl/stamps/
kgvistamps
Members Picture


Collecting King George VI from all countries, and King Edward VII and King George V from the West Indies.

02 Nov 2018
10:16:29am
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

I live in the Chicago area and was in John Ross's stamp store in downtown Chicago one day about 30 years ago looking at Bermuda stamps. He had a set of Bermuda King George VI Keyplates and I noticed that the 10/ looked like a first printing. I think the price was $50 for the set, so I bought it.

When I got it home and started comparing it to my other Bermuda stamps I realized that it was probably a set of first printings which included the good Pound value.

Later after I joined Bermuda High (a group of Keyplate collectors) I was able to get an opinion from Bob Dickgiesser who wrote the book on identifying these stamps. He confirmed my theory about the set. I still have the stamps.


Like
Login to Like
this post

"Learn more about King George VI stamps at www.KGVIStamps.com"

www.kgvistamps.com
Bujutsu
Members Picture


02 Nov 2018
10:36:05am
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Hi All

About 4 or 5 years ago, a member in our local club brought in a plastic tub measuring 22 inches long, 15 inches wide and 8.5 inches deep. He first offered me the stamps at 2 cents each. He said, 'take it home and just let me know what you took'. This was great. At the next meeting, I told him how many I took but admitted I lost count of how many I took exactly. He said to me, "I know what you mean, I did the same when I first got this'. He then said, "Heck, give me $150.00 total for the tub and all the stamps in it'. I jumped at the offer right away. A week later he came over to my place and said, "Larry, I don't have any room to keep this tub and was wondering if you would consider giving me just another $100.00, again for the tub and all the stamps?'. I thought it was a great deal and accepted his offer.

What I have to make a point of now is that the tubs were completely full of loose worldwide stamps (all off paper with commemoratives & definitives) barely a half inch from the top in 'each' tub. At a rough guess, I estimated at least a minimum of 60,000 stamps.

The thing that amazed me was that I was literally picking out stamps that were cataloging $10.00 to $50.00 apiece. (About 10 or 12 stamps were close to the $100.00 mark!!) There were 1000s cataloging $3.00 to $5.00 each, about 4000 from $6.00 to $50.00 each. Not counting cheap stamps, and only the better stamps, there was about $8-9000.00 catalog value at least. A lot of the stamps were British colonies, West Germany , German Soviet forerunners and Western European countries. I found several 100 hundred perfins as well. To make this story short, this was all for a total of $250.00 and the member I bought it from said he just didn't have the time to do the sorting.

This collection / accumulation gave me many days of sorting and categorizing, which is something I really enjoy.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Like
Login to Like
this post
BenFranklin1902
Members Picture


Tom in Exton, PA

02 Nov 2018
07:42:33pm

Approvals
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

So I bought the old desk for $50 and it had a stuck drawer. I got it home and worked it open and found a complete set of US Zeppelin stamps... full mint sheets of them! Laughing

Okay back to reality.. I'd have to say a box of covers I bought on eBay. It was more of an antique / memorabilia dealer and the description was kind of vague. Bad photos. So I bid the $100 plus $20 postage. I was shocked when it arrived! The box was much bigger than I thought. It was a window air conditioner box. It was stuffed and coming apart. Full of old US covers. Nothing after the 1960s.

It looked like a box a dealer had under his desk and he'd toss cheap covers into. I found all kinds of interesting cancels and usage. I probably have 50 NJ cancel covers in my collection from that lot.

I started to put them on eBay.. 100 mixed old covers starting at $9.99 and I even threw in 10% more to account for bad covers! That lot sold every week. Even bid up to $20-25! Nobody ever complained. I probably made $1000 from that box. And I still have maybe 5 envelope boxes full of covers!

Like
Login to Like
this post
AntoniusRa
Members Picture


The truth is within and only you can reveal it

02 Nov 2018
07:50:19pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

I've gotten so many great deals over the years that it makes it hard to remember. When it comes down to cost vs selling price it would probably have to be the error sheet below.
I saw it in the stamp window at my local post office and noticed it had a printing error.
I paid the $6.60 face value for it and brought it home to research. I soon found out it was called a reppelex error where a portion of the plate had received a drop of water that spread out into an oval when the plate came down upon it washing out the ink over that portion of the sheet. You can see the error covering portions of the three bottom Purple stamps.
Any way I sent the stamp into Linns and they featured on the cover of their next issue.
At the time that issue of Linns was hot off the press I ran it on Ebay and it sold for $1,200 giving me a profit of nearly 200 times my investment.
I've always thought it was very cool that out of all my stamp purchases the best deal I made was from the post office. Kind helps to make up for some of the people who thought they were making a good investment buying stamps from the P.O. that would only decrease in value.

Image Not Found

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.

mitch.seymourfamily.com/mward/collection/mapindex.html
ernieinjax
Members Picture


02 Nov 2018
08:12:51pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Mitch. Great story. You're a regular "William T. Robey" my favorite story so far. Makes me wanna pony up for a "mystery lot".

Like
Login to Like
this post
StampCollector
Members Picture


03 Nov 2018
12:41:42pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

My wife and my daughter brought me a shoebox full of stamps they found on a garage sale, I asked them how much did they pay, $15.00 my wife said. I started sorting and counting, stoped when I saw several stamps on the $10.00 to $15.00 CV range and up to 5 stamps per penny, I told myself this was not good but a great purchase. Like the good old days those days are gone!

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

www.webstore.com/~stampcollector1
dollhaus

03 Nov 2018
01:55:54pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Many years ago, I went to a local estate auction. The owner had been a pretty serious woodworker, and all the tools were up for auction - that's what caused me to go. There were tables set up with all the small stuff, so I browsed through those. There was a shoebox about half full of stamps - mostly current US on paper, with some European, mainly Spain, heavy on air mails. I did not collect US, but did collect Spain, and I noticed two or three I thought I needed in the batch.

When the box came up for sale, the auctioneer had some outlandish starting price. No bids, so he kept dropping the price till he got to $1.00, so I stuck up my bidding card - and there were no more bids. The rest of the auction was a bust. When the tools came up, there was a bidding frenzy that shot past my budget, so the box was my only purchase.

Took it home, where it sat around on a shelf for weeks. Finally got around to it. Found three or four Spanish I could use, so not too bad a buy. When I got to the bottom, there lay a glassine envelope. Inside were MNH imperf blocks of four of the entire National Parks series.

I still have those. I had actually forgotten this until StampCollector posted about a shoebox of stamps.




Like
Login to Like
this post
51Studebaker
Members Picture


Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't

03 Nov 2018
01:58:44pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

"The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses. - FRANCIS BACON"


Here comes Negative Nancy again...Big Grin

Once in a lifetime finds, great stuff as long as new hobbyists do not read too much into this thread. Finding a ‘treasure’ is wonderful and certainly fuels our motivation as collectors. But we should be clear that these kinds of things typically happen only after countless purchases, much investment in catalogs and other resources, and years of experience in our philatelic education.

We need to add this context because non-collectors or new collectors will read threads like this and then assume that they too have rare stamps. Just this morning we had a new SCF forum member post 10-15 threads about the ‘rare’ stamps he had complete with eBay listings which mis-identified all of them as rare stamp (and price to match). This happens every week and many of us work hard to trying to reset the proper expectations and turn them into hobbyists for years to come.

This is a great thread, but new collectors should not work under the assumption that they have rare stamps. This is like assuming that if you have a lot of lottery tickets several of them big winners. The odds are overwhelming not in your favor. Stamp collecting is a fantastic hobby for attributes that have little to do with good deals or $$$. Happy
Don

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

"Current Score... Don 1 - Cancer 0"

stampsmarter.org
larsdog
Members Picture


APS #220693 ATA#57179

04 Nov 2018
12:06:18am
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Don makes a good point. My best deal was when there was a seller offering two different U.S. 2nd Bureau 5c imperf stamps (Scott 315 CV $325 MH). The one with slightly bigger margins had a BUY-IT-NOW for $190 and the other one started out at 99c. I had been watching stamps like this sell for around $225 and I was ready to buy, so I took the BUY-IT-NOW deal. I was confident that it was legit because the margins were so big, and I wasn't disappointed when the cert came back genuine.

I followed the stamp with the 99c start out of curiousity, and the day it closed it was only going for about $50, but a last minute flurry hit and when the dust settled, it went for around $225. So I got one a bit better for $35 less. Patience and research paid off!

Lars

Like
Login to Like
this post

"Expanding your knowledge faster than your collection can save you a few bucks."

www.larsdog.com/stamps
malcolm197

04 Nov 2018
06:44:32am
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Mega profit buys are rare.

However in the days when I bought stamps regularly, I often bought "mixed lots" of stamps ( but not big expensive several thousand items ), and I have to say that I was never disappointed - I always came out ahead ( but not by thousands ). It was not rare to have at least 50x catalogue of the "new to me" stamps, ignoring the value of the duplicates that I was able to trade on for something else for the cost of postage, and also the rubbish.

I have scored by taking the time to check every single stamp and postmark against those in my collection, something that most sellers of this material cannot afford, or cannot be bothered to do. Even some ( but not all ) kiloware usually has the odd "find" especially in the postmark field.

I can only remember one ( or perhaps two) that have been a complete waste of time and money.

As I see it the decline in collector numbers means that some of this potentially interesting material gets "binned" rather than recirculated, or is ridiculously overvalued by the unrealistic !

Another thing to note is that many "minimum catalogue value" stamps ( other than normal letter rate) are extremely scarce, and only experience or the jungle telegraph will tell you which ones they are. These sometimes turn up in mixtures, and if those who advertise on e-bay were to take the trouble to illustrate them, some of their realisations might be much higher. Everyone knows which of their own specialist area's stamps fall into this category, but there is general ignorance outside their own speciality.

Malcolm

Like
Login to Like
this post
angore
Members Picture


Collector, Moderator

04 Nov 2018
06:51:58am
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

I do not really think about it as I do not really sell stamps so not consideration for thinking about return of investment. I am more a sightseer. I do not approach buying as looking for some steel to brag about. When someone is discussing stamps and only talk about the deals they got or the one that got away (common around dealer tables), I tune out.

Like
Login to Like
this post

"Stamp Collecting is a many splendored thing"
jbaxter5256
Members Picture


04 Nov 2018
12:41:34pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

My best stamp purchase was a stamp album at a stamp show at Ft. Walton Beach, FL in 1975 after graduating from college which restarted my stamp collecting activities with which I have continued ever since. I still have a USA Scott #12 which was in the album. The stamp has a small cut into the right side about 1mm long but is otherwise in great shape. Most of the attraction of the album initially was an incomplete range of mint stamps from the 1930's through 1950's with some individual items in the early part of the album through the Washington/Franklin's.

Second best was a Canada Scott Hingeless album purchased in 2014 (I think) at a stamp show in Kent, WA while bringing my son to a stamp collecting workshop for the Boy Scout merit badge which reignited my interest in stamp collecting as suddenly there were low cost stamps to pursue which fit in better with my budget while working on college tuitions for my daughters and now my son who did complete the merit badge as well as earned his Eagle rank.

My most recent best purchase was a package of archival quality paper and a free download of the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country print it yourself album which has started an active search for a wide variety of both modern and old stamps encompassing the world. Looking up background information on the stamp issuing countries and entities involved has definitely broadened my world.

Like
Login to Like
this post
Dakota
Members Picture


04 Nov 2018
03:13:45pm

Auctions
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

My brother used to go to a lot of area auctions and rummage sales. If he located any stamps, he would pick them up. A few years ago, he knocked on my door and said he had some stamps that he paid $25.00 for. He then brought in 6 Banker's Boxes and a couple of smaller totes. I have been sorting and selling this yet. One box was full of mint New Zealand and Australia. There were also a few packs of Dennison hinges.

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

www.hipstamp.com/store/dakota-stamps
51Studebaker
Members Picture


Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't

04 Nov 2018
03:42:09pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

"...There were also a few packs of Dennison hinges."


Score of the thread for sure! Happy
Don

Like
Login to Like
this post

"Current Score... Don 1 - Cancer 0"

stampsmarter.org
Brechinite
Members Picture


Neddie Seagoon from The Telegoons

04 Nov 2018
06:46:04pm

Auctions - Approvals
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Yeah! Sometimes it is not the stamps that are the "best " items in the box.
My best "deal" was finding a CD with ALL the Steiner pages on it up to 2005!!

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

"StayAlert.......Control The Virus.......Save Lives."
cdj1122
Members Picture


Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..

07 Nov 2018
12:17:28pm
re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

" ....best stamp purchase deal ever....."

Since I seldom sell stamps, there are few "best deals"
in monetary terms. But when I returned to being active
in the hobby, I did have an interesting and somewhat
convoluted series of transactions that was quite rewarding.
The first part is when I visited Nassau Street and
roamed up and down the halls looking into the cubbyhole
offices on the different floors. At some, the occupant
was obviously busy with a client, others were deeply
immersed in a phone call or some philatelic chore, and
did not seem to like being interrupted by a mid-twenties,
probably newbie.
Eventually, I stopped in one on an upper floor and chatted
with the dealer telling him I was looking for something
to take with me to work on during my next voyage. He was
a bit older, slightly balding and he sat behind a large
wooden desk. He seemed friendly so I sat on an ancient
looking ladder back wood chair.
The room was certainly not fancy and there were items
scattered all around on cabinets, in piles, stuffed into
shelving, and all over his desk so that he only had a
central portion to use to work on. I remember seeing
some black and white pictures on the wall, one of a young
sailor in his winter blues. So we actually started talking
about ships and military service.
A bright intensely white lighted lamp was on his desk,
I suppose to overcome the otherwise minimal overhead lights
in the ceiling. I think the room was once a part of a larger
office partitioned off, as I do not recall any window, which
would probably be required by city standards. The dealer
looked up, sort of thinking about; probably the money in his
pocket today, I am almost sure it was a Friday afternoon,
versus a bit more in some future month.

He pointed to a small three drawer metal filing cabinet by the
doorway. The middle drawer was somewhat ajar, overstuffed with
some pudgy manila envelopes and filled with small boxes and
bundled envelopes of what probably was his junk drawer, "You
can have everything in that drawer for $50."

I looked and was impressed with the sheer volume and variety of
the different things.
He came from behind the desk, "Here you can have all this as
well"
adding some additional envelopes and partial collections
stapled into manilla folders, then offering a Macy's shopping bag
to put things in. As soon as I began touching things the magic
began, something I later learned when I sold Automotive Analysers
to repair shops. As soon as the customer starts touching things,
shut up, as he is mentally buying the product.
A second shopping bag (Gimbals, perhaps.) appeared from somewhere
and I continued stuffing glassine envelopes in to the bottom, the
third was a large grocery bag that lacked handles. I think there
was also a cardboard shoebox we dumped in.
I was thrilled and overwhelmed. I paid cash and we shook hands,
completely forgetting to note his name. A year or so later, I
could not find his office and I began to think that he may have
been closing down his little shop and preparing to dispose of
things he never sold.
Now today $50 may not seem like much, but in 1965 or '66 that was
about half my father's weekly salary. I was sailing on MSTS vessels
regularly between New York and Bremerhaven with occasional stops in
Southampton, and making a very decent salary as Chief Quartermaster.
I gathered up the paper bag in one arm, gripped a string tied shoebox
under that arm and took the two shopping bags by the handles,
setting off for Penn Station where, if I caught the 5:35, I would
likely meet one of two cousins or my uncle who were regular LIRR
riders on their way home from city jobs.
To say that I enjoyed sorting through the trove once at home would be
an understatement and there were some parts that I did not get to
looking at in detail for several years.
The second part of the story is some fifteen years later when I was
the company sales and tech representative covering a part of Fairfield
County, Connecticut. Just on the outskirts of Danbury there was a stamp
shop that I visited several times a month if not to buy anything, as his
stock was thin, to at least sit, and chat, sipping his hot coffee while
we devoured the fresh bagels I always brought along.
He ran a small weekly (or bi-weekly) auction of his lots supplemented
by his customers entries, the latter was where the goodies were to be
found.
Often digging back into that lot from Nassau Street I entered quite a
few interesting lots each week myself and used my credit from sales to
sweep up some nice stamps that were offered by local members of his stamp
club. After all, it was not real money to me, since whatever I entered
was from that giant $50 lot I had bought, almost twenty years earlier.
One afternoon I overheard a conversation between the dealer (Mike ???)
and a customer who was looking to cash out the lots he had placed in a
previous auction and that had been sold. The selling price should have
been collected that night at the end the auction, or the end of the week.
I can't recall the exact words but the dealer looked worried and seemed
to be ducking that customer, putting him off with an excuse about a buyer
not paying yet. I immediately recalled that rather than greeting me
happily when I entered the shop with the bag of bagels, he glanced downward
as if he did not want to make eye contact. I was owed several hundred
dollars from the lots I had put in the auction. If all was well, when
the winner paid that money it should have been there to pay me, less
the dealer's commission, of course.
Over the years, I had run my own business and often used the tax account
to pay some immediate payment due and replaced the tax account by the time
it was due, so I knew that "Robbing Peter to pay Paul " look. I sat down
and did not say a thing about the money he owed me. A phone call and a quiet conversation away from where I could easily hear it sealed the deal for
me, he was putting someone else off.
So casually, I looked at the new lots being offered for the next week's
auction and slid over to some decent inventory he had been selling. One
at a time, I made a pile of things without even haggling and found enough
quality items to offset what was owed to me, no cash needed.
I hate the look of someone cornered and felt better as he actually seemed
relieved. But to make up the total I took some things that were mint, NH,
and I have always preferred postally used when available.
One envelope was stuffed with MNH German stamps, not the worthless Hitlers
but the commemoratives and such.
Well, we parted friends and the next week the shop was closed. I passed
it by several times over a few months, but it never re-opened, another
victim to both the mild recession and a bucket of mismanagement.
Some time later, perhaps a year or so I noticed that there were quite a
few of the German "Cologne Cathedral" series including the high values
(#s 58-61) on several 102 cards, which at the time were cataloged over
$100 each. As near as I could tell then, some were of each type, T I
and T II and there were notes about some with inverted watermarks.
I sent four off to Apfelbaum in Philadelphia and they agreed to put
them in their auction. It took several months, as they said they had
them expertized, when I received a check for almost $700.oo after
commission. I later sent off a few more which all sold for different
amounts between $100 and $250 and there were a few Danzig overprints
that I sent to Germany for auction, one of which I remember had the
burlage doubled, points up and points down. All told, I netted close
to $3,000 for the stamps that I got as payment for some others that
were in a large lot, purchased for $50.oo. And the best part is I
still have several file drawers filled with stamps from that original
purchase at 14 Nassau Street, left to sell again if ever the need
arises.

If ever there was a serendipitous series of events, to me, this was it.

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.

".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
        

 

Author/Postings
Members Picture
cougar

02 Nov 2018
12:45:43am

Approvals

I will start with mine. About 2 years ago I came across a bulk lot of stamps on Ebay advertised as unfranked. I was looking for recent used stamps of this country, but in the absence of them, I was ready to fill the gaps in my album with whatever came my way. So I placed a bid and was lucky to purchase the pile of about 200g off paper.

Once they arrived I discovered there were many duplicates and not only that, about 1/4 were damaged. Creased, torn, thinned and what not. Still I got about 150 good quality stamps for my collection which was already a fair deal for the price. Then, I pulled out another good lot of maybe 120 stamps for my Dad.

And then comes the interesting part. I organized what was left into lots and put two of them back on Ebay. The first one fetched about what I had paid for all the stamps plus postage. And I had about 20 more lots left!

The interest was so high that a citizen of country X gave me a phone call to see what quantity I had left and what I was willing to accept. To my total amazement, even the damaged stamps that I almost discarded on day one sold!!!

At the end of this mini-deal, I had made about $450 and I had my stamps and my Dad's stamps for free. I bought one fishing reel to have as a token of that lucky find.

I know such things happen fairly often and the bigger the deal, the bigger the advantage (or loss) can be. My estimate is that the profit to capital investment ratio in my deal was about 40:1

So what was your best, or your worst deal?

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
DaveSheridan

02 Nov 2018
12:57:12am

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Once in a lifetime? Definitely a Falklands and Gilbert & Ellice collection I bought for $5k. CV was in the vicinity of $200k. Just lucky to meet the right person at the right time.


Like
Login to Like
this post

"www.globalphilately.com"

www.globalphilately. ...
Members Picture
Jansimon

02 Nov 2018
05:08:00am

Auctions - Approvals

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

About 20 years ago I bought a box filled with weird Russian material from my local stamp dealer. All kinds of civil war era stuff: Far east republic, Ukraine, Turkish and Chinese offices, Wenden, Georgia and other caucasian republics... the works. It cost me 60 guilders, which would now be around 25 euros. I thought it was quite expensive at that time (it was double the amount of what I normally spent as a maximum) but I thought what the heck, let's see if I can make a profit with this lot.
I started sorting the stamps and put it on ebay in small amounts. Ukraine trident overprints and some of the Turkish overprints and the wrangel army overprints quickly sold and I had my investment back. After that it really went wild, with a bunch of Ukraine Field Courier stamps being the best items of the lot. These sold for a few hundred dollars each. I had no idea what was happening and was also not even sure if these were real or forgeries, but the end of the story is that that year I went on holiday to Italy from the profits, bought myself an mp3 player and a bunch of other goodies.
I have returned to that stamp shop many times and bought a lot of things. Some for my own collection, some to resell. It was always worth the money, but never again like with this Russian collection. I think it must have passed the radar somehow and I was lucky.

Jan-Simon

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.

www.pagowirense.nl/s ...

Collecting King George VI from all countries, and King Edward VII and King George V from the West Indies.
02 Nov 2018
10:16:29am

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

I live in the Chicago area and was in John Ross's stamp store in downtown Chicago one day about 30 years ago looking at Bermuda stamps. He had a set of Bermuda King George VI Keyplates and I noticed that the 10/ looked like a first printing. I think the price was $50 for the set, so I bought it.

When I got it home and started comparing it to my other Bermuda stamps I realized that it was probably a set of first printings which included the good Pound value.

Later after I joined Bermuda High (a group of Keyplate collectors) I was able to get an opinion from Bob Dickgiesser who wrote the book on identifying these stamps. He confirmed my theory about the set. I still have the stamps.


Like
Login to Like
this post

"Learn more about King George VI stamps at www.KGVIStamps.com"

www.kgvistamps.com
Members Picture
Bujutsu

02 Nov 2018
10:36:05am

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Hi All

About 4 or 5 years ago, a member in our local club brought in a plastic tub measuring 22 inches long, 15 inches wide and 8.5 inches deep. He first offered me the stamps at 2 cents each. He said, 'take it home and just let me know what you took'. This was great. At the next meeting, I told him how many I took but admitted I lost count of how many I took exactly. He said to me, "I know what you mean, I did the same when I first got this'. He then said, "Heck, give me $150.00 total for the tub and all the stamps in it'. I jumped at the offer right away. A week later he came over to my place and said, "Larry, I don't have any room to keep this tub and was wondering if you would consider giving me just another $100.00, again for the tub and all the stamps?'. I thought it was a great deal and accepted his offer.

What I have to make a point of now is that the tubs were completely full of loose worldwide stamps (all off paper with commemoratives & definitives) barely a half inch from the top in 'each' tub. At a rough guess, I estimated at least a minimum of 60,000 stamps.

The thing that amazed me was that I was literally picking out stamps that were cataloging $10.00 to $50.00 apiece. (About 10 or 12 stamps were close to the $100.00 mark!!) There were 1000s cataloging $3.00 to $5.00 each, about 4000 from $6.00 to $50.00 each. Not counting cheap stamps, and only the better stamps, there was about $8-9000.00 catalog value at least. A lot of the stamps were British colonies, West Germany , German Soviet forerunners and Western European countries. I found several 100 hundred perfins as well. To make this story short, this was all for a total of $250.00 and the member I bought it from said he just didn't have the time to do the sorting.

This collection / accumulation gave me many days of sorting and categorizing, which is something I really enjoy.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
BenFranklin1902

Tom in Exton, PA
02 Nov 2018
07:42:33pm

Approvals

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

So I bought the old desk for $50 and it had a stuck drawer. I got it home and worked it open and found a complete set of US Zeppelin stamps... full mint sheets of them! Laughing

Okay back to reality.. I'd have to say a box of covers I bought on eBay. It was more of an antique / memorabilia dealer and the description was kind of vague. Bad photos. So I bid the $100 plus $20 postage. I was shocked when it arrived! The box was much bigger than I thought. It was a window air conditioner box. It was stuffed and coming apart. Full of old US covers. Nothing after the 1960s.

It looked like a box a dealer had under his desk and he'd toss cheap covers into. I found all kinds of interesting cancels and usage. I probably have 50 NJ cancel covers in my collection from that lot.

I started to put them on eBay.. 100 mixed old covers starting at $9.99 and I even threw in 10% more to account for bad covers! That lot sold every week. Even bid up to $20-25! Nobody ever complained. I probably made $1000 from that box. And I still have maybe 5 envelope boxes full of covers!

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
AntoniusRa

The truth is within and only you can reveal it
02 Nov 2018
07:50:19pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

I've gotten so many great deals over the years that it makes it hard to remember. When it comes down to cost vs selling price it would probably have to be the error sheet below.
I saw it in the stamp window at my local post office and noticed it had a printing error.
I paid the $6.60 face value for it and brought it home to research. I soon found out it was called a reppelex error where a portion of the plate had received a drop of water that spread out into an oval when the plate came down upon it washing out the ink over that portion of the sheet. You can see the error covering portions of the three bottom Purple stamps.
Any way I sent the stamp into Linns and they featured on the cover of their next issue.
At the time that issue of Linns was hot off the press I ran it on Ebay and it sold for $1,200 giving me a profit of nearly 200 times my investment.
I've always thought it was very cool that out of all my stamp purchases the best deal I made was from the post office. Kind helps to make up for some of the people who thought they were making a good investment buying stamps from the P.O. that would only decrease in value.

Image Not Found

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.

mitch.seymourfamily. ...
Members Picture
ernieinjax

02 Nov 2018
08:12:51pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Mitch. Great story. You're a regular "William T. Robey" my favorite story so far. Makes me wanna pony up for a "mystery lot".

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
StampCollector

03 Nov 2018
12:41:42pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

My wife and my daughter brought me a shoebox full of stamps they found on a garage sale, I asked them how much did they pay, $15.00 my wife said. I started sorting and counting, stoped when I saw several stamps on the $10.00 to $15.00 CV range and up to 5 stamps per penny, I told myself this was not good but a great purchase. Like the good old days those days are gone!

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

www.webstore.com/~st ...
dollhaus

03 Nov 2018
01:55:54pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Many years ago, I went to a local estate auction. The owner had been a pretty serious woodworker, and all the tools were up for auction - that's what caused me to go. There were tables set up with all the small stuff, so I browsed through those. There was a shoebox about half full of stamps - mostly current US on paper, with some European, mainly Spain, heavy on air mails. I did not collect US, but did collect Spain, and I noticed two or three I thought I needed in the batch.

When the box came up for sale, the auctioneer had some outlandish starting price. No bids, so he kept dropping the price till he got to $1.00, so I stuck up my bidding card - and there were no more bids. The rest of the auction was a bust. When the tools came up, there was a bidding frenzy that shot past my budget, so the box was my only purchase.

Took it home, where it sat around on a shelf for weeks. Finally got around to it. Found three or four Spanish I could use, so not too bad a buy. When I got to the bottom, there lay a glassine envelope. Inside were MNH imperf blocks of four of the entire National Parks series.

I still have those. I had actually forgotten this until StampCollector posted about a shoebox of stamps.




Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
51Studebaker

Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't
03 Nov 2018
01:58:44pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

"The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses. - FRANCIS BACON"


Here comes Negative Nancy again...Big Grin

Once in a lifetime finds, great stuff as long as new hobbyists do not read too much into this thread. Finding a ‘treasure’ is wonderful and certainly fuels our motivation as collectors. But we should be clear that these kinds of things typically happen only after countless purchases, much investment in catalogs and other resources, and years of experience in our philatelic education.

We need to add this context because non-collectors or new collectors will read threads like this and then assume that they too have rare stamps. Just this morning we had a new SCF forum member post 10-15 threads about the ‘rare’ stamps he had complete with eBay listings which mis-identified all of them as rare stamp (and price to match). This happens every week and many of us work hard to trying to reset the proper expectations and turn them into hobbyists for years to come.

This is a great thread, but new collectors should not work under the assumption that they have rare stamps. This is like assuming that if you have a lot of lottery tickets several of them big winners. The odds are overwhelming not in your favor. Stamp collecting is a fantastic hobby for attributes that have little to do with good deals or $$$. Happy
Don

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

"Current Score... Don 1 - Cancer 0"

stampsmarter.org
Members Picture
larsdog

APS #220693 ATA#57179
04 Nov 2018
12:06:18am

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Don makes a good point. My best deal was when there was a seller offering two different U.S. 2nd Bureau 5c imperf stamps (Scott 315 CV $325 MH). The one with slightly bigger margins had a BUY-IT-NOW for $190 and the other one started out at 99c. I had been watching stamps like this sell for around $225 and I was ready to buy, so I took the BUY-IT-NOW deal. I was confident that it was legit because the margins were so big, and I wasn't disappointed when the cert came back genuine.

I followed the stamp with the 99c start out of curiousity, and the day it closed it was only going for about $50, but a last minute flurry hit and when the dust settled, it went for around $225. So I got one a bit better for $35 less. Patience and research paid off!

Lars

Like
Login to Like
this post

"Expanding your knowledge faster than your collection can save you a few bucks."

www.larsdog.com/stam ...
malcolm197

04 Nov 2018
06:44:32am

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Mega profit buys are rare.

However in the days when I bought stamps regularly, I often bought "mixed lots" of stamps ( but not big expensive several thousand items ), and I have to say that I was never disappointed - I always came out ahead ( but not by thousands ). It was not rare to have at least 50x catalogue of the "new to me" stamps, ignoring the value of the duplicates that I was able to trade on for something else for the cost of postage, and also the rubbish.

I have scored by taking the time to check every single stamp and postmark against those in my collection, something that most sellers of this material cannot afford, or cannot be bothered to do. Even some ( but not all ) kiloware usually has the odd "find" especially in the postmark field.

I can only remember one ( or perhaps two) that have been a complete waste of time and money.

As I see it the decline in collector numbers means that some of this potentially interesting material gets "binned" rather than recirculated, or is ridiculously overvalued by the unrealistic !

Another thing to note is that many "minimum catalogue value" stamps ( other than normal letter rate) are extremely scarce, and only experience or the jungle telegraph will tell you which ones they are. These sometimes turn up in mixtures, and if those who advertise on e-bay were to take the trouble to illustrate them, some of their realisations might be much higher. Everyone knows which of their own specialist area's stamps fall into this category, but there is general ignorance outside their own speciality.

Malcolm

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
angore

Collector, Moderator
04 Nov 2018
06:51:58am

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

I do not really think about it as I do not really sell stamps so not consideration for thinking about return of investment. I am more a sightseer. I do not approach buying as looking for some steel to brag about. When someone is discussing stamps and only talk about the deals they got or the one that got away (common around dealer tables), I tune out.

Like
Login to Like
this post

"Stamp Collecting is a many splendored thing"
Members Picture
jbaxter5256

04 Nov 2018
12:41:34pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

My best stamp purchase was a stamp album at a stamp show at Ft. Walton Beach, FL in 1975 after graduating from college which restarted my stamp collecting activities with which I have continued ever since. I still have a USA Scott #12 which was in the album. The stamp has a small cut into the right side about 1mm long but is otherwise in great shape. Most of the attraction of the album initially was an incomplete range of mint stamps from the 1930's through 1950's with some individual items in the early part of the album through the Washington/Franklin's.

Second best was a Canada Scott Hingeless album purchased in 2014 (I think) at a stamp show in Kent, WA while bringing my son to a stamp collecting workshop for the Boy Scout merit badge which reignited my interest in stamp collecting as suddenly there were low cost stamps to pursue which fit in better with my budget while working on college tuitions for my daughters and now my son who did complete the merit badge as well as earned his Eagle rank.

My most recent best purchase was a package of archival quality paper and a free download of the Smithsonian Stamp for Every Country print it yourself album which has started an active search for a wide variety of both modern and old stamps encompassing the world. Looking up background information on the stamp issuing countries and entities involved has definitely broadened my world.

Like
Login to Like
this post
Members Picture
Dakota

04 Nov 2018
03:13:45pm

Auctions

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

My brother used to go to a lot of area auctions and rummage sales. If he located any stamps, he would pick them up. A few years ago, he knocked on my door and said he had some stamps that he paid $25.00 for. He then brought in 6 Banker's Boxes and a couple of smaller totes. I have been sorting and selling this yet. One box was full of mint New Zealand and Australia. There were also a few packs of Dennison hinges.

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

www.hipstamp.com/sto ...
Members Picture
51Studebaker

Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't
04 Nov 2018
03:42:09pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

"...There were also a few packs of Dennison hinges."


Score of the thread for sure! Happy
Don

Like
Login to Like
this post

"Current Score... Don 1 - Cancer 0"

stampsmarter.org
Members Picture
Brechinite

Neddie Seagoon from The Telegoons
04 Nov 2018
06:46:04pm

Auctions - Approvals

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

Yeah! Sometimes it is not the stamps that are the "best " items in the box.
My best "deal" was finding a CD with ALL the Steiner pages on it up to 2005!!

Like 
1 Member
likes this post.
Login to Like.

"StayAlert.......Control The Virus.......Save Lives."

Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
07 Nov 2018
12:17:28pm

re: What was your best stamp purchase deal ever?

" ....best stamp purchase deal ever....."

Since I seldom sell stamps, there are few "best deals"
in monetary terms. But when I returned to being active
in the hobby, I did have an interesting and somewhat
convoluted series of transactions that was quite rewarding.
The first part is when I visited Nassau Street and
roamed up and down the halls looking into the cubbyhole
offices on the different floors. At some, the occupant
was obviously busy with a client, others were deeply
immersed in a phone call or some philatelic chore, and
did not seem to like being interrupted by a mid-twenties,
probably newbie.
Eventually, I stopped in one on an upper floor and chatted
with the dealer telling him I was looking for something
to take with me to work on during my next voyage. He was
a bit older, slightly balding and he sat behind a large
wooden desk. He seemed friendly so I sat on an ancient
looking ladder back wood chair.
The room was certainly not fancy and there were items
scattered all around on cabinets, in piles, stuffed into
shelving, and all over his desk so that he only had a
central portion to use to work on. I remember seeing
some black and white pictures on the wall, one of a young
sailor in his winter blues. So we actually started talking
about ships and military service.
A bright intensely white lighted lamp was on his desk,
I suppose to overcome the otherwise minimal overhead lights
in the ceiling. I think the room was once a part of a larger
office partitioned off, as I do not recall any window, which
would probably be required by city standards. The dealer
looked up, sort of thinking about; probably the money in his
pocket today, I am almost sure it was a Friday afternoon,
versus a bit more in some future month.

He pointed to a small three drawer metal filing cabinet by the
doorway. The middle drawer was somewhat ajar, overstuffed with
some pudgy manila envelopes and filled with small boxes and
bundled envelopes of what probably was his junk drawer, "You
can have everything in that drawer for $50."

I looked and was impressed with the sheer volume and variety of
the different things.
He came from behind the desk, "Here you can have all this as
well"
adding some additional envelopes and partial collections
stapled into manilla folders, then offering a Macy's shopping bag
to put things in. As soon as I began touching things the magic
began, something I later learned when I sold Automotive Analysers
to repair shops. As soon as the customer starts touching things,
shut up, as he is mentally buying the product.
A second shopping bag (Gimbals, perhaps.) appeared from somewhere
and I continued stuffing glassine envelopes in to the bottom, the
third was a large grocery bag that lacked handles. I think there
was also a cardboard shoebox we dumped in.
I was thrilled and overwhelmed. I paid cash and we shook hands,
completely forgetting to note his name. A year or so later, I
could not find his office and I began to think that he may have
been closing down his little shop and preparing to dispose of
things he never sold.
Now today $50 may not seem like much, but in 1965 or '66 that was
about half my father's weekly salary. I was sailing on MSTS vessels
regularly between New York and Bremerhaven with occasional stops in
Southampton, and making a very decent salary as Chief Quartermaster.
I gathered up the paper bag in one arm, gripped a string tied shoebox
under that arm and took the two shopping bags by the handles,
setting off for Penn Station where, if I caught the 5:35, I would
likely meet one of two cousins or my uncle who were regular LIRR
riders on their way home from city jobs.
To say that I enjoyed sorting through the trove once at home would be
an understatement and there were some parts that I did not get to
looking at in detail for several years.
The second part of the story is some fifteen years later when I was
the company sales and tech representative covering a part of Fairfield
County, Connecticut. Just on the outskirts of Danbury there was a stamp
shop that I visited several times a month if not to buy anything, as his
stock was thin, to at least sit, and chat, sipping his hot coffee while
we devoured the fresh bagels I always brought along.
He ran a small weekly (or bi-weekly) auction of his lots supplemented
by his customers entries, the latter was where the goodies were to be
found.
Often digging back into that lot from Nassau Street I entered quite a
few interesting lots each week myself and used my credit from sales to
sweep up some nice stamps that were offered by local members of his stamp
club. After all, it was not real money to me, since whatever I entered
was from that giant $50 lot I had bought, almost twenty years earlier.
One afternoon I overheard a conversation between the dealer (Mike ???)
and a customer who was looking to cash out the lots he had placed in a
previous auction and that had been sold. The selling price should have
been collected that night at the end the auction, or the end of the week.
I can't recall the exact words but the dealer looked worried and seemed
to be ducking that customer, putting him off with an excuse about a buyer
not paying yet. I immediately recalled that rather than greeting me
happily when I entered the shop with the bag of bagels, he glanced downward
as if he did not want to make eye contact. I was owed several hundred
dollars from the lots I had put in the auction. If all was well, when
the winner paid that money it should have been there to pay me, less
the dealer's commission, of course.
Over the years, I had run my own business and often used the tax account
to pay some immediate payment due and replaced the tax account by the time
it was due, so I knew that "Robbing Peter to pay Paul " look. I sat down
and did not say a thing about the money he owed me. A phone call and a quiet conversation away from where I could easily hear it sealed the deal for
me, he was putting someone else off.
So casually, I looked at the new lots being offered for the next week's
auction and slid over to some decent inventory he had been selling. One
at a time, I made a pile of things without even haggling and found enough
quality items to offset what was owed to me, no cash needed.
I hate the look of someone cornered and felt better as he actually seemed
relieved. But to make up the total I took some things that were mint, NH,
and I have always preferred postally used when available.
One envelope was stuffed with MNH German stamps, not the worthless Hitlers
but the commemoratives and such.
Well, we parted friends and the next week the shop was closed. I passed
it by several times over a few months, but it never re-opened, another
victim to both the mild recession and a bucket of mismanagement.
Some time later, perhaps a year or so I noticed that there were quite a
few of the German "Cologne Cathedral" series including the high values
(#s 58-61) on several 102 cards, which at the time were cataloged over
$100 each. As near as I could tell then, some were of each type, T I
and T II and there were notes about some with inverted watermarks.
I sent four off to Apfelbaum in Philadelphia and they agreed to put
them in their auction. It took several months, as they said they had
them expertized, when I received a check for almost $700.oo after
commission. I later sent off a few more which all sold for different
amounts between $100 and $250 and there were a few Danzig overprints
that I sent to Germany for auction, one of which I remember had the
burlage doubled, points up and points down. All told, I netted close
to $3,000 for the stamps that I got as payment for some others that
were in a large lot, purchased for $50.oo. And the best part is I
still have several file drawers filled with stamps from that original
purchase at 14 Nassau Street, left to sell again if ever the need
arises.

If ever there was a serendipitous series of events, to me, this was it.

Like 
2 Members
like this post.
Login to Like.

".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
        

Contact Webmaster | Visitors Online | Unsubscribe Emails | Facebook


User Agreement

Copyright © 2024 Stamporama.com