Monthly Archives: July 2010

At any given time there are hundreds of thousands of stamps available for sale on the web. Stamp dealers are constantly selling their wares and of course like any merchant they need to replenish their stock. To obtain new inventory in other businesses sellers call up manufacturers and order new items. But we have no manufacturers of collectible postage stamps. So where do stamp sellers replenish and freshen up their inventories- Stamp auctions that's where.
Every Apfelbaum public Auction contains 5000 lots of US and worldwide sets and singles and collections. Most of the collection lots that we sell realize prices that make them very attractive for further break up and sale. Many better country lots sell at 15% of catalog or less and where auction lots have "suggested bids" these prices are at an even lower percentage of catalog. A nice collection lot or stock will often have scores of desire able mid priced sets that can be broken out for sale. If you are a stamp seller, you should

Today I had a real treat. I worked on a collection in which the last stamp was put in the album in 1921. The Collector died in that year and his great grandchildren decided to sell the stamps this year. Collecting styles have changed over the years and working on this collection brought back memories of the old times. A collector in 1921 was never content with having one example of a stamp. This collection had no less than 20 5c 1847s were as well as a number of 10c. But the real interest began with the 1861 issue where collectors of that bye gone era collected numerous shades and better cancels. The 1861s contained Civil War Patriotics, the 1869s fancy cancels and used in Japan and the Banknotes had a plethora of interesting and specialized subsections that were a pleasure to behold.
This collection was especially interesting as the collector continued his specialized collection right up through the early Washington-Franklin issues with many better usages including Pivate perfs.And

While it is true that an enormous amount of good philatelic research
material is available online, millions of words of philatelic importance were written before the Internet was invented. Unlike academic disciplines with their well funded libraries and armies of grad student workers, most older philatelic literature and periodicals have never been scanned and many have only been scantily indexed. It is great fun to go through a box of old literature and periodicals and read interesting articles that are unobtainable online.
Thus it is a great event when a new web site offers interesting older philatelic literature and it is even better when that site is owned by a young professional philatelist as knowledgeable and easy to get along with as Matt Kewriga http://kewriga.com/. Older literature is inexpensive and extremely readable. Go to Matt's site. You'll have fun

One of the things that has always amazed me is the disparity in price between the stamps of popular countries and the stamps of more esoteric areas. Like you, I took Econ 101 and was drilled on the basics of supply and demand. But,really, consider this. On EBay today as I write this there are 71 mint US #237 (the 10c Columbian) for sale. This is my basic metric of a common mid priced stamp. Hundreds of thousands exist and at any one time in all the stamp stocks in all the world there are literally hundreds if not thousands for sale. Depending on quality a #237 will sell for about $50. In our August auction we are selling a specialized collection of early Libya. Classic Libya was a legitimate philatelic country, no back door issues, the stamps of which were issued by a major European power-Italy. This collection has numerous Scott and Sassone listed varieties of early issues that exist in quantities of less than 50 and which I have never seen offered for sale before and yet many of these