Revenue Collectors, Save Your Money........

The catalog is now posted online.

Looks like all of the items pictured in the "Coming Soon" advertisement are in the sale, except the "Persian Rug" pictured appears to be a little different than the one actually in the auction (unless my eyesight is getting worse). As is always the case with Kelleher and the other major auction houses (in my experience), all of the items pictured on the cover of the actual auction catalog are in the sale.

So who wins the bet?

There are actually some affordable items in this sale.

Don't make affordability assessments based on the "current bids". The openers can be WILDLY inaccurate, and frequently are artificially low to drum up interest.

I am seeing more than a few 1st issue items that are in dire need of certs. The fact that while the high-dollar imperfs have certs, but the big dollar part perfs (lots 15 and 16) do not, speaks volumes. I wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole anyway. The color is all wrong for genuine part perfs.

It's a nice high-catalog-value general collection, but I see very little of personal interest (at least nothing I can afford). My tastes run more to the esoteric these days anyway (cancels, plate varieties, bisects, illegal usages).

Is there a reference or some sort of guide to help identify fake imperfs and part perfs? I usually try to use date, paper and margins, but I guess this way is not infallible.

Truthfully, the only way is to see many thousands of first issue revenues and learn what they are supposed to look like. Date, paper, shade, impression and margins are the clues, but interpretation comes mostly from experience gained knowledge. Each value has it's own characteristics. Knowledge of cancels themselves helps too, some cancels only come on certain stamps. The Ruth and Fleming printed cancel only
comes on perforated stamps, for example.

Even then not all stamps can be proven one way or another.

In this case it's easy. The vivid bright red color of the $1 issues only exists on late printings. Early printings have a less saturated, more subdued ink color. A good way to compare is to look at the $1 imperfs. That is the color the part perfs should have. While not all late printing have this bright red color, no early printings have it, so it is an immediate disqualifier.

There has been at least one example of (supposed) R69b that is a horizontal pair imperf vertically, *but* it is not a real R69b. The color is that of late printings and the consensus is that it is an EFO misperf rather than an intentional part perf. It was in Eric's inventory for a while (he was trying to sell it as a part perf pair), but when it went to the PF it did not get a cert as a part perf. I spoke with both Richard Friedberg and Brian Bleckwenn about it at the time. Everyone agreed that it was not a true part perf.

Early printing:



Late printing:



One thing you also have to be wary of are imperfs that have been perforated to create part perfs. Those are especially insidious, as they can be quite convincing compared to trimmed perforated stamps.

Here are three examples of bogus part perfs that I have in my collection as reference items. In each case, the nature of the perfs is the giveaway (although the color on the last stamp is a negative indicator as well as the late cancel date):

The early stamps are dull red, the later stamps are bright red. This was intentional to help prevent cleaning and reuse.

I guess what I was asking is that it would be nice to have some sort of visual guide to go by. With the understanding of course that it couldn't be perfect, but at least some sort of help.

The closest thing to a visual guide is looking at past auction sales online plus the PF website.

Well? Did anyone check out the merchandise? I just saw this discussion and wonder if any of our Forum Revenue collectors put in any bids?

A few months ago, ikeypikey, one of our Forum members tipped me off to a local stamp auction here in Long Island, NY. My first live auction yielded a nice parcel of BOB items and a good buy on a US classic. Can't wait for my next auction!