What Was Your The All Times Best Catch In Your As Life Experience And As Stamp?

I'm answering first
Life: I met with my wife thanks to a professional photo shooting at Russia. The interesting part here is the guy who gave me that job was my ex-wife's lover (I did not know at that times) First he made me divorced with a fighting and very problematic woman and gave me love of my life.

Stamp: One of my friends sold me many stamps as defining them much more pricey. Even some of them were fraud. But I realized he missed the watermark and gave me a high value expert signed 1867 9 Crazie Tuscany stamp (Cat.Value:7750$) instead of 1861 (C.V:350$)

cheers

Looks like a Fournier forgery to me. Can we see the experts signature?

My best was last year, which was an accumulation of postal stationery and postal cards which cost about 3% of SCV, mostly early unused postal cards and message/reply cards. Included in the accumulation were 4 postal notes (two Type I, one type IVa, and one type V) which I hadn't even counted!

Love the hunt - never know what you will run across.

Another close one was a large grouping of cinderellas, which had some unexpected postage stamps, including a bunch of 220a,c and others with printing EFOs.

Keep looking, there still are finds out there!

I found stamps on paper and covers at an estate sale in the early 2000s full of early post WWII German issues including all the higher value Mark denominations of the Berlin overprints, the higher value post horns including several of the 90 pf single use on registered covers. Also there were envelopes from a correspondence to a family here in Louisville from a Catholic German Officer who was in a mainly Bavarian Catholic German Wehrmacht unit that defected to the French at the start of WWII. Included were covers with French POW and censor markings from before the German invasion of France. And then the French apparently allowed the officer to join the French Foreign Legion ( FFL ) and he was sent to French Morocco. Envelopes had his FFL number and appropriate markings. I put one on eBay and the winning bidder turned out to be his son, who verified that it was his father who had that FFL #. He also recognized his signature on the cover. The officer had passed and never talked about his war experiences. His children wondered why they grew up in France. The son had returned to Berlin as an adult. He wanted to know if I knew what his father's connection was with a family in Louisville. I replied I did not, and sent him some scans of postal cards included in the group. He replied he was shocked, but the material explained a lot of things to him and his siblings. Never heard back from the son again, and he never paid for the cover.

That is the joy of collecting and finding treasures. I paid $75 for the entire lot and got good certs on the higher value Berlin overprints and Post Horn covers. Needless to say it was pretty much a once in a lifetime find.

Perhaps not the best, but one of the best, received last week...paid £30.00 at auction. Stamp is unused with slightly disturbed OG.

I have a couple... Back in my early days on eBay I was starting to work on my Turkey collection. I purchased a lot of postage due stamps and this was included:

It's the essay, of which there was only the one sheet printed. Catalog value is now in excess of $2k, and most aren't as well centered as this one.
I also managed to hit it big once when going through kiloware... A three margin penny black, my second example, and at 5 cents not to be resisted. :)

Bought a lot of remainders that had a 388 pair (CV $3750) misidentified as a 353 pair (CV $240).

I have written about my experience in past posts. These topics come up every so often. The short version is that I was outbid on all of the lots I was after in a Rasdale auction and saw a three-carton lot towards the auction end that I put a live internet bid on so as not to walk away empty handed. I won the lot at $300 with tip and shipping. The description was short and mentioned modern Mongolia and some other usual large lot suspects.

The cartons arrived and I was not that excited about it based upon the unenthusiastic description. Until I dug in just an inch or so above the top of the first carton that did indeed have some modern Mongolia. My jaw dropped and kept dropping through all three cartons. It was full of dealer sales sheets, some going back to the 1950's that had a massive amount of British Commonwealth premium material. There was also a LOT of higher value stamps from other Countries. There was paperwork in the cartons that pointed to the material being the stock remains of a Dr. from Chicago that was very well known (now I cannot recall his name) who collected and also sold stamps.

In the end I pulled out and cataloged over $70,000 in stamps.

I have been looking for that experience ever since, but it has not happened. In fact, I don't see those massive and genuine estate lots anymore, that volume of material. It makes me wonder if that mine has been depleted.

One of the big finds I've had. Maybe not big to many, but to me.

Browsed Ebay and Hip stamp regularly looking for plate varieties on the officials.
Found this one.
An example of plate 40, from a semi experimental steam press used briefly for stamps but eventually rejected because the print quality was not great. A change in pigment made an ink that got runny under a spike in pressure.
It was used for about half the 2c post office officials. but only a bit over 2400 impressions of the 3c compared to the millions printed. Some experts had thought that early references were wrong about plate 40 and 36 being used for issued stamps.
Then I found this plate 40 example in 2012.
It hadn't been described in any literature since 1932!

Best catch? A few years ago at a leaving drink in Champagne Charlies near Villiers Street. My mate Andy side-swiped his near-full pint of bitter from the table, and I caught it in mid-air without spilling a drop.

Best purchase was a auction lot in Chicago around 1973 . This was the first year of buying at a stamp auction .There was a small lot which came in a shoe box of Batum stamps ,the opening bid was $30.00 and was filled with sheets of 50 stamps ,with about 100 sheets all in a semi-rolled up bundle . Ok ! They must be forgeries if they are are opening at $30.00.

Figured if they are real all the dealers would run them up during the auction . Auction starts on the lot ,opening call was $30.00 ,no bids are heard ,my card goes up ,then I hear SOLD !

I take the lot home and now I know they are forgeries but at less than one cent each, they would make good surprises in my box lots ,so I was cutting them up and placing 6 different in each box I sold .

Happy cutting up the sheets for years ,sold a few hundred boxes but still had dozens of full sheets and had about 50 sets cut out and packed in glassines in the box ready to drop in future sold boxes .

I get a note from a customer who bought a box with those Batum stamp and he is willing to buy more if I had a extra set for $3.00 ,Now interested about what I got , took them to a stamp show and told more than half of the box are real stamps with the top few sheets are fake .
I kept a few sets and sold the box the next day at the stamp show