Relative New Guy RE; Auction Purchases

john o'neil

I rec'd my second won collection from SAN. It was a Barclay's Canada Album (not hard bound)).When I first opened it just to peruse it, I noticed that in the early issues there were hand written values in some spaces that bore light evidence of a hinge. Higher value items. So, some cream had been removed from this collection. The write up in SAN listed the cat numbers of a few finer items included , but no other detail or pics beyond this . The items apparently removed were not mentioned.

I'm really just trying to get a bit more savvy. It would appear that the earlier stamps in my win were at least partially remaindered (if I understand that term correctly). Should this have been mentioned in the auction description, or is it caveat emptor ( and here I never thought I'd use my 4 years of Latin in high school). Not complaining.....there are some awesome stamps and complete unused sets in the collection. Just trying to get a handle on basic ground rules,

john o'neil

Clarification....it was a Vance auction, but through SAN.

Henry Brooks

There are very few collections in the marketplace that have not been remaindered. SOP when a dealer gets an untouched collection (generally bought directly from the collector) is to pull enough desirable high value stamps to at least pay for the purchase price and then remainder the rest. The same as cigar box or shoebox lots of "untouched" 3 cent green banknotes, 2 cent reds, etc. They have been repeatedly "touched" through several dealers.

All of the lots i ever purchased were remaindered by my source 0 but he left in enough value I could always pull out 2 or 3 times what i paid in retail value and remainder the lot for what I originally paid. Or if I needed stock I could always wholesale off a few better stamps that remained and keep the rest to make up lots or singles as the need arose, but the key here is quick turnaround to get your money back and increasing your inventory.

Hope I explained that OK - not easy to find a good source. Oh - one more thing. When you do find that good source ALWAYS buy whatever is offered as he usually needs to keep up cash flow to pay his bills and he usually has other people he can sell to.

john o'neil

Got it....thans Henry!

Pete James

John,
It is common for some better items to be cherry picked from a collection and usually sold separately. As long as the missing items were not shown or mentioned as being present in the lot, I would not worry about it.