More details

Ok, here are the scans. The one on the left is one of the set of 8 sheets offered by the philatelic service. According to my source, the first day these were available was June 1, 2009.

The one on the right is one of the ones available at post offices around Israel.

While they are similar, they are not identical. The key difference to me is the label attached to the stamp. The ones from the philatelic service have the generic label, while the ones at the post office have different images. There are at least 5 labels for each stamp that you can find at the post office. The other differences are the text in the yellow box in the center, and trhe inclusion of a web address in the white section on the bottom of the philatelic service ones.

Below you can see the envelopes that these are sold in at the post office. There is no way to know what one you are buying until you open the package. It is more like collecting baseball cards in packs then stamps. Each package at the post office is NIS4.90, or about $1.25. Unfortunately, based on my experience at 1 post office, about 80% of the ones you buy are duplicates. Maybe the chances are better if you buy a few at a bunch of different post offices, but I didn't have the ability to test that out.

Just when I thought it couldn't get worse....

I am on a trip to Israel for work, the first time I have been on a business trip in 10 years. I arrived here Sunday evening (having left home on Saturday morning), and I leave here tonight (to arrive back home Friday morning). I took advantage of the trip to meet up with some of the people I have been buying stamps from for years. I found out about some intersting items that I had not heard about before. Apparently, there was a printing 1a for "The Israeli" booklet. It has the die cuts for the stamps inverted. The only way to see the difference is to look at the corner of the stamp, and see if it has a peak or a valley. This printing was released in October.

The next item I found out about was an even bigger surprise. The generic stamps that Israel has been issuing for the past few years have been the traditional lick and stick variety. Now, for some contest run in Israel starting in February, they are selling the same stamp in a self adhesive variety. There are 8 stamps, each with 5 different personalized stamps (I think it is 5, I might be wrong though). They come on a sheet with 1 stamp, 1 personalized label, and 3 stickers. The sheets are sold in a foil wrapped envelope, so when you buy them you don't know what stamp/label combo you are getting. Apparently, the first 10 people to collect a complete set win a PSP. At this point, there is no way to buy a set of these anywhere, and I have not seen any offered for sale (on E-bay or elsewhere) in the US. The only way I found out about it was talking to Zohar here in Israel. I went to the post office in jerusalem myself, and bought the few they had for available there. I only managed to get 4 of the 8 stamps, and no more than 2 different labels for each stamp. I did get a few duplicates, and I will probably be listing them on E-bay when I get home. This might turn out to be one of the rarest new issues from Israel in a long time, and one of the hardest sets to put together. Or, the postal service might decide to offer complete sets to collectors once the contest is over, and it will merely be an interesting variety. Only time will tell, I guess.

There is a second variety of the same stamps that were made available on June first of this year. It has the same self adhesive stamps, but just with the generic smiling face label attached. It is 1 stamp and 1 label per sheet. The sheets are the same format as the ones above, but the text on the sheet itself is completely different, since it is not part of the contest. I did get a set of 8 of these, but they didn't seem to be available at the post office (at least, the one I went to). I haven't seen these offered from the philatelic service yet. I will have to call them and see.

When I get back home, I will scan and post the items so everyone can see what I am talking about.

New ATM Stamps

Last month, Israel issued a new ATM stamp to commemorate the visit of the Pope to Israel. It was available with 3 different machine numbers (001, 010, 015). I am not sure how long they were available for in the machines, but if you collect ATM stamps, you should be aware of this issue.

Julie's 2nd stamp show

Two weeks ago, I received a postcard in the mail about a stamp show in Sacramento. Before I even had a chance to look at it, Julie had seen it and declared she was going to the show. The show took place this last weekend (Sacramento Stamp Expo), and Julie and I went on Sunday. We got there around 10:30, and spent only an hour at the show. Julie was disappointed that there were no tables piled high with penny stamps for her to look through, like she had seen at the last show we went to. However, we went around to all the dealers, and several had boxes of stamps available at face (usually 3 and 4 cent plate blocks), and one even took out a book of Disney stamps for her to look through and pick out a few at 20 cents each. There were 2 dealers that gave her some free covers that she liked. She had fun, but not as much as she did at the last show. Hopefully, the next show will have a table of used stamps at a penny or two each for her to spend hours digging through.

House of Zion Auction 76

I sold a bunch of material to Ed Rosen of House of Zion at WestPex, and I took half as cash and half as credit for future stamp purchases from him. The credit was rather large (at least for me), and I was able to bid on items that would normally be out of my price range in his auction last weekend. I bid on 4 total lots, a set of 7-9 plate blocks (the tabs were still, unfortunately out of my reach), and 3 booklets (2B, 3A, and 5B). I just got the results e-mailed to me by Ed. And I am shocked. I won the 7-9 plate blocks, for just over the minimum bid (which was less than a third of catalog value).

However, I was no where close to winning any of the 3 booklets. B2B had a minimum bid of $400, with an estimated value of $1000. The 2004 Bale catalog lists it at $850. It closed at $1900. When you add in the buyers premium, the winner will have paid nearly 2.5 times the catalog value. B3A had a start price of $600, with an estimated value of $1350 and a 2004 Bale catalog value of $1200. It closed at$1650. I checked the other booklets offered, and the majority of the early booklets went for more than the estimates.

So, it looks like the early booklets are hot right now, and their value should be on the rise. Most of the better booklets rarely come up on E-bay, so it is tough to compare. None of the early booklets have sold on E-bay in the past 2 weeks, and only 4 are currently offered for sale (B1, B3B, B5C, and B6). My earlier data from 2007 E-bay tracking shows several sales of the early booklets, most at about half of catalog value. Of course, I wasn't looking at traditional auction realizations then to know if this is normal, or an upward spike.

Did I do the right thing?

Another E-bay situation came up yesterday. A single seller had about 15 lots of maximum cards up for sale, at a start price of $1.99. I was planning on bidding on them just before they closed. I noticed that earlier in the day, someone had bid on all the lots I was interested in. I can't be 100% certain that it was the same person bidding on the lots, but it is highly likely. I bid on the first one, and I bid it up to about $15, before giving up and moving to the next. The same thing happened on the second and third lots. At this point, I gave up on the rest of the lots. I could have bid them all up to the most I would pay for the lot, but I figured the other bidder had bid higher than I was willing to pay on all the lots. I didn't think it was worth it to just drive up the price he would pay, without any chance of me winning the lots. Now, looking back at it, I am wondering if I did a disservice to the seller? He got less for some lots than he would have if I had bid on them. Also, the buyer got a better deal then he would have, and now may have more money in his stamp budget to outbid me on or drive up the price on lots I want in the future. without knowing the buyer, I can't know if it is a zero sum operation for him, where he has a fixed amount to spend, or if he is buying to resell later, or what the situation really is. As an occasional seller, I would hate to have a potential bidder on some lots stop because of what other lots went for. After all, it is not like it cost me to bid on items that I don't win. I guess the lesson I take from this is to not list too many lots that are similar at the same time, or risk losing out on potential bidders. Especially on E-bay, where most lots have a low start price and rely on having bidding wars to establish the value of the items.

E-bay frustrations

I have had some frustrating experiences on E-bay recently. I guess the first one is not just recently, it seems to be becoming a trend. I have seen a bunch of lots offered with 1-2 items that I am interested in, along with a ton of common material that is of no interest to me. This is frustrating, since I either have to overpay for the item I want, and hope to make back enough when I sell the remainders, or just pass on the item. This probably even makes sense from the sellers standpoint. Having a few better (or more interesting) items in the lot will probably get more people bidding on it, therefore giving the seller a better price. But, from a buyer's standpoint, it is terrible. I would rather be able to bid on just the items I want, rather than the lot of duplicates.

The second frustrating thing is that I have been getting outbid on nearly every lot I bid on these past few weeks. There was a set of third coins tete-beche sheets up for sale (each sheet listed separately). While I already have almost 2 full sets, a few of the sheets had differences in the margin perforations (one or 2 edges imperf) then the ones I already own. Since I started collecting plate blocks with margin varieties, I thought I could pick up some of the ones I was missing in these auctions, without having to buy a complete set to just get one new variety. However, I think someone was after a complete set, because I was outbid at the last second on every single one I bid on, despite not bidding myself until ~10 seconds were left in the auction.

I am still watching ~15 items, but most of those are just plate blocks that I am interested in, but not willing to pay the buy it now price. These are all store inventory items, and they have been on my watch list for a few months now. I figure eventually the seller will drop his prices. We shall see.

On another note, looks like I will be going to Jerusalem for work in the middle of June. It doesn't look like I will have any free days in my schedule, but I hope to still meet some of the stamp dealers and collectors over there that I have been corresponding with for the past few years.