R SCHNEIDER’S THIS & THAT | SEPTEMBER 2019

As we completed our first 20 days of 100 degree weather this year I looked up 100 degree days in Wichita Falls on Google. Turns out that Wichita Falls holds the US all time record for the most 100 degree days in one year in an American city 100! That was in 2011. In the same year they had twelve days over 110 degrees. I knew it was hot here – I didn’t guess it was this hot.

My youngest daughter was married the first of September in St Louis so we have been out of the net for the past week. Now our last one is now off the dole! She is our last chance for grandchildren so our fingers are crossed. My youngest was our most difficult child and we have patiently waited many years for her turn as a parent!

We have been working on organizing our recent German offices and colonies acquisitions and have made good progress. We will have our German offices list part I completed for October and will upload a couple of hundred new images for these to our web site by October. We have some very difficult to find stamps for this list.

This month we have updated our Germany Part B list. Which includes Germany proper issues from Scott 187 through 497. The list includes a great many Michel listed varieties.

Auctions

As active auction buyers, we watch all auctions in the US and overseas for good German and Austrian collections. The market for collections has been getting stronger and stronger in recent years. Good collections are selling for very good prices for the sellers.

The trend for the bigger auction houses is to hold their auctions live on the internet. This trend has increased bidding on lots and resulted in higher realizations overall. On line auctions improve the chances of bidders absent from the auction site to compete against floor bidders. Traditionally most of the better material has gone to floor bidders but this has changed. Auction houses also do a much better job of showing images of the stamps in collections on line. This improvement has done as much to increase bidding as live online bidding. Buyers now have a realistic idea of the content and quality of each lot.

The auctions that I have found to have the best collections, best descriptions and images are:

Rasdale Stamps Auctions Chicago
H.R. Harmer New York
Cherrystone Stamp Auctions – New York
Heinrich Kohler Auktion – Wiesbaden
Wurttembergisches Auktionhaus Wiesbaden

SC0TT 2020 VOLUME 4A

LIECHTENSTEIN

There are no price changes at all for 2020 for Liechtenstein.

LUXEMBOURG

This year there are many, many significant price changes – most of them downward.

The very early issues show no price changes. Price changes start with:

60-69* was $68 now $82
60-69 U was $110 now $100

82-96* was $179 now $152
82-92 U was $168 now $162

1940s and 1950’s NH stamps increase in value modestly while * and U values decrease moderately.

151 SS * increases dramatically from $1000 to $1500.

Semi-postal stamps show slight decreases in * and ** values but massive decreases throughout for used issues.

B30-34 U was $56 now $13
B35-9 U was $56 now $30
B65A-65Q U was $1666 now $1125

Officials hold their values throughout.