I want to interrupt my psychology of trading rules posts to comment on rare stamps, especially rare US stamps which I know a lot about. To my knowledge two people have acquired (or nearly acquired) a complete 19th century rare stamp collection and it may never be done again.

The first was Robert K. Miller. Miller's collection was fabulous. He acquired most of his collection before the first stamp catalogue came out and it was unbelievably complete. He gave his collection to the NY public library in 1925 and made sure it was almost impossible for another collector to get a complete collection. That collection was on display until around 1970 when (because of 4 robberies) it was put into cold storage. However, for the first time in over 30 years, it is now on display at the US Post Office Museum in Washington. I saw it when I was there (and although I was about the only one really looking at it) it is is faboulous. Millions of dollars worth of rare stamps.

The second person to acquire a complete collection (well except for 64 and Miller didn't have that either) was Robert Zoellner. His collection was sold by Siegel in 1998. And the 1cent z grill (there are only two copies and one of them is in the NY Library) went for $935,000. And guess what? Bill Gross (head of Pimco) acquired that recently by trading an inverted airplane plate block (C3a) that he paid $3.5 million for for that stamp. I think Bill may also have a complete collection as well now. And to my amazement, both copies of the 1 cent z grill were on displace that the postal museum. YOU CAN ONLY SEE IT FOR A LIMITED TIME, so it you are interested get to Washington, DC.

I mention this because I think that if 100 people were each willing to invest $100,000 in rare stamps (and I'm taking about the ones in which only 50 or so exist), those rare stamps would go through the moon.