Breaking KGV blocks?

Recently, someone disposed of a large collection of Union of South
Africa KGV "King's Head" stamps on ebay. There were some really nice
items, many of the better items were unfortunately beyond my budget.
A number of the items comprised of a single stamp with attached
selvedge containing the plate number. These were very popular, and
received a number of bids.
What I found interesting however, was that blocks of 4 or 6 stamps,
containing the same stamp and plate number, often attracted fewer bids,
and were often sold for less than or for a similar amount to the single
stamp. I did place some half hearted bids on some of the blocks when I
didn't get a corresponding single stamp, realising that for a block of
four, I could get the stamp with the plate number that I wanted, and
have 3 singles to dispose of.
Fortunately I didn't win any of these, as I don't think that I could
have had the heart to break them up.
I was surprised that the blocks went for so little relatively speaking,
perhaps others felt that they would prefer to pay a little more for the
single, rather than break up the blocks, or fewer people bid on the
blocks, thinking that the final prices would be two to six times the
price of a single.
Regards,
Clive

wrote in message
oups.com...
Recently, someone disposed of a large collection of Union of South
Africa KGV "King's Head" stamps on ebay. There were some really nice
items, many of the better items were unfortunately beyond my budget.
A number of the items comprised of a single stamp with attached
selvedge containing the plate number. These were very popular, and
received a number of bids.
What I found interesting however, was that blocks of 4 or 6 stamps,
containing the same stamp and plate number, often attracted fewer bids,
and were often sold for less than or for a similar amount to the single
stamp. I did place some half hearted bids on some of the blocks when I
didn't get a corresponding single stamp, realising that for a block of
four, I could get the stamp with the plate number that I wanted, and
have 3 singles to dispose of.
Fortunately I didn't win any of these, as I don't think that I could
have had the heart to break them up.
I was surprised that the blocks went for so little relatively speaking,
perhaps others felt that they would prefer to pay a little more for the
single, rather than break up the blocks, or fewer people bid on the
blocks, thinking that the final prices would be two to six times the
price of a single.
Regards,
Clive

Clive, such is the mysterious world of the stamp market. It was probably
fashionable years ago to collect single stamps with the control in the
margin (as with UK issues of the same period), but I notice that the
catalogue prices these items as either singles or corner horizontal pairs
(the control in these issues occurs next to the second and penultimate stamp
in the top and bottom rows of the sheet) with the pairs priced 2 to 4 times
the price of a single.

I would certainly pay extra for the pairs, but maybe collectors view larger
blocks as awkward to display and not worth paying extra for. It would be
sad if they were broken up though.

Regards, Roger