THE CARDS ARE OUT THERE

EVENTS

Events announced between Newsletters will be posted in the News section of  www.aviapc.com as will the corrections that usually seem necessary for this section.

The number of shows seems to be growing. while the number of  better cards available is shrinking which I guess follows some sort of law e.g  by the time a collecting hobby has reached the point that it has a structure of fairs, publications etc, the opportunities for long standing collectors to gain new material shrinks in inverse proportion to the rise in the number of sources offered.  Which, other things being equal results in polarization of prices from the “worthless to the “priceless” – which brings us to Web prices.

INTERNET AUCTION REPORT  

Curiously enough copies of the same set of cards realized around $100 each (£65) at both the AI convention in Houston and on the net. As usual the cards were real photo, but this time not U.S or South American, but from that Far Eastern collecting hot-spot Singapore. The subject was a set of cards of the opening ceremonies and air display at Kallang Airport, Singapore in, I think, 1939. Apart from the one  shown with a flypast of RAF flying boats, cards included interiors, a DH.86 in flight over the tower, a DH86 by the tower, and a Short Empire flying boat on beaching gear.

The other card illustrated shows that the “real Photo- Airport” price escalation has reached the UK. This Prestwick card was tracked at over $80 (£50). Price tracking is actually now more difficult due to use of “Snipe” software.

This is nothing to do with late WW1 Sopwith fighters but is derived from the military use of the word “snipe”. Software enables a bidder to fire a single-shot bid at the very last moment, measured in seconds. On the one hand this is an advantage for bidders in a different time-zone, enabling bids to be put in at any time, day or night. It also means that your bids cannot be tracked by another who takes advantage of your searching with a last minute bid.  The downside is that virtually as soon as a bid is made the auction is closed and the price cannot be tracked unless the item has been identified earlier. Snipe software is available from various vendors at different charging rates. I am told that, in more developed collecting spheres, such as some postal history, all bids are made in this way, so an item sits at its start price for N days and then all bids come in in the last few seconds. Bidders therefore have to bid their maximum price in ignorance of what other bidders are in competition – which tends to drive prices up further. 

Inevitably with these prices around there is a risk that what is displayed on the net may not be what it seems. This can be an ignorant seller genuinely believing that a modern reproduction is an original or something more deliberate. Member Chris Slimmer recently found that what appeared to be genuine “aged” real photograph was in fact a high-quality laser-copy of an original which had been “welded” onto an old postcard of a non-aviation subject. It would probably not deceive physical inspection but clearly did so on the web. Another risk area is Zeppelins, where many current German reproductions are exact copies of the originals with no text to alert buyers – again the paper “look & feel” would  be the clue on the actual item, but not on the Web.

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