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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonSellos, post: 1619297, member: 1797&quot;]A recent acquisition for my Stamp Dealers cover collection.&nbsp; Actually a post card sized item, I was attracted to it for Emauel Strauss&#039; business name &quot;Mr. Postage Stamp,&quot; and for the note in the lower left corner identifying him as the author of a <i>Linn&quot;s Weekly Stamp News</i> column entitled &quot;The Plate Blocker.&quot; </p><p><br /></p><p>Collecting plate blocs of four used to be a hot specialty.&nbsp; Current, and several older ones could be collected at face value by going to the local post office and finding a helpful clerk who would sell a plate block from a sheet.&nbsp; Finding matching numbers for all four positions was a goal as was finding the occasional elusive numbers.&nbsp; There was a strong secondary market with dealers specializing in them.&nbsp; All the fun went out of plate block collecting, however, when the Post Office started to print commemoratives with multiple plate numbers and collecting a strip of up to twelve numbers became just too unwieldy, and expensive.</p><p><br /></p><p>All that said, there is an interesting statement on the reverse of this card that astonished me.&nbsp; That is &quot;Due to the tremendous response and the time necessary to sort <b>over 10,000 bids</b>, ... .&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; I know plate block collecting was popular, but this number of bids seems incredible for a mail sale.&nbsp; The message goes on to say it would take 10 days to determine and notify the high bidders.&nbsp; That was over 1,000 bids a day to sort through. </p><p><br /></p><p>How times change.&nbsp; Besides the demise of plate block collecting, the internet has made the mail bid sale obsolete as well.&nbsp; Although, I was surprised to received a mail sale catalog for RPO covers earlier this month. </p><p><br /></p><p>DonSellos</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]13992[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]13993[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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