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KELLER IN DALLAS

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The young lasses, unfolded a piece of paper and laid it on the counter in front of Keller "The certificate of expertization for Obock J1," he said "Signed by Bloch and Mueller"

HeTed Williams, and Keller could understand why Herbert Bloch and Edwin Mueller were legendary philatelists, and their assertion that this particular stae due stah to allay all doubt

Keller exah the raph of the stamp on the certificate, and he studied that as well, with and without itih to be collectible in and of itself

Still, even experts were sometimes careless, and occasionally er for an expertized stamp So Keller reached for another tool, this one in the inside pocket of his jacket It was a flat ned to enable the user to compute the number of perforations per inch on the top or side of a stamp Obock J1 was imperforate, which rendered the question e doubled as a e andthe other, and Keller used it to check the size of the stamp’s overprint

That overprint, hand stae due stamp initially issued for the French Colonies as a whole, had the nainal stamp, the overprint measured 12 1/2 millimeters by 3 3/4 millimeters On the reprint, a copy of which reposed in Keller’s own collection, each dimension of the overprint was half a millimeter smaller

And so Keller reeoods, the genuine article All he had to do to go home with it was outbid any other interested collectors And he could do that, too, and without straining his budget or dipping into his capital

But first he’d have to kill somebody

The Dallas-based firm of Whistler & Welles conducted auctions of collectibles throughout the year At various tiraphs, and sports memorabilia, but the partners had started out as staest co Equinox Sale, held each year in the Hotel Lombardy on the third weekend in March, was one Keller had wanted to attend for years So He’d s over the years, sent in unsuccessful mail bids on a few occasions, and one year had a hotel roo or other came up and forced him to cancel

He’d lived in New York when Whistler & Welles put hi list Nowadays he lived in New Orleans, and the na list was one he’d borrowed from a local tombstone He was Nicholas Edwards now, and that was the name on his passport, and on all the cards in his wallet He lived in a big old house in the Lower Garden District, and he had a wife and a baby daughter, and he was a partner in a construction fir distressed properties

A year earlier, he’d looked with longing at the Whistler & Welles catalog Dallas was a lot closer to New Orleans than to New York, but he and Donny Wallings were putting in twelve-hour days and seven-day weeks, just trying to keep up with everything they had going on

But that was a year ago, before the collapse of the subpri that followed on its heels Credit dried up, houses stopped selling, and they’d gone from more business than they could handle to no business to speak of

So he could afford the time A couple of days in Dallas? Sure, why not? He could even take his time and drive to Dallas and back

And there were plenty of staer to add to his collection, with Obock J1 at the very top of his wish list

Now, though, he couldn’t afford it

The Lo to survive in a world of e The carpet in Keller’s room, while not yet threadbare, was due for replacement A sofa in the lobby orn on the ar in one of the elevators needed touching up None of this bothered Keller, who found the hotel’s faded glory soe to compete for little pieces of paper that had done their duty carrying thebefore any of thee conference rooin pro New Orleans and Dallas were a little over five hundred miles apart, and Keller drove ht at a Red Roof Inn off a handy exit from the interstate He checked into his room at the Lo Nicholas Edwards on the bidder register and walking over to the long table where they were showing the auction lots

By two thirty he’d had a look at all the lots that interested hi Every sales lot was illustrated with a color photograph, so he didn’t absolutely have to see the that way that you couldn’t get fro Some stamps reached out to you while others put you off, and it probably didn’t h to begin with Ia fortune on little pieces of colored paper? Picking the them in albu since come to terms with the essential absurdity of the pastime, and didn’t let it bother him He was a stamp collector, he derived enormous satisfaction from the pursuit, and that was all he needed to know If you thought about it, just about everything hu? Sex?

Upstairs in his room, Keller reviewed the notes he’d made There were stamps he’d initially considered and now decided to pass on, others he ht, and a few for which he’d be bidding competitively And there was Obock J1 It was rare, it didn’t come up that often, and this particular speciins Imperforate stamps had to be cut apart, and sometimes a careless clerk snipped off a bit of the sta its designated recipient, but it made the stamp considerably less desirable to a collector

According to the Scott catalog, Obock J1 orth 7500 In their catalog, Whistler & Welles had estimated the lot conservatively at 6500 The actual price, Keller kneould depend on the bidders, those in the roo by mail or phone, or via the Internet, and the hammer price wouldn’t tell the whole story; to that you’d have to add a 15 percent bidder’s premium and whatever sales tax the state of Texas saw fit to pile on Keller, anted the staured he et it, and the check he’d write out would be uncoh?

Well, that’s why they had auctions, and why bidders showed up in person You sat in your chair, and you’d decided in advance just how high you’d go and when you’d drop out, and then they got to the lot you aiting for and you discovered how you really felt Maybe you did exactly what you planned on doing, but reat as you’d thought, and wound up dropping out of the bidding early on Orin far beyond your predeter considerably uess hoould be this ti and afternoon sessions would both be devoted to US issues, and thus of no interest to Keller He wouldn’t need to be in the auction roo, and the French Colonial issues, including Obock J1, wouldn’t come up until early Saturday afternoon