Rick and the Old Man took a look at the stamps, but weren't sure how to value them, so they called in their stamp and coin expert Jay Tell to evaluate.
Tell explained that this was more than just a simple miscut. "This is four or five errors combined in one," he said. There were "clips" in several places where the stamps were cut off, a miscut that made the stamps an imperfect shape, and an "imperforate error," where the perforations that were supposed to separate the stamps were missing. "Out of millions of these panes produced, you don't see this too often," Tell said.
Rick asked him how much he thought the rare stamps were worth, and after a long (edited) pause, Tell gave his answer: between $500 and $700. Fred was aghast.
That figure was more than Rick was expecting, however. "I thought you were going to say 50 bucks," he said with a laugh.
Rick asked how much Fred wanted for the stamps, and he asked for $500, the low end of the quoted figure. "That's not the low end, son, that's retail," the Old Man grumbled. Rick countered with $400. Fred really struggled with that — he clearly had his heart set on thousands — and finally countered with $425, which Rick accepted.
While $425 is not a windfall, it's a lot for some stamps. The whole book only cost $2 in 1971!
