Robert Zoellner

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Robert Zoellner is a stamp collector who achieved fame as the first person ever to have formed a complete collection of United States postage stamps. As of November 2005, one other person, William H. Gross, has also formed a complete collection of US postage stamps.

Like many, Zoellner collected stamps as a child and had attempted to fill the space of his US stamp album. However, many US stamps are quite rare, and he eventually put the album aside. His interest was rekindled in 1984, and in 1985 he approached Scott Trepel of Siegel Auctions and asked whether it was possible to assemble a complete collection.

The answer is not straightforward, because for some of the rarest types only a few examples exist, and it is not always known where they are - the stamps may change hands in a private transaction and not be seen in public for decades. The rarest of all is the 1c Z grill; of the two known examples, one is in the collection of the New York Public Library, leaving only one for collectors. The availability of several other grills also depended on the sale of certain collections.

Nevertheless, Zoellner had both the "means and the inclination" (to quote the Weill brothers), and in 1986 he was fortunate in that all of the major grill rarities were coming on the market. The 1c Z grill was bought in November 1986 for US$418,000, setting a new record for a US stamp.

In addition to singles of each type, Zoellner also bought strips, blocks, and covers. Since the original album had no spaces for these, he moved to a system of computer-generated pages designed for the additional items.

By 1996, only a few spaces remained to be filled, and an invitation to exhibit the collection at Anphilex '96 had already been accepted, and there was a scramble to fill in the holes. The last to be acquired was the 30c gray black stamp of 1873, given as a gift by one of Zoellner's friends. The Anphilex exhibit generated great interest among US collectors; for the first time, one of them had actually realized the dream of a complete collection.

Having achieved his goal, Zoellner apparently lost interest in expanding or maintaining his collection, and on October 8-10, 1998, the entire collection was auctioned off. Siegel's auction catalog was a 391-page work that included extensive description and documentation of the items, many of which were the "finest known" of their type, and sold for prices well above their nominal values. The 1c Z grill went to Donald Sundman of Mystic Stamp Company for US$935,000.