Who Can We Trust On The World Market Selling Or Buying?

I am seriously looking at only trusting Australia, Canada and the United States of America for my stamps to have new homes.

The United Kingdom and Israel I am still thinking about but I believe I will include them.

All other countries are just to much of a risk. They are or are going bankrupt with impossibly high unemployment levels. Are known high risk countries or have no idea about my culture or language so if trouble happens how can I get my message across to them.

The people that say they have not received the stamps in the mail and are spot on with the time limit to wait before making a claim to get their money back are IMO, have the stamps and are scamming them. It seems to becoming common place.

The classic example is what has just happened to philb.

I have met a lot of very honest people in the countries I will be excluding but there fellow country people that are not honest are to blame for the way I am thinking. The condition the economies are in,in some countries make for desperate people that are scamming to survive.

It is a tough situation but I am in a position to listen to any reasonable comment on this issue as I would like to get it right and not just race bash. These days are becoming very desperate times indeed.

Two observations:

1. I think a lot depends on what you want to sell. If you mostly sell Australia or USA material, then you can safely limit your market to buyers from these countries without losing much. But if you sell Germany or Russia, for example, and you exclude European buyers, then good luck selling your stuff.

2. Regarding your reasoning on the economic crisis, I think it stands on very thin ground. Need to remind you that the current economic crisis started in the US, that there is a high unemployment rate and tens of millions of people on food stamps in the US? How does that relate to the "desperation" and the tendency to scam on stamp purchases? Do you really think that unemployed workers (in Greece, for example) have nothing else on their mind than to purchase stamps on ebay and scam their sellers?

In the final analysis, what do you think would make a buyer with a high enough feedback score on ebay and a 100% rating to go AWOL? The loss of his job? Thinking that people are intrinsically dishonest is a sign of the prevalent market mentality of the day, but it is not the proper guiding principle that should govern our hobby.

I also include customs and postal workers in this statement.

The buyer that is in a situation where the seller can not give any feed back can do what they like even blackmail the seller and the seller can do nothing about it. It does not show up on their feedback no matter if they have a score of a million.

It is of course entirely up to you who you sell to, but I find the above statement to be a ridiculous generalisation.

That helps me a lot. As I am with .com Canada, USA and Australia for me only is my decision. That stops the ridiculous generalization.

Thanks for helping me make a decision.

I buy quite a bit from, and occasionally sell and give away to, India. Most of what I receive from India comes registered, but some isn't. Because of the high registration charges here in Australia, as you'd very well know KGV Collector, I rarely send registered to India. I've yet to have anything go missing, in either direction.

In my opinion, it all comes down to individuals, not whole nations. Most collectors are honest; a very few aren't. Australia, Canada and the USA don't have a monopoly on honesty.

This includes customs and postal workers.







True tony but 99% of my sales are from the counties named above thank goodness. I have never been blackmailed by anyone in these countries.

Well, if you include postal and customs workers as possible (or likely?) sources of missing mail, what is it that makes Australian, US and Canadian ones more honest than others? Is it some intrinsic value of their nationality or the lack of motives (financial strains, etc) for stealing? Do you think that US postal workers, for example, are not being hit by cutbacks as hard as Greek or Italian postal workers?

From what you are saying it is evident that you have very little experience with selling outside the 3 countries you mention, since 99% of your sales are to these countries. So allow me to say that your generalization based on statistically insignificant samples (how many really? more than a handful?) verges on the insulting for all of us not blessed enough to be residents of a non-crisis-ridden (what a joke!) Anglo-Saxon country.

And I'd just add that it might still be worth looking into the markets outside these three countries. Buyers can turn up in the most unlikely places. The Indian States that I collect are a rather esoteric taste, but there are serious collectors, spending serious money on them, in countries other than the UK, the US and India. Australia mightn't be front of mind to someone selling Indian States, but we have some serious collectors here; I know of a couple of serious collectors of the Indian States in the Czech Republic ...

To get the best price for your goods you need a bit of market tension. You might increase that market tension by casting your net as wide as possible.

And as for cultural differences, well, I've found gentlemen to be gentlemen everywhere, not only in selected English-speaking countries. There are a great many gentlemen (and ladies, of course) in the stamp collecting world.

Nothing. The New York processing center has become infamous for theft of registered mail. It's so bad that many European dealers with whom I do business will no longer ship to the US.

Selling online or selling approvals is somewhat the same thing.

It is International Mail Order.

People who sell in this field know there is a risk factor involved with each sale, whether the people involved are the buyer, the postal administrations, friends, employees, or bad or good weather, and too many other factors to mention here.

The sellers then adjust their profit margin or hike their prices to cover this risk factor.

It may be higher for some countries or some regions or some eras or some seasons or some people or it may be lower.

One missed sale is usually not a reason to exclude sections of the marketplace, whether they be in the next city, state or province, or the next country or continent.

I have had good dealings with most of the world except once close to home (more or less) and once across the pond. Buying and selling. But that has only stopped me from buying from that person again and shipping to that person again. that's the best I could do.

I have had items lost for a month and then arrived with no postmarks at all anywhere to indicate where the blame lay in the matter of delay.

There are a couple things you can do to help avoid mis-deliveries or non-deliveries.

Double check the address to be sent to with the buyer. This takes a lot of extra work and is perhaps unnecessary.

Double check you have addressed the envelope or package correctly and so that the receiving country can understand it (as best you can of course). I have noticed that after changing from hand-written addresses to typed ones a difference in the speed of delivery.

After hearing (or reading) of losses to be expected when shipping to Italy years ago I hesitated and then said, well I need to find out for myself, and I spelled the country name not Italy but Italia, as Italians spell it, and it arrived. Of course, that does not help prove whether my spelling experiment helped or not. There were pretty stamps on the cover as well. The delivery took a bit longer than expected by me and the buyer but it did arrive.

I have read one trick lately for shipping to other countries. It was to put labels on the envelope, like airmail, registered, other business-like seeming labels, and this would deter any people it came into contact with from taking it for their own.

Don't make it seem rich or expensive but make it seem ordinary or even ordinary business-like. Who wants to steal a telephone bill or an advertisement for a cel phone company?

But, as we have seen, theft is but just one factor to be considered in the international mail order business.

Excellent point by Tony! Reminds me of a group of France Napoleons (old stamps) that I sold once. I had bidders from France, Canada, United States, Australia, a fellow who had just created his account on ebay from Columbia (ahem), and the winning bidder from Argentina in Tierra del Fuego at the southernmost tip of the continent.

Selling and sending to somewhere close to the South Pole almost made the whole sale pointless as it was so exciting to me that I had actually sent something there.

And it arrived and was deemed satisfactory by the buyer, which was a bonus as far as I was concerned.

If I had just sold to Canada or the US the price would not have gone up as much as it did and I would have thought that there was no market for these silly French stamps anywhere. How wrong I would have been.

In another sale I had to ship to the Arctic in Canada in Nunavut (the old Northwest Territories). I had as much wonder about that shipment and worry that it would get there and not get lost in a snow bank until the next Ice Age moved it down the Mississippi valley or somewhere. But that arrived OK too.

Any mishap that occurs does tend to weaken one's faith in humans as a species for a while but to err is human, to forgive divine.

I would agree that most people are honest and that includes buyers and postal/custom workers. I ship everywhere and anywhere without hesitation. If I can get mail to Haiti and Pakistan then anywhere else should be easy as pie. The only time I worry is when there is a postal strike or the system is really "broken" like the Moscow postal service (not the rest of Russia). Since the mid-1990's 11, I've sold/traded through ebay, Delcampe and the Stamp Trader's List over 10,000 shipments easily worldwide and 99.99% have made it fine. And everyone one of them used real nice commemorative stamps (just make sure the clerk cancels them). I won't block any country as I don't think it's fair to exclude those who are honest over a few insignificant bad apples. With the exception of sub-sahara Africa there are not many countries left where I haven't mailed something.

I do take precautions: Label shipments well with a clear address and a return address. I don't use labels for addresses as they can be "replaced" or damaged by postal machinery. Also I feel the handwritten look allows shipment to fly under radar. Just use good block lettering. Use a big black Sharpie marker on large envelopes. Check the address with the buyer if it looks weird on the Paypal email (especially Chinese addresses). Use labels for Airmail and handstamp for other information - "Do Not Bend/First Class, etc. Use those custom forms even if it is a gift or worth just $1.00. People are less likely to mess with an item the more official it looks. Also choose language on the customs form that makes the item unappealing to customs/postal folks - "Used postcards, used envelopes, used stamps, used stationery" don't sound like they have any value to the non-philatelists. If they are mint stamps, call them "mailing labels". Technically it's correct. Also just use cardboard stiffener inside so your shipment is sturdy, but thin. Big puffy mailers attract attention. I will register/insure mail if I feel it is necessary or the item is of really high value.

Next week, I'll be sending a shipment to Nicaragua and it will make it I'm sure.

Will

That's true, except when you have a system that is easily gamed, then the scammers congregate and skew the odds dramatically in that specific system. Anyone that sells high volume for a living on ebay understands this. If I ship to a country 20 times and 4 or 5 packages are claimed not received (I couldn't care less if they actually are or aren't) then I'm not shipping there anymore and I don't care who's feelings I hurt because at this point its all about me.

tonymacg I appreciate your input about mail to India being reliable...i am certainly not going to blame a nation because of an unhappy deal....it does strike me as odd that the dollar and 2 dollar stuff always seems to arrive safely...i started my item out at 3 dollars...two bidders bid it up to 16.50....i was paid..and I crossed my fingers and mailed the item first class to India..i did not ask if the customer wanted registered mail..he did not request it...now I will probably be out $18 plus my cover, plus my mailing cost to India when ebay RESOLVES the problem...i am certainly not going to volunterily give the money back...let ebay do what they have to do !

A little off topic but hopefully helpful none the less. I've been an ebay seller of fishing lures for many years. In a nut shell without going into pros and cons of buyer/ seller issues I've found as a percentage about the same lost stolen items across all the years and changes. Basically chalk it up to cost of business. I once had 3 packages sent same time all to MN and all were claimed missing. My thoughts were the MN postal service has a really full tackle box or all 3 decided to rip me off. After all the years shipping 1000's of small lumpy curious packages I would say the loss rate is maybe 1-2% and that is all just sticking stamps and dropping in mail box with no proof of anything. Now if your selling $500+ items you may want to be a bit more skeptical and reduce potential losses but all things being = I think the chances are the same to loose a cross town package as loosing a cross world item.