Am I Too Suspicious?

Does anyone other than myself wonder about stamps that cost at least several hundred dollars and yet don't have a certificate? I always figure there's a good chance the stamp had a certificate with a fault notated and the seller "lost" the cert. I won't buy these unless the seller allows me sufficient time to obtain a certificate myself and return the stamp if there's a problem. My experience is about half the time the stamp goes back.

If I was in the market for stamps worth that much, I would insist that the seller refund me the cost of the item and the cert if it turns out not to be as described.

Making stamps seem better than they really are is a thriving industry. In the future, such stamps will only be seen as legitimate if they have a documented provenance (the history of the collections of real people they have been in).

Expertization means everything; provenance (except for unique items) means nothing. Many sellers specify terms for subsequent expertization, and by bidding, you agree to them 100%. That said, in the past, I bought expensive items at shows, not online. Sometimes made an exception for covers, because all of them are different.

Lot of quick bucks to make by selling at on line auctions and misidentifying or improperly describing items. Deals might be available but if you want to be safe, buy from legitimate dealers who will stand behind their merchandise with or without a cert. Even the presence of a reasonably current cert is no guarantee that damage has not occurred since the cert was issued. Oh, and watch out for those bogus certs, like the ones from the nonexistent Internet Certification whatsis and xerox copies of genuine certs because a similar item received a good cert.

Bill Lehr
APS, IFSDA, IPDA, NSDA, all fine dealer organizations

Not necessarily. It depends on what the item is. For certain stamps, a cert may be necessary for authentication purposes, whereas for others it may be for condition... or both.

Also, it depends on the market value compared to catalog value. Some stamps are prohibitively expensive to certify compared to what they garner on the market.

For example, let's say you have a stamp that catalogs $5,000. If it is a sound VF copy that you expect could bring $2,500, then it's likely worth expertizing. However, take the same stamp with a fault or two, which might only bring $1,000, and it becomes a bit more iffy of a proposition from a return-on-investment perspective. Why? Because the expertization cost will be the same 5% of Scott regardless of condition.

$250 (plus registered or express mail both ways) is a bit over 10% of the expected return on the first stamp, but over 25% of the second.

Experization is not always cost effective. As a buyer, it then becomes a question of whether you are knowledgeable enough and comfortable in that particular area to risk buying without a cert.

In my case, certain revenues I will buy without certs, as I feel I know enough of the diagnostics, but others (some of the part perfs, 2nd issue RB roulettes), I still insist upon a cert or extension.

How much does your certificate cost? I wouldn't bother except for a new discovery or an item easily faked.

My preference would be to spend $50 on my stamp library than $50 on a certificate, you know, "buy a man a fish and feed him once, teach him to fish and he is fed for a lifetime".