Are Ebay Sales Indicative Of Existing Stamp Populations?

I hope I'm phrasing this question, right. Basically excluding rare stamps (say w/ a value over $1000), are the stamps that are sold on ebay indicative of what stamps are out there for US Classic stamps? For example, I think that I read somewhere that a lot of stamp dealers just dump their "junk" on ebay, and keep all of their quality material for their store or private clientele. Is this true or is what is for sale on ebay for a given period generally a good snapshot of what is out there for a particular stamp? For example, if I am looking for a classic US stamp that is original gum, not hinged and well centered, and I don't find any such examples currently for sale on ebay or in the sales history on ebay, is that higher quality stamp actually scarce? Or could there still actually be thousands upon thousands of these stamps out there in dealer inventory that dealers simply do not put on ebay? I realize that I could look at stamp price guides, and the scarcity price for mint XF stamps should probably roughly correlate to actual scarcity, but I was wondering if that was actually true. That is, maybe that price just correlates to non hinged original gum stamps, but doesn't take centering into consideration much (or other things such as the stamp wasn't at the end of the sheet or booklet so it has perforations on all four sides instead of just three, things like that). I'm a relatively new collector so if any experienced collector could give their thoughts on this, that would be great! Thanks!

You may get different answers from dealer to dealer. In my case my #1 priority is customer satisfaction. My mentality is that if I take care of my customers the "making money" part takes care of itself. I sell my BEST stuff on ebay with only few exceptions for special items. I purposely sell my "junk" in venues in which the buyers will have the opportunity to see, touch, and smell the stamp(s)in person. This way they know exactly what they are getting before they make a purchase.

With regard to the "population" question I wouldn't venture a guess. I just wanted to throw in my two cents on the 'selling junk on ebay' idea.

glchen, Greetings:

You really want to look at completed sales. The stuff you see listed is, of course, the stuff that has not yet sold. Could very well be that it is mostly the junk that sits & sits on ebay ... for-ev-er ...

While dealers want to sell their stuff, they might hold something off-Bay because:

- They know that a certain customer is looking for whatevers, and will be at the whoever show/bourse, and will pay a good price for the item in-hand. (One often overhears "I have to show it to one guy, and then I can sell it to you"; sometimes, this will even be true; other times, it will just be a way of whetting the appetite before the haggling begins.)

- They know that IRL Auctions is holding a 'purposed' (themed?) sale at some point in the future, and they will get their best price in that environment.

- Lastly (for me), they want to see the whites of the buyer's eyes (to coin a phrase), because they want to gauge the buyer's interest, and otherwise apply their other selling skills, so as to get their best price. (A BIN does not let you know if the customer would have paid more, and an ebay auction only captures bids from the bidders who see the item that week ... hard to imagine but, sometimes, people have other things to do.)

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

You ask some interesting questions, your going to get some interesting answers . Let me answer as a worldwide collector and it is a answer others are not going to like . ebay is at the bottom of the food chain and yes some good material will show up there on occasion but you can't build a specialized collection hunting on ebay. To buy good collectible material you end up going to the five or six major stamp auction houses. Because that is who is getting the better material on consignment .
ebay is a land of bottom feeders and buyers hoping to find misidentified stuff which shows up there. If your in the higher income range and have a life beyond stamps your not spending hundreds or thousands of hours looking for collectible purchases.I want to work on building a decent worldwide collection not screw around dealing with searching, mailings, feedback and bad sellers ,and people who are playing games of finding bargins and low bidding and lots of stupid questions .

This is slightly off-topic, but why is anyone here referring to stamps as "junk." Please define "junk." - Is it based on country? Price? Condition? If it truly is trash, why not throw it away? I have had common stamps that are so beat and ragged that I have tossed them. They are, indeed, "junk" and are treated as such, not recycled to be sold anywhere.

I am not targeting anyone here - I have seen this term used many times in this forum and I am confused. Why would a community of collectors interested in the hobby use this term?

At one time I was spending anywhere from 50 cents to $10 on some individual stamps. For me, these were hefty sums. In a discussion with a dealer about some stamps, he practically sneered and snickered at what I was buying (from him!) Needless to say, I have never spent another dime with that man.

I am not trying to cause a fuss. Just looking for an explanation.

Just a note on how some people buy stamps -------I fly across the country ,rent a car and pay for a hotel room for a few days .I spend two or three days viewing the material. I see the dealers looking at the lots and the ebay sellers with their notepads and catalogs figuring out what they can sell it for ,viewing the material .Before the auction I make the rounds of the different viewers who spend hours looking and pricing the stuff . I give them my standard remark ,that lot is going home with me after the auction .During the auction I study the bidders and what is selling . I bid for my collection ,not what is it worth for resale today or what it is worth next year .The lot will be with me for 10 or 20 years so I am looking at rareity of the material not resale .
After the auction and made my purchases for the year ,on the flight back to Chicago I try to think which job or jobs over the next 10 days will return the money for my purchases . The lot will sit under my desk unopen until the winter comes and the hard work of ripping out a fast food restaurant parking lot and repaving it is long forgotten but the boxes are under the desk as soon as the snow starts .

to Centerstage

I might use the word "junk" in the context of country - or price - or condition - or global popularity - or even how much work it would be for me to list the item on ebay, and so on. I also use the expression "crummy food". Of course both terms are very subjective, meaning different things to different people. When I do encounter REAL junk it ends up in the dumpster, or getting flushed. Reminding me of a scribbling I once saw on a restroom wall: "Flush twice - it's a long way to (fill in a place you don't like)".

In my opinion 'junk' is material that falls into one of these categories;

- Material that has been picked through by collectors and is being resold. Some 'collections' or 'lots' have been through this cycle several time, each time it loses the better material and the remaining material can be considered by many as junk.

- Material that a dealer deems not worth spending time on, has not sold well, or that he does not want to park on his regular customers.

- Questionable material that a seller hopes to unload without having to answer for.
Don

There are FAR, FAR more of every level and issue of stamps out there than show up on ebay. In every condition. Some dealers only post their lesser material, and some their best stock, but there is plenty more of almost all of it. From millions more of the common stamps to thousands more of the less common ones.

There are certainly some interesting opinions on this topic - and I expect many more to come. To answer your question of whether or not ebay is indicative of the (classic) US stamp market, my opinion is 'yes'.

Let me put it to you another way - The vast majority of classic US stamps are not rare and are, therefore, widely available on ebay. We can split hairs on what to call rare, but my opinion, which is formed by 17 years of buying stamps on ebay, rare stamps are NOT high face-value commemoratives, 1869s, etc, but should include the following:

- Classics with a low distribution or short service life
- Mint Classics that are 100% sound with OG (with the exception of most of the everyday, domestic-rate stamps. EG - 3c values)
- Plate and color varities (EG: Scott #5, 78C)
- Highly-graded Classics in almost every classic stamp issued (95 or above)

In the first three items I mentioned, rarity is reflected in cat values. The last item might be a bit more ambiguous and controversial, but prices realized definitely lend credence to my opinion.

There are deals to be had on ebay for exceptional stamps - varieties, uncommon classics, and the occasional rare stamp, but the truth is most of the aforementioned stamps are not listed with 99c starting bids, and rarely sell for bargain prices.

Rest assured, you can build an excellent specialized collection of stamps buying off ebay.

Brian

The Internet has fundamentally changed the stamp marketplace in a couple of respects. When brick and mortar stamp shops dominated the marketplace, many dealers offered stamps at a fixed percentage of the Scott catalog value or used some other formula resulting in the sale of the best stamps. As stores closed, residual stocks found their way to the Internet marketplace. Until then, no one really appreciated that most classic stamps are off center and that so many are damaged. While nicely centered sound copies remain elusive and hard to find, downward price pressure continues widening the gap between the Scott catalog value and prices for off center or damaged. Unfortunately, Scott has sometimes misinterpreted marketplace results and lowered the price of sound very fine stamps. The price of the best stamps is increasing while prices of lesser stamps continues to drop.

High labor costs has contributed to the demise of the marketplace for less expensive stamps. It is difficult to profitably sell a stamp for less than about $25 on ebay unless the seller is willing to forego the Top Rated Seller Discount. Sellers of inexpensive stamps either place no value on their time or make their profit on shipping. High ebay fees have forced many of them to list on less expensive venues like bidStart.

For Internet auctions, ebay remains the only game in town for small sellers unless intensive marketing efforts are made to build a good customer base. Unfortunately, ebay auctions seem to realize only about one third of retail or the wholesale value for the best stamps. Lesser stamps sell for a higher percentage of retail with the worst stamps sometimes selling for more than they are worth if presented in groups. As a result, the best stamps on ebay are offered as fixed price listings.

As stamp shows continue to decline, the number of better stamps offered on the Internet will continue to increase. However, the percentage of really nice stamps in collections seems to be declining because of alterations, deterioration and mishandling.

Clark

" Classics with a low distribution or short service life
- Mint Classics that are 100% sound with OG (with the exception of most of the everyday, domestic-rate stamps. EG - 3c values)
- Plate and color varities (EG: Scott #5, 78C)
- Highly-graded Classics in almost every classic stamp issued (95 or above)"

Even for these, the survival rate can vary greatly. And there are a fair number of hinged OG classics out there, although finding really nice ones can be very tough in many cases.
Classic shades are often volatile, and can and do change upon exposure to the elements, even when no deliberate fraud is involved. And 10 experts might give 8 different shades for the same stamp, so it is a dangerous collecting area at the best of times.
Since #5 is a major number, it is really not fair to call it a "plate variety" in the usual philatelic use of the phrase. Clearly those types all come from variations in the plates, but as major numbers they are stamps unto themselves rather than "varieties".
Actual plate varieties are probably among the scarcest overall; many are VERY hard to find, but because many catalog very little people assume they are there to be found easily if they wanted to bother. Since most do not, demand for many of them is fairly low, so the catalog prices rarely change. But collecting every US postage and revenue double transfer and foreign entry would be a daunting task even if money was no object.
Since there is no genuine way to know how many classics have not been graded, it is tough to know for sure which are actually rare and which are just fairly scarce. Plus grading is in the eyes of the beholder anyway, despite the claims to the contrary.

Trying to pigeonhole ebay as either "good" or "bad" is a mistake from the get go. There are gems on ebay and there is trash. The difficult thing is wading through the trash to find the gems, made a more difficult task when ebay removed wildcard searches.

In my opinion, the more esoteric your collecting preferences, the greater value ebay can be, although more labor and patience may be required. I also wouldn't recommend ONLY using ebay. I go to shows, I buy at auction, I buy from certain dealers directly online, I use the APS online store, I get APS circuits. ebay is only one of the resources I use... although it is a very LARGE portion of my overall buying; my collection would be missing some very scarce and beautiful pieces were it not for ebay.

To get back to the OP's original question, no I don't think that current listings or even completed results are necessarily indicative of populations or sales percentages. They are merely a snapshot of what was offered during a brief interval in time. The time of year can greatly impact these resulta (fewer buyers and listings during summer months vs. the "holiday shopping season"). Also, the scarcer the item, and thus the lower the population shown, the less accurate any results will be.

Add to all that the various and sundry misidentifications, misrepresentations, and bidiots that appear, and IMO you end up with very little accurate data for any given stamp.

Given that ebay is open to dealers, collectors, folks that " inherited" collections and garage sale / flea market shoppers, etc., the quality and range of material and prices are all over the place. As has been said, some dealers put their lower quality material to move on ebay, but others put their best stuff, or all of their stuff on ebay, so there is no standard qualifier for ebay material.

I generally put all of my material (or at least a wide representation) on ebay, some very high quality, some mixed, some fairly esoteric/uncommon. As some others have said, there are good finds and great buying opportunities still on ebay, one just has to do their homework.

I agree with Clark that much of the lower quality classic material is found, and the pricing is much lower than catalog pricing, as you would hope/expect. The higher quality material gets better prices, but is still typically at 1/2 to 1/3 of the condition-referenced pricing or less.

Regarding ebay sales and stamp populations, I think ebay is somewhat representative of the statistical population, with exception to some of the very scarce or specialist items, which generally still are sold at brick/mortar auction or private treaty. Of course, some scarce items can show up on ebay, but as with other higher quality items, will not typically realize what they would at brick/mortar auction or private treaty. SO, also meaning that I don't think ebay represents the stamp population PRICING as well, except for expected faulty material, in which I think ebay does quite well!

One becomes familiar over time with different sellers on ebay and learns to gauge the price commensurate with the quality received, and, of course the sellers to avoid and not compare with for "reasonable" pricing.

As stated by orstampman, ebay is open to everyone so it's possible to get everything under the sun on a global scale from the cheapest of the cheap to great rarities. Didn't a classic U.S. Franklin stamp go from about $10 starting bid to over $30,000 grand a couple years back. It hard for something like to happen anywhere else, but ebay.

As for myself, I will sell anything I get my hands on through ebay regardless of the value just because I don't have any other venue - at least one that can compare to ebay. I feel like a lot of other sellers are in the same boat. Traditional means of selling stamps are dwindling to varying degrees depending on your location and means. A number of traditional stamp dealers have included ebay as a means of selling as attendance at the shows is dismal. One would be lucky to make enough to cover the $35 table fee at some shows. It's just that bad. As time goes by, I feel that more and more of all types of material will appear on ebay.

Thankyou, glchen, and all who have commented so far. This is a very informative thread.