Are These Perforations Possible?

So I ask, does being a PAID messenger make it any less harmful to the buyers? Or is it a bad thing? I guess I don't understand WHY that is even a valid point? And I am only paid for my expert service work - NOT one penny for all of the work I have ever done, or do now, in trying to rid online auctions of problematic material. Every report I've ever made, whether on the Stamp Community Watch, on the ebay EMR Program, for Stamp Smarter or simply independently, all has been without being paid one red penny.

Bill, I am going to ask you not to try to infer more about what I think than what I directly say. Truth be told, I am not DEFENDING any system here, I am challenging the adequacy of the case you have been trying to make. But it would help if we not take such big bites of the question, so let me stick with what I have quoted.

Would you agree that one has to be careful about the question of moral accountability? Justice must be preserved.

Do you recognize in your statements I quote here, Bill, that you seem to hold the seller to a higher standard of moral accountability than the buyer. I.e., the seller may not sell without good knowledge of the material, but the buyer may buy without it. From a moral standpoint, why is that? If the seller has a moral obligation to know how to describe a stamp with knowledge and precision, does not the buyer have an equal moral obligation to know how to do the same to protect his own interests?

In the house analogy, should we say that I am not allowed to sell my house until I know how to detail its flaws? Or will an inspection report from an authorized third party suffice? What if the buyer does not know how to read such a report? When is the buyer accountable for knowing what questions to ask?

Justice cuts equally in both directions.

essayk
In my opinion, the buyer definitely has a responsibly, this is why I beat the education drum. I have little sympathy for those buyers who are driven by greed and ego by thinking they can pick out "bargains" without the required experience and education.

But matters are NOT made any better by catalogs using pricing that in no way actually reflect true market values. Philately doesn't help itself by treating information as a commodity to be sold. These things make it more difficult for a person to understand what is and isn't a good buy and much different than buying a house.

Nor do people buy a house from two images posted online, at the very least people do a walk through. They may not be able to determine if the house has a radon issue of has other hidden defects but they can at least determine many flaws or potential problems.

And yes, NY Stamps does always post a image of the back of the stamp. And it always a low resolution, small little image that barely shows their "professional" repairs. But this doesn't speak to the amount of misidentified material. What is happening is clear to me. They are doing large amounts of consignment. And this is where the ethical decision must be made. He has a consigner wanting to use his service and is insisting the stamp is real, has no faults, or should bring X amount of dollars. He may fully know that the item is not what the consigner thinks it is or that it has faults that should be called out. But he does not do this and instead simply accepts the consignment and lists it. If there is a problem, he will simply refund the money and not pay the consigner; no skin off his back.

I came to this understanding after watching their response to over 100 Stamp Smarter reviews. At first I could not understand why the responded to some requests for listing improvements but ignored others. It did not trend in any obvious way (dollar amount, time remaining, etc.) But then it dawned on me, imagine having to update a listing (an update that might make a sale less likely or at least bring less dollars) on consigned material. Do you invest more time by trying to communicate with the consigner before making the update? Do you make the update and then deal with an unhappy consigner? I think what happens is that these are the listings where no updates are made.

By dancing on the sharp edge of ethics, some sellers "describe" an item with an image and put the burden on the buyer to figure out any flaws, faults, and even the correct identification. I believe that buyers DO have a responsibility to do their homework. For example, I have absolutely no beef with Kevin asking 10 times market value for that blank error he has listed. It is his material and he can ask what he wants. A buyer has a responsibility to understand market value and should be educated enough to know if it is worth it to them or not. But this is different than a seller misidentifying a stamp because of a watermark or paper type. This is different than not mentioning a fault which doesn't show up well in an image.

Do I have sympathy for a buyer who is willing to lay out thousands of dollars on a stamp without a cert? No. Do I have sympathy for a buyer who will bid on an item when the attached cert calls it a fake or forgery? No. But I do have sympathy for a buyer who bids on an item where a failed cert is not disclosed. As I previously stated; there IS an ethical line that can be drawn somewhere. We should care about this because unethical selling hurts our hobby.
Don

A very good question. I would say that, yes he does to a certain extent, but isn't that "extent" dependent on his amount of experience in the hobby? Let's just stick, for the moment, to that fake #519 I showed you here. To a more seasoned collector and dealer it screams "fake", but does it scream the same thing to a relatively new collector? Maybe that collector doesn't own a Scott catalog? Maybe - even if he does - and even if he reads the "warnig" about buying fake 519s - maybe his skill level won't allow him to recognize reperfing. So let's say these things are true and this buyer "trusts" that because there are NO faults listed, and the seller looks OK and his return policy is good, so he bids and wins. Does that act, as decscribed, constitute an immoral irresponsible act on his part? Hell no. He did his best with the level of experience he possesses. To demand or expect any more of him, because of his personal limititations, is 100% incorrect. Comparing his level of responsibility to a seller with over 140,000 feedback (!) is wrong, wrong, wrong.

But that seller has been told numerous times what to look for on fake 519s, but knowingly chooses to list it anyway........ I'll let others conclude what they want. I know what *I* conclude!

Not to be forgotten, weeds like this have been offered at stamp bourses for 50 years [or a lot more] by sellers along the whole spectrum of reliability [except for a handful at the top]. The problem is not new or isolated to ebay. Even the APS StampStore is not immune. Buyers without education are asking for trouble in this hobby and in life.
ebay just makes the situation more visible/transparent. You can be darned sure that sellers with thousands of feedback know the difference between a real 519 and a fake [see also 315's and flat plate coils, and regums]. They would never pay real money for a questionable one. They get them in collections and try to fob them off to dumbbunnies. It has been going on long before ebay.
The question I would ask is why would a dealer play these games - have they no self respect?

Don,

I am trying to help us deal with this in an orderly way. You did not speak to the questions I raised in response to Bill. Would you consider responding first to the questions I raised, and then add a couple of related questions of your own?

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. (Gen 3:6)

When an adult knowingly chooses to act beyond his/her experience s/he is morally accountable for the outcome. It's an old story.

In the stamp market there are real consequences for the errors of the uninformed - a price that others sometimes have to pay, as when the stamps in an album are in the wrong places. Dealers discount the purchase price to partially compensate themselves for the time it will take to straighten the mess out. To say, " He did his best with the level of experience he possesses." does not fix the problem. And for just that reason it is morally irresponsible for a fledgling collector to venture into a market for which he is ill prepared.

It sounds from your statement like we can't agree on that. Is that correct?

Essayk,
Sorry, I'm home after three weeks in the hospital and still on some heavy meds. As such I probably should not be posting but allow me to try to clarify my response.

You asked, "Would you agree that one has to be careful about the question of moral accountability?" Yes, I concur. Any transaction requires a meeting of the minds; both parties have to be aware of the terms and conditions and have responsibilities.

To paraphrase another of your questions, 'does the seller have a greater moral obligation then the buyer?' In my opinion no but that is missing the point, the point is that there IS a moral obligation. A buyer has a moral obligation to make his/her buying decision properly, and then they have a moral obligation to follow the supplied terms and conditions to close the sale (i.e. pay in timely manner, supply shipping info, etc. A seller also has many moral obligations including properly IDing the item he/she is selling. It extends to properly describing the item and publishing the terms and conditions of the sale. I consider a seller 'bad' when they fail to do this. For example, a seller who does not disclose that any returns don't go to where the item was shipped from but rather off-shore and into another country. This kind of BS is simply beyond anything that anyone can defend in my opinion.

There is a chicken-egg aspect to this; the seller sets the T&Cs so the first step falls upon the seller. They are the ones listing the item and seeking to sell their goods. The buyer also has obligations but those are built upon the original T&Cs. The buyer assumes, for example, that if he has to return something it will go back to where it shipped from. But when a return is called for, the buyer suddenly changes the T&Cs to 'you have to pay for an insured return to another country'. In y mind that's unethical, the seller has failed the 'meeting of the minds' pre-sale understanding. Can you argue that a seller should have asked for clarification of the return policy? I guess but I don't buy it. Could you argue that the buyer should have dug deeper into researching the seller's reputation? Again, you can make that point but I don't buy it.

There is a line that can be drawn for ethical behavior for both the seller and the buyer. We may argue over exactly where this line may fall; but I think we can agree that it is there.
Don

My gripes with nystamps are basically the same as what's been mentioned, generally low-res pictures (not scans) with no written description. I have bought stamps from them before (no US, however) with generally decent results, but if there's any doubt whatsoever as to quality, I won't bid. From looking at the pictures, anything that potentially could be a fault, I assume that it is in fact a fault. I don't give them the benefit of the doubt and take a chance on it. If it's bad enough for them to actually state some kind of fault, you can bet the fault is huge and inescapable, not something little and hard to spot.

That looks like a reasonable approach to me too, Artful. They have a quick turnover policy that is expedient for them, and with high volume a lot gets missed. Their [implied] advice is pretty straightforward: Bid on what you see and ONLY on what you see. I believe questions are permitted before the end of sale, but they haven't helped me very much.

So if I don't get a clear look at what I'm after, and I don't want to risk a possible return, I don't bid.

I don't know exactly how they run their operation and how many people they have working for them, but they have something around 500 or so auctions closing every day. I'd guess they probably do it in assembly-line fashion, with different people doing the cataloging, photographing and listing, with each step of the process designed to go as quickly as possible. I'm sure this is a big reason they don't do scans as they can take several pictures in the time it takes to do one decent scan. And I'm sure the people doing the cataloging (there almost has to be more than one) are under pressure to get their job done quickly as well, with little to no time for further examination. I'm sure they've done the math that dealing with a few returns and dissatisfied customers is cheaper than hiring another person or two to examine and describe lots more carefully. I'm not saying it's the morally correct thing to do, but I'm sure it makes sense from a business perspective.

All this being said, the marketplace has set certain rules, and this seller is not the only one, by far, that plays fast and loose with them.

I believe these are still the current ebay guidelines for selling stamps:



I think the seller has the harder time claiming the moral high ground as opposed to the buyer. A business model that makes it inconvenient to follow the rules is a failed business model. (Okay, that's naive; it should be a failed business model.)

I anticipate the "everyone else does it, too" defense and I'll even allow that it might be valuable to have a place for this business model, but until ebay changes its policies, ebay is (supposedly) not that place.

If my information on ebay's policies is dated, then so be it...

Indeed Cjd your post is 100% correct in all aspects IMO. So I would ask Essayk that, in light of this ebay rule when listing stamps (and yes, as far as I know, they are exactly the same as they have been for a few years) is a seller offering a fake 519 ethically following that rule? Since he's been told numerous times how to identify a fake 519, is he acting ethically? And I'm not buying for one second the "assembly-line" excuse.

To me, this is a pretty simple question. Either someone (whether buyer or seller) exhibits ethical conduct in excercising the transaction or he doesn't. I don't equate a buyer's ignorance as being a legitimate reason that makes it then OK to screw him. But I DO equate a seller not revealing everything he either knows or can reasonably determine to be unethical.

And I've always believed that everyone possesses a certain amount of ethics and they will or will not cross a given line they have set for themself. For some, the bar is higher than others. What one person feels is the "line" may not (will not!) agree with the next guy. It's only when society or an industry sets "rules" for being considered ethical, whether in the form of a written/published law or a written/published Code, such as, for example, the APS Code of Ethics. A member must abide by them, subject to penalty if a complaint is filed and the Board of Vice Presidents agrees. I think virtually anyone might read the APS COE and come away from it pretty much agreeing with the document's contents (it is available on their website.) There is also an "Online Seller's" set of rules. Since there are no "laws" to govern ethics in our industry, shouldn't we rely on something like the APS COE for our guidelines? Read them. Then you tell me if someone who knowingly offers something for sale that he reasonably should know is not genuine or has faults that are not clear in the picture, etc is acting ethically?

I've got to agree with Bill regarding the excuse of 'they have high volume'. We have not been talking about lots or collections. We haven't been talking about the practice of offering a higher value stamp singularly, getting called out on it, so then pulling it from sale only to have it become part of another "lot" where it is still misidentified. Mostly we have been talking about selling individual stamps called out by Scott number. If you have time to pull out stamps and sell them singularly, then you have the time to properly ID and described them.

If they have such high volume than they should be able to purchase the required resources to do the job right. You train people, you purchased high speed imaging devices, you do what it takes. If you allow for 'oh they are high volume' than virtually anything can be excused. "Gee, sorry I couldn't get my homework done because I had so much to do last night" becomes legitimate. (I don't know how anyone else grew up but that never flew for me.) Additionally, many companies have successfully become large and mange to handle high volumes properly. Places like Walmart and Home Depot added infrastructure and resources to support their huge size and high volumes. No, my mental image of NY Stamps is more like a small group of people, some of whom are not hobbyists, handling large amounts of consigned material. While they put effort into the material they actually purchase and resell, the majority is lower margin consignments which they HAVE to not spend much time or effort on to make a profit. I could be wrong but the situation certainly appears to be something like this.
Don

SUN Philately, NY purchase before I learned about SCADS many years ago, far outside return window...

I am glad to have found this site. I have this stamp among others, that I am sure an experienced philatelist could discern immediately. I live in Wyoming and am unaware of any collectors or clubs within hundreds of miles, so ebay was a great way to fill my album as a hobbyist. Now I have several questionable stamps that are on the borderline of needing certification.

I am wondering if there is a post that members of this group offer advice as to weather a stamp would be worth the postage, cost of cert., time, etc., to send away for certification, and at what point would a graded cert. be worth the extra charge.

You guys (and gals) are awesome!!
Thanks, and Howdy! from Wyoming, USA.

Dennis (D307Menace) on ebay.
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions on my offerings, I am aware of my ignorance of the finer points of this excellent hobby, but I certainly have an open mind and willingness to learn as well as a commitment to be an asset to the hobby rather than a liability. I strive to be fair, open and honest...