Tariffs As They Might Affect The US Market

And posts like that can magically disappear. And if those who post like that are not careful, they can also magically disappear.

It would help if we could keep politics out of the forum. I come here to discuss stamps.

I agree with blcjr and PostmasterGS. There's only so much to be said about whether the prices of stamps will go up before a thread goes belly up.

As I read the Spink email, their opinion is that the country of manufacture (origin) is what matters. So a Chinese stamp bought from a London auction would receive the 104% China rate not the 10% UK rate.

A worldwide collection might get covered under a universal 10% rate. If true, there may be a loophole, add a GB stamp to your purchase of $1000 of Chinese stamps and you have a mixed-country collection to qualify for the 10% rate.

Back to the "Heading 4907" and "Section 9704 rules, I don't understand if those are overrides to the blanket 10% rate, or if those are the base tariffs and the 10% (or 104%) is added above and beyond the base per-product rates. For example coffee is "Free" and Tea is 6.4% according to sections 0901 and 0902, yet I hear warnings about coffee prices about to go up. Is the new rate for coffee "0%" plus 10% (e.g. Columbia) = 10%, or does the 0% rate for coffee override the universal country rate and we are back to 0%? And tea imported from China, will the tariff be 6.4% or 104% or 110.4%?

Of course these are rhetorical questions and mostly hypothetical because the rules are changing by the hour.

Back to stamps, I will be very curious to know how other international auction houses (and eBay sellers) respond to this. Not that I am planning any > $800 purchases but in case the de minimus exception goes away from other places I might purchase from. Google fed me this, "the de minimis exemption is ending for goods from China and Hong Kong, effective May 2, 2025, and is slated to end for other countries once systems are in place."

no those are the base rates - the duties set by the Executive Orders are added to the base rate - again see Chapter 99 of the HTS document (if you want to read 700+ pages of legalese).



this isn't like a US sales tax. Payment is collected by the customs broker from the importer. If you ever listen to a Siegel auction, one of the announcements before every auction that is that the lots will be shipped with an accurate customs declaration. When I purchase lots from an auction house in Europe there is a customs declaration attached to the package stating the value of the shipment and a description of the contents. The shipping company acts as the customs broker. Prior to this week, stamps were zero rated, so there was no duty due and the shipping company (say FedEx) just delivered the package. I don't know how shipping companies are dealing with this, but the normal process is that the customs broker pays the duty and collects the duty (and their fee) from the recipient.

add on - the shipping company may hold the package and not enter the package through customs until the importer (the recipient) pays the duties

You will not only pay the tariff, but also a service charge for them to clear the package. It all adds up.

So per their interpretation, if a U.S. collector purchases Chinese stamps (or Chinese coins, currency, etc.) from *ANY* other country, we should be paying a 104% tariff, regardless of the age of said item?

That's as dumb as eBay's ban against selling 100+ year old Iranian and Cuban stamps.

They defy logic and actually flout the intent.

Correct. I haven't read the law myself but what news pundits have suggested is that the rule about country of manufacture/origin matters so that the Chinese (for example) don't "launder" their exports through Penguin Island and receive the favorable 10% tariff on imports rather than the 104% tariff if the goods were imported directly from China.




Agreed. In the Art world, it is understood that 100+ and 250+ year old art and antiques get more favorable tariff treatment than modern art. But as seen in this thread, how stamps are treated is ambiguous with multiple interpretations of the same policy. Maybe stamps are excluded from tariffs completely, or maybe they fall under the country's 25% baseline rate since stamps aren't specifically excluded from the new tariffs in Appendix II like energy, pharmaceuticals, and lumber...

It's kindof like the income tax code. You can either have a simple flat tax for everyone, or you can have a complicated tax code with separate rules and exceptions for every business and industry and incentive that gets lobbied into the law. It is hard to have it both ways.

We will have to wait and see. Personally, I'm withholding any international purchases for now because I expect getting anything through customs just got a lot more complicated.

Wise move. Not stamp-related, but unfortunately I'm caught with an existing preorder for some boutique 4K steelbook sets, placed several months ago, where the product is shipped from China. I've reached out to find out what their plans are (under-declare value for customs, hold shipments until things settle down, allow cancellations, etc.)

Happy to never have to be concerned about such things.

Don't know about you but these are very exciting days for a financial market trader . Can't believe how good my trading account is doing . Never voted or cared who sits in the White House. Just looking for market opportunities and watching stamp auction prices slide .

We have three major stamp auctions in the next 30 days . At Schuyler Rumsey, Cherrystone and Daniel Kelleher . will give us notice how telling the stamp markets are going for 2025 .

Looking forward to tomorrow when 10 stamp auction lots are received by me ,can't believe all ten were won on the opening bid ,never ever happen to me or anybody else . But a sad statement to the stamp community .

Sad statement due to the =====
Crazy stock market
Falling interest rates
Ageing of stamp collectors
Oversea buyers upset with US policy
Too much good material being dumped on the market .

SPQR - Yes - I rarely buy from the US, but my last Amazon US purchase some time ago included an amount taken by Amazon to cover UK duty. For earlier Amazon purchases, I'd paid the duty when collecting my item from the post office.

Amazon operates their own fleet of planes, so they might have acted as their own customs broker

Is no else bothered, as I am, by their condescending tone in saying "Many of us were health experts during Covid, geopolitical experts during the war between Russia and Ukraine, and now we are all international commerce experts!"

No, sirs, very few of us considered ourselves "experts" at all. What we were were ordinary, thoughtful people who had opinions. Talk about alienating your customers.

Yes. I rewarded them with an unsubscribe. The message tipped me over the edge after a couple of other past negative dealings. It would have been so easy for them to say, "We are in consultations with solicitors and will update our customers on the applicable surcharges just before each auction …" but apparently found the need to "get in front of" the issue irresistible. They have significant auctions on April 29 and may be freaking out about the impact on their US customers.