Make Money Selling Stamps

This points to the elephant in the room, that most members have been politely ignoring: expertise. If you want to make money buying and reselling (and I basically just buy - I sell once in a blue moon), you do really need expert knowledge of something. It probably doesn't matter too much, as long as there's at least one other collector out there who might want it.

My avatar provides a perfect case in point. It's SG (and probably Scott, Michel, Yvert and everything else) 1. Mint, it's worth a couple of dollars; used - CTO -



it's common enough, and still worth a couple of dollars. In fact, it's rather hard to split CTOs from genuine usage at Bhor Town, which used exactly the same implement. However, this same stamp geneuinely used from one of the small village post offices



is worth perhaps $100.

Serious expert knowledge can be parlayed into serious profits. Take an area that most collectors avoid like the plague - say early 20th century Iran, due to all the fakes - make yourself an expert in it, and you can make real money in trading.

As far as your Franklin cover, If you got $2 I'd be elated as those are everywhere and usually go without bid as every US collector already has one.

Agree, with the exception of the "looky here what I found in the attic and sold on ebay" no way can one expect to be profitable if one has no or limited knowledge of the product being offered.

I saw statistics where your local drug dealer makes 50 percent profit on his sales..as long as he has a good supplier...he will have a loyal customer base !!

Philb, also they (users) would make sure that ones supplies WERE NOT from down the line because of greed, cutting and mixing.

Too many wanted their needed supply paid for by the next buyer, so they took what they required and got their money back on maybe ONE FIFTH genuine good stuff, if you were lucky, - the rest USELESS crushed/powdered sugar they added to make up the weight/volume.

Isn't this exactly what we are seeing/reading but involving stamps.

ok-- off the drug dealing part and back to stamps...lol
TIME FOR ANOTHER RANT ------How come when it comes to making money on stamps ,the discussion always starts and ends up with the high price blue chips ?
If you look at the stamp business ,you would notice that most of if not 90% of it at the low end ......packets,country collections and various bulk lot type of dealings . THIS IS THE MOST PROFITABLE ,end of the business.
If you think you can buy at a stamp auction a $1,000 item and get $1,500 for it ,think again .It is the dealer who buys a huge consignment bulk lot that ends up breakdown the lot and sells it in pieces that makes the best return on investment .
To give you a example back as a young collector ,I would go to stamp shows and go thru the dealer tables and many had 2 cent mixture books ,I purchased thousand and thousands of them at two cents each and enjoyed myself . Now I look thru e-bay and see those same stamps selling on stock cards or on album pages and their getting bid up to 8 or 10 cents each as part of the lot. There are a few big dealers on ebay even getting much more if they are mounted on album pages even in incomplete sets and a few better sprinkled in .So my thinking is to make a profit in the hobby your better off in the low end .I never heard a stamp dealer compliant about getting stuck with junk but heard a lot about loseing your shirt on special items ........so the lower end is where the profit are ?

I'm pretty sure he's not thinking of giving Siegel Auctions a run for their money. I'd imagine he realizes that the majority of sales are going to be from $1 - $20. ? Blue Chip items just aren't available at will, which is why they are Blue chip items. I think Tony's statement of the Expertise end is already become apparent as 1 lot has been pulled already due to discrepancies over the item being properly identified. Just think of the bad publicity a seller gets here alone for not describing items or lots properly.

It is good to hear things are working for you duncanvr.
I have posted what has happened to us on ebay since we last spoke. It will make some laugh but it is great for us.


As at 21st Jan 2012






9th March 2012

Sales to date: $8,126.48

Transactions: 1697

First ebay Sale: 01/25/2011

Edit: Plus $63.34 out standing. With 46 bids on 45 lots for next week already.

Hi KGV Thanks for your posting. I am up to 90 sales. Just had a good run. So far this month net profit minus all costs $350. I can do better when I retire at Easter. I see people love US Covers Pre 1920s So I got hundreds of them and am selling them cheap, one at a time. I have not had time to list all of them. One box I have has 1300 old covers in it and I just got hold of two more boxes jam packed with many hundreds of covers. As soon as I retire I am going to get stuck into listing. ebay.com and .CA are best places to list by far. The sell market seems to be in items cheaper. I.E. Sell lots of stuff at 4 or 5 bucks and less higher value stuff. Though I just listed a cover with SC2 from 1841, very high value. I feel I also need a mix of other things so I have been trying to list different stuff to attract more customers. Well KGV I hope I can catch up to your $8000 soon. Well done buy the way. Keep me posted on your progress regards Duncan

tonymacg,
You make a very convincing argument, do you not think that knowledge widens your prospective customer base though?

Hi Tonymarc Yes absolutely more knowledge will widen my customer base. And I am learning more things each day. I am seeing some trends and getting a good idea of what some collectors want. For Example Indiana Covers pre 1900 seem very popular, more so than others. Anyway my long term goal will be to have a big customer base and regular items they like to buy, and at good prices. This will all come down to knowledge that I will learn along the way. It all takes time to develop.

Certainly, the more - and more detailed - knowledge you have, the better positioned you'll be to spot the bargain. The trick is to narrow the scope sufficiently that you can master the knowledge required, but not make the scope so narrow that the market is vanishingly small. The market for the Bhor stamps I showed is tiny, but that doesn't worry me, because I'm not a seller. If I was, though, I'd know where to offer them.

There's another side of knowledge, too: knowing what isn't a bargain. I regularly find collectors, and dealers too, hyperventilating over these stamps:



The right hand stamp is the rather rare (£475) 1945 wide setting 2 Anna stamp of Barwani, SG 35aB; the left hand stamp is the rather common (£3.75) narrow setting 2 Anna, SG 35A. They're easy to tell apart when you see them together, but not so easy if you've never seen the rare stamp. Of course, everyone who finds a 2 Anna immediately thinks it's the rare type. Some pay for the rare stamp, and end up with the common one. Deep knowledge can save you from losing money and looking very silly into the bargain.

Good luck to you Duncan.

Given the cost of ebay increasing, I would approach it by offering loss leaders on ebay and have a dedicated website of my own for direct marekting to people who buy lower quality material on ebay. This gives you a client list to whom you can market and more importantly find out what you should be buying for them. Wants lists take a bit of managing but offering a client directly what he has asked you for will get your head up above the crowd.

If you have 100 covers and after all expenses achieve a mark up of 100%, you only start to make money ater 50 sales are made.

After much trouble with listing $3.65 for registered mail in Australia and $2.35 for mailing out side Australia we finally phased out mailing cost yesterday.
We were carrying a full explanation on how the mailing costs worked in our description area but very few people read it. Even when we were asked about combined mailing cost by a buyer and reply that ebay will send an automatic invoice with a mailing cost for every stamp and nobody can stop this happening but please wait until we invoice you and it will have the correct mailing charge on it for you. We were still receiving many angry emails per week.
This was upsetting my wife greatly because she was spending so much time trying to avoid this problem.

So by adding 20c to 50c extra cost to our listings and charging no mailing cost the bids coming in are unbelievable. Normally at this time of the week we would have 2 or 5 bids on our auctions for next week but today we have 56 already.

I do not think we will loose on mailing as it is now. As strange as this might sound. It looks like we will make money out of mailing. I looked long and hard in the answer forum on ebay and what was said there is 110% correct. The simpler the listing is the better it is for the buyer. We will truly see what happens in the next couple of weeks.
Always Happy Stamping. John

Hi John (KGV), interesting you say the invoice is automatic sent by ebay, actually mine are manually sent. I believe you can change the invoice setting in preferences within your ebay account. I prefer to do all my invoicing manually. I have had no issue's with $2.35 postage, the customers know I am located in Australia so can expect two week waiting for their items. But so far all buyers have been happy in some case getting the item in a few days. One customer in USA even said it was quicker to order from me rather than from his local area! 56 sales already wow. I just sold 16 in 2 days. I hope my store grows like yours. Regards Duncan