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Rest in Peace
Canada
6750 Posts |
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Qutoed from the Delcampe newsletter received via email. My quoting the Delcampe Newsletter email here has removed all of their bold formating and links to a Poll and to the Gold club. Please sign in to Delcampe and see their Community D-News for the original communications. http://www.delcampe.net/page/announ...guage,E.html Quote:Dear Members, Every day in between 100.000 and 150.000 new collectibles are offered on Delcampe. In this diversity we can find modest items as well as rare and invaluable objects. The other side of the coin: items for which there is a great interest find themselves hidden in the middle of all the less rare and attractive items. As a consequence of this, increasingly more members are asking us to improve the global quality of the items proposed on the website. We understand this legitimate request. We find it very important that our members appreciate our website and that they feel well on it. It is for this reason that we try to improve the website every day. To meet this justified need, we have decided to undertake a big project with you on the whole of the website: “Sane Listings”. This project aims to improve the global quality of available items and will happen in several phases spread over a total of two years. Presentation of the Project: "Sane listings" First stage: Fixed fee charged to the seller for each item sold Today, we announce the first stage to you which will start September 1st. Its objective is to limit the sale of items of too little value or for which there is too little interest. We are aware that these items can bring happiness to many collectors, but there are too many of them in the categories. This burdens our servers, makes searches slower and makes browsing of the website tiresome at times for buyers. As a first step we will charge sellers a fixed fee of 0,15 EUR (0,18 USD/ 0,12 GBP/ 0,18 CHF/ 0,18 CAD) for each sold item. These are of course not insertion fees. Putting up for sale will remain free of charge for members, a fee will only be charged for sold items. This fixed rate will be calculated once a month, like our commission fee (which remains unchanged). Our last change of rates dates back to more than 4 years ago.These additional means will be used to improve the quality of the whole of the website (new features, more advertizing for the website, better services, etc.) Of course, items of lesser value still have a place on our website, since we are a website for collectors and we are aware that these items bring hapiness to some of them. However, we advise sellers of these items to group them into batches. Our team remains at your disposal for advice or help (especially concerning your low value items). In principle, this first stage will be the only stage of the project which has an obligatory financial aspect. In time, when several stages will have been put in work, it will be much more pleasant for buyers to browse through the website in search of news items for their collection. In turn, the sellers will appreciate the fact that their sales are better respresented and thus more attractive. We are also aware that this change will have an impact on our statistics related to the number of items (on sale, sold monthly, etc.). However, we know that this will improve your daily experience on our website and this is what matters most to us. Click here to see our actual rates Future stages... Express your opinion! This first stage will of course not be sufficient to improve the quality of the listings. This is why we have other ideas in store for the future. Some ideas which are under consideration for future stages of this project are the following: the possibility for a buyer to exclude the sales of a certain seller in a listing, automatic closure of sales which have not received any visits for a certain period of time, an automatic price reduction for items fulfilling certain conditions, the insertion of at least one picture, changing unsold auctions to fixed price sales, etc. As you can see, there are many ideas for the future of this project. However, we find it very important to have input from our members. This is why we started a new poll. In it you can express your ideas for improving the quality of items offered on the website. We'd like to hear everyone's opinion: both sellers and buyers. Help us by commenting our ideas or by proposing your own. See you soon... on http://www.delcampe.net ! Quote:
Club+ Gold advantages
Our Club+ Gold members will only need to pay a fixed fee of 0,10 EUR (0,12 USD/ 0,08 GBP/ 0,12 CHF/ 0,12 CAD).
Thanks to this reduction Club+ Gold members will start to break-even at little less than one hundred sold items per month
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Rest in Peace
Canada
6750 Posts |
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Copied from Delcampe's D-News. Quote:
Softening of the fee changes
Dear Delcampe Seller,
You have received or you will receive in the hours that follow an e-mail announcing our fee changes, as a part of our project "Sane Listings".
The decisions we took are important both for you and for us. They aim to improve the global quality of the items put up for sale on the website and to give us the financial means to continue to provide you with a quality service.
These new measures need to be applied as of September 1st.
However, as a result of your messages by e-mail and in our poll, we understand that 10 days is not enough time for a lot of our sellers who sometimes possess thousands of items. These are mainly sellers of items of modest financial value.
Listening to you and respecting your opinion and remarks is a value we hold dear. This is why we have decided to soften the measures we recently announced.
Here are thus the changes in 3 points:
1) The measure will be applied as of September 1st 2012,
but it will only apply to items put up for sale starting from this date.
(We are talking about putting up for sale, not renewing already existing sales)
2) All of the items which are currently on the website and the items which are put on the website
before September 1st will not be subject to the fixed price charge per item sold.
3) Starting from January 1st 2013 all of the items present on the website
will be subject to the fixed price charge.
This thus gives sellers a 4 months window in which they can change their selling strategy in view of the new measures.
This way we think we answer your demands for extending the deadline and softening the measures, all the while maintaining an essential financial income, which is needed for the functioning of the website.
For 12 years the Delcampe website has been created for collectors. The « small » items deserve the same place on our website as the « big » ones. However, we need to face more and more volume of these small items which costs us a lot of money and server capacity.
Furthermore, our member's demands increasingly go in the direction of such measures. We took these measures today because it is a necessity and we want them to be favorable to all, no matter what you collect.
Our website remains cheaper and more profitable than other websites. Moreover, we are not introducing listing fees and the advantages for which you need to pay on these other websites remain free on ours. As long as you do not sell anything, you do not need to pay us anything. We are keeping true to this philosophy.
The additional financial means will be invested in our services: the essential purchase of faster servers, improvement of website features, more advertizing on and off the internet, a higher quality help section, etc. We all have to gain here; a better website and more buyers.
Should you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us at info@delcampe.com.
Thank you for the trust you place in us.
Best regards, |
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Rest in Peace
Canada
6750 Posts |
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
4031 Posts |
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The changers to auction sites seem to happen because of peoples very bad manners...sadly. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2779 Posts |
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Unfortunately, the changes also hurt those who sell cheap items that buyers do want and are willing to buy regardless of shipping costs (and yes, many, many folks are willing to do so as the opportunity costs are still lower than searching on and on for that one cheap stamp or cover that's elusive). It's going to be hard to buy just the low priced stamps and covers that you want without having to buy it in a more expensive set or part of a larger collection with items you do not want or need. |
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
4031 Posts |
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Most stamp collector's, collect stamps because it is very affordable and meets the budget of the most of people. Not too many of us collect gold encrusted with precious stones in the form of jewellery. A new thing that has been coming at us in the last couple of months is ebay generated hate emails from other sellers. The main trouble for them is how cheap we sell our stamps for and we are wasting our time.........! ebay.com gets there $400+ per month out of us and there computer must like us because they just lifted our power sellers rating to silver. So if we are a typical low end of the stamp sellers market, why is Delcampe having a melt down in this area? The answer is everyone is buying on ebay so they attack the slower to sell areas of there dead in the water market place. I contacted our seller of wholesale items last week and he was very surprise that we were still up and running as so many seller have folded and his selling has slowed greatly. I can see many reasons why we are still are up and running and most of the reasons I have shared on this forum. So is Delcampe real reason for change because no one in Europe has got any thing to buy stamps with? Are they reacting because there market place is dead in the water? I do not think I can trust the why of the Delcampe information release. |
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
2027 Posts |
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Thanks for the mention Puzzler  I can see both sides of this discussion, but as a buyer, I support the change. I'm sure Seb Delcampe and his team are analysing numbers like this that I posted in my blog this morning: There are now 15,978,959 items on Delcampe (a whopping increase of 750,000 in a day as sellers list before 1 September?). Of these, 2,706,894 are priced between 1 and 2 (16.9%). In addition, there are 8,595,160 items listed from 0.01 to 0.99 (53.8%).(note that equivalent values in other currencies are included in these ranges, so it covers ALL items) Therefore 11,302,054 items are listed <2, or 70.7%. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've seen a bidding war on an item listed at such a low price on Delcampe. Most items, as sellers know, sell after one or two bids, therefore selling around the listing price. This is an unsustainable business model for Delcampe! |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2779 Posts |
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There's 50 million items currently on Delcampe. I used the advanced search engine to find some current stats searching only on items priced $100 USD or less of which there is 44.3 million ongoing. Of this 44.3 million items, 26.3% is priced at $1.00 or less, 71.8% is priced at $1.01 to $10.00 and 18.8% at $10.01 to $100.
Of the ongoing auctions .21% of items priced at $1.00 or less have current bids. Items priced at $1.01 to $10.00 have a current bid rate of .11% and only .10% for items at $10.01 to $1.00. It seems the cheaper items have a better chance of receiving a bid - slightly more than double the rate compared to high priced items.
Now lets look at completed items at $100 and less. The search engine gave me the number of 29.468 million for completed items of which 20.972 million sold. Using the same three price groupings I compared sold versus completed. At $1.00 and less it was 82%, $1.01 to $10.00 is was 68.5% and only 58.6% for items at $10.01 to $100.00
If you compare items sold by price group versus total sold it breaks down this way, 35.4% for items $1.00 and less, 51.6% for items at $1.01 to $10.00 and only 12.98% for items at $10.01 to $100.
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
2027 Posts |
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The numbers you provide show that 87% of items that sold were <$10. If they all sold at $10 (which of course they didn't), Delcampe would receive 55c per item. That is an incredibly low per-item return. To put it in context, would you be happy for someone to sell something in your shop, and only give you 55c? I'd love to see the comparitive stats for ebay if anyone knows how to find them? |
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| Edited by jubilee - 08/24/2012 11:45 pm |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2779 Posts |
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55 cents x 18 million + ain't bad. What's the percentage of stamps, covers, postal stationery and postcards in existence that are worth less than $10? Somehow Delcampe survived this long by selling the bulk of material at $10 and less. I'm sure the bulk of items in most people's collections are worth less than $10. To exclude such items from Delcampe's auctions will only hurt the hobby as a whole. It will be cheaper to list them on ebay on a free listing day. As for ebay stats..beats me. |
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
2027 Posts |
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Depends over what period those 18M were sold. I'd rather buy 100 of the same stamp and hunt for postmarks than buy one + postage, but we're not all postmark collectors. I would love to see some stats on the average age of listings for the cheapies. The oldest I saw was 2007, so that's been carried on the server for five years, at a cost to Delcampe. Would any reasonable seller leave an unsold item on their own website that long? No, they wouldn't. Re the free listing days on ebay, they have a cunning plan to fix that. If you're too successful, they make you a Power Seller, and you lose the free listing days. Don't bank on that as an option! |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2779 Posts |
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I opted out of the power seller program years ago on ebay when buyers saw it as negative and anyone else can too. You don't have to join. Most folks are going to lose that Top Rated Seller Status as well soon enough since we like to use stamps and tracking is a joke on low cost shipments at least from the U.S. Have you ever been to an antique store? I've seen items sit around for decades..5 years is nothing. It just means the item is overpriced, poorly listed ot the seller has a bad reputation. As for data storage, it's pretty cheap these days. Maybe Delcampe just needs to hit a sale or two. I'm not buying the data storage problem angle A lot of people are willing to pay postage even if it more than the cost of the item. And some people don't want to hunt randomly through a bulk lot for a winner like it was some sort of scratch off lotto ticket. I've sent thousands of such items. I've even had people request registered mail for a 99 cent item. |
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
2027 Posts |
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Times have changed my friend. There's only one way to opt out of being a power seller, and that's to stop selling until you fall below the (somewhat arbitrary) sales value level. In my case, that means no more sales until 1 January.
Many people may well pay postage for a 99c item. Unless it's a 99c item with a large CV, I for one, won't. Registered post for a 99c item (unless it was a sleeper of course)?. I want the guys address! He clearly has money to burn....
It's interesting how Delcampe's cost of doing business seems unimportant to many sellers, yet their own cost of doing business is critical (and I mean NO offence by that, it's quite normal). |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2779 Posts |
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I've had buyers in Russia, Haiti, Argentina, Italy and Brazil who have paid registered mail for 99 cents items, because they know that if they don't that there's a good chance they'll never see the items because of problems with their postal service, but that's a different issue. In general other buyers are quite willing to pay standard international shipping on 99 cent/$1 items, because as I've said before that's still a cheaper opportunity cost of time and money. Maybe it's different in the U.S., but you can turn down Powerseller status and ebay won't offer it again regardless of sales. I qualify for it - says so on the dashboard system, but it also says I've opted out and doesn't even give me the option of rejoining. Just like the silly TRS system, it's all unnecessary for good selling and again a different issue. Business is more than just "cost of doing business", but also one of good service. They are going to remove the service that allow buyers and sellers to buy and sell the vast majority of stamps and covers in existance. That's bad business as sellers (with the stamps that are sold to make revenue) will be leaving. The fee is like a tax and the power to tax is the power to kill. You know Poppestamps. They have 960,000 some stamps listed at which 91.4% or 878,839 stamps are at $1 or less. They've sold at least around 30,000 stamps or so and I presume mostly cheaper stamps as well. I don't see them staying on Delcampe at all, but at least the silver lining is that they already have their own large website where they can sell cheaper items. One of my friends who also runs a stamp website says they'll be doing that too as 4000 of their 5000 lots are under $1. The high priced items simply don't sell well enough (I've read even on SC that many buyers are not willing to pay more than x value or their montly budget is set a x value which is a couple of reasons why high priced items don't sell, but also because some sellers are just overpriced). It's the cheap items that keep many sellers afloat. I feel Delcampe is shooting themselves in the foot. It will be interesting to see how their revenues are altered as sellers leave or lower their volume of listed stock. I'm guessing it's not going to be for the positive as overall sales will drop. They should have taken some of the other options they listed in the email - ending unsold items sitting there for too long with little to no views, deleting mass duplications from the same sellers, time limits, etc etc. And if they needed the additional revenue, then maybe they should offer services that sellers would be willing to spend additional money on like the ability to list items in two groups (a feature ebay has, but they lack. I'm sure they could have figured out a way to provide more "carrots" and less "sticks" approaches to their problems. It reminds me of the New York state tolls roads. They complained that revenues were dropping because less people were using the toll roads. Want to guess their solution? They raised the toll rates and guess what - usage dropped more and further in the hole they fall. I always thought that if demand dropped that prices go lower in most economic systems. Maybe that's part of Delcampe's problem: supply has increased, but demand has dropped thus prices and sales are very low and Delcampe's large infrastructure can't handle it. Thus the change like the toll roads Delcampe raises revenues to support and even larger infrastructure while doing nothing to raise sales and probably even lower them. |
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Pillar Of The Community
Australia
3547 Posts |
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It's been quite instructive reading through the posts here and elsewhere on the coming changes at Delcampe. I'm in the minority, here, who are irritated by the large quantity of very low-priced junk on Delcampe. I scroll through countless very cheap listings, in the hope of finding an overlooked gem. It happens so rarely, I really shouldn't bother. I've never sold anything on ebay or Delcampe, but I spend more on ebay in a month than I have in all the years I've been on Delcampe. Now I hear there's a lot of dissatisfaction with ebay pricing policies for sellers. One obvious strategy for Delcampe, not the only one but an obvious one, is to lure away those sellers of better quality material from ebay. However, to attract the ebay buyers along with the sellers, it's necessary to discourage the Delcampe sellers of junk: the preponderance of junk is the biggest reason buyers like me don't take Delcampe seriously. There's another, unspoken, thread running through many of the responses here: that Delcampe, and ebay, shouldn't be profiting at the expense of collectors. Just to spell it out is to show how ridiculous it is. |
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Pillar Of The Community
United States
2779 Posts |
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tonymacq: "Junk" is a very grey defitition and we each have our own definition - some consider all modern issues trash, all used item trash, all FDCs and philatelic items trash - I've heard it here, ebay, Delcampe and from dealers and collectors alike at clubs and shows. There's also a lot of high priced "trash" at all venues that don't sell. Many dealers I've seen at shows are more like traveling museums. If you are simply browsing aimlessly through the listing, yes you will see hordes of "junk", but that said of ebay and many, many dealers at stamp shows. However, internet auction sites have a great advantage over stamp shows - the search engine. Use it - choose your price range, block those sellers you don't like if you have the option and use specific keywords. If you use that search engine effectively, you'll see most of the "junk" disappear. ...just my two cents (minus 20%+ in fees) |
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Posted 08/23/2012 8:25 pm
