APS Sales Circuits

I have been selling stamps on the APS sales circuits for years. I do it for mental health reasons! Working on stamps cleans the cob webs out of my brain! I would like to hear from those of you who also sell through the APS. Do I make a profit? Don't make me laugh! I am lucky if I bread even!

Charles Farrell

we seen the same thing with E-BAY,back in 2002 and 2003 large lots of stamps were cheap at the major stamp auction houses ,then the ebay sellers started to show up at auctions looking for the large bulk lots.By 2006 we started to have prices realized at stamp auctions that pushed out the long term dealers who specialized in large lots .Then you got the bigger sellers who acted like vacumcleaners taken most of the bigger bulk lots no matter how you fought over the price.
Now I belive prices for lots gotten so high and the prices that sellers are getting off E-BAY have gotten to a thin margin even for the bigger players.

I've been on ebay 11 years, with a perfect 100% Feedback of around 2070. I now sell only sets and singles - no large lots, no packets, no bulk (except for discount postage, which is a different animal).

I am lucky I live in a major metro area where CraigsList is HOT. I keep CL full of bulk lots, especially on album pages, in the $10 to $50 range. I don't make a lot of sales, but when I do, it tends to be a repeat buyer who comes back again and again. I also put Commonwealth items on StampBoards, which is free, and occasional lots on Delcampe.

This year, I want to go back to bidStart again, with a different approach, centered around selling individual covers. My main goal in 2013 is (1) to sell $2500 worth of discount postage and put the money into silver, and (2) to clear out the rest of the large lots on album pages, as they take up a lot of room and are almost impossible to sell at auction for decent prices. For 2014, the goal is to cut covers down from 40,000 to 10,000 and picture postcards down from 25,000 to 5,000 favorites. Big goals.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of converting an ebay or other auction buyer into a repeat customer, OUTSIDE of ebay, with no PayPal crap, and a lot more flexibility. What most folks don't realize is that ebay is the best FREE ADVERTISING in the world. An item displayed for a week, with 12 pictures if necessary, visible to millions of people, with as much description as you care to write, for 50c or so. And you can certainly word a listing to "encourage" people [hint, hint, nudge, nudge] to contact you privately for more variety and lower prices. That's not difficult.

Doug

Couldn't have said it better !

My main purpose in listing anything on ebay is to make contacts for private sales. Seldom do I list any "good" stuff, usually just teasers.

Even on a good day, only 50% will respond to private offers. Seems many prefer to collect in anonmyity, hidden behind their ebay IDs.


I don't want to sound anti ebay. ebay has single handily done more for stamp collecting in the last decade than anything I can think of. It has made items available and brought collectors together like nothing else. It's given life support to a dying hobby ! Where we take it from here is up to us.

It certainly has benefited those of us with the marketing gene.

But ten years ago, it was fun; now it's a grind. And there's a lot of ways to go wrong. I am hopeful bidStart cranks up the competition.

I've sold surplus material for several years now through the APS stamp store and through a Florida auction house where I also buy. I've done OK with sales via APS. And, the APS offers an option at year's end of donating stuff that isn't selling, and taking a tax write-off.

I've heard enough horror stories about ebay and philately that I could not be paid enough to sell stuff there. And I would disagree to an extent that ebay was needed in order to "rescue an dying hobby."

I will argue to my dying breath that ebay did, in fact, save philately. I wish I could quantify my remarks, but it would require a lot of study. What doesn't need to be studied is the fact that ebay is responsible for my return to the hobby in 1997.

Brian

ebay has brought back thousands and thousands of baby boomers that "used to collect when I was a kid". They are reviving a old hobby, but this time they have money to spend.

They've dusted off those old stamp albums and started collecting again in earnest.

But even that will only last for a blip in time. Unless some of the major players in Stamp Collecting do something to encourage a new generation of collectors, it's just a matter of time. Anyone who has been to a stamp show, knows exactly what I'm talking about. And I don't think they have any ideas.