Unsuccessful Stamp Dealer?

I operated a stamp business for 4 years about 12 years ago. I was able to to turn a good profit, but considering the time spent on the business, I figure I made less than 50 cents an hour. I focused on a niche specialty, and this not only helped attract sellers, but it also helped with markups. My biggest problem was finding sellers of the specialized material I was looking for. Once I was able to buy, selling was easy because I knew so much about the niche specialty, and could post interesting ads.

Terence: I think many of sellers of small collectibles have rejected the GSP program or will try to get rid of it if they get entangled into it. However, ebay sells almost everything under the sun as we know so it's all the other sellers who might like it. Apparently, the GSP does work for folks selling big heavy items like motor parts and the like. Unless we're to sell a whole set of Scott's International Albums or 10 banker boxes of covers then it's not worth it the buyer or seller. I feel you anger at the program too as I know it's a business killer. Those who have stuck with the program are those who never really wanted to sell internationally to begin with since they feared what they didn't understand about global shipping.

A good assessment Battlestamps. From my on-line conversation with the seller of the single stamp with postage and shipping at $24 I learned that he couldn't see the shipping charges to his customers when he opened his listings. He also told me that ebay wouldn't tell him the charges on his items. He seemed genuinely knocked back when I told him what they were, and I have no reason to doubt him.

So if ebay are not telling sellers about the shipping, duty and tax charges on their items it can only be to prevent sellers from pulling out of the deal. Used to be called sharp practice that sort of thing.

Terry

PS: Here's one buyer's experience.....
http://xiigame.com/vvid_ijmdVlQ36-w

Terry I share your distaste of GSP. That ebay condones charging $24 shipping to post a single stamp is beyond the pale. On the positive side though, it does let you weed out unsophisticated sellers who have no idea that they can just put an international stamp on an envelope and drop it in the mail. I much prefer to buy from professionals such as Battlestamps.

Battlestamps is a nice guy dealer..and now hes a PRO ! If our friend shows up the 3rd Sunday in June with a part of the 114,000 covers (i hope a lot of them are foreign) we hope to be there !!

Personally, I think its good to have a passion about your business. Otherwise why get into it. I love the martial arts, so I have my own school. But, unlike folks that depend on a new customer everytime the door opens, my customers sign up for a period of time. And the customer is not always right. I worked in retail for years, and have found that you need to draw the line at some point. Fortunately, in my business, If you aren't happy doing it; I dont want you there.
As for ebay's GSP; as soon as they started doing that I quit selling anything abroad. But, I was always a better buyer than a seller.

There are all kinds of problems to being a successful stamp dealer ....................getting material to sell is a huge problem especially to get it cheap enough to make a profit, advertising and shipping cost is unstable with ebay always changing the rules if your figuring cost and the Post Office is as unstable as ebay when figuring cost . Then trying to figure out what the buyers want 6 months to a year from now is a speculative venture . There are a lot of dealers right now at shows ,bourses and on ebay who have been holding and trying to sell their inventory which they had for 10 years who are trying to recover their cost ,they are holding stale inventory but know what they got into it and want their money back .

I think another issue - common to any business - is start up capital. In the 90s, I launched a short-lived dealership. My challenge was simply being underfunded when compared to obtaining enough inventory that might help me pay myself a reasonable wage (and we all have different definitions of that). I could find the material to add to my stock, I just couldn't afford it in enough quantity to get ahead of the curve.

As a young person I will never forget my Grandfathers word of advice to me as I asked him why are so many business closing down and he said.

"The only reason they are closing down is they are closing there front door."

As you can see I never forgot it!

ecmorgan and Jenny2U

Great posts! They others members too but i'm always impress by concise and precise comments and clever also.

I'm a stamp collector not a dealer. For me it's a great hobby. Depending on my work situation I spend more or less time with it. I auction stamps before on SCF and I sold to dealers and overall I lost money. That is the cost of my hobby and on an hourely basis it's cheap compare to other hobby like rebuilding an old car. A dealer is a businessman and stamps sells like any goods. But one thing is for sure if you don't sell enough and don't cover your cost eventually you will close the store. There is so many hints your hear about a successfull business. Treat your buyers as friends and that you can supply with everything they need at reasonnable price SO THAT EVERYONES A WINNER. Daniel

Good observations about buying to sell vs. buying what you like or basing what you think will sell on what you like. You can be passionate/studied about a specialty or area without becoming attached to the stamps or covers, which is critical to pricing and selling effectively. The market changes (demand, pricing, etc.) and you need to be aware of trends vs. hype.

I think one of the key requirements is to be objective on ALL of the costs vs. pricing/flexibility to understand the real profit margin. Costs include purchase price, venue costs/fees, advertising, travel/packaging/postage, tax on profit, etc. You may think that purchasing something at $X and selling at 2 x $X is a great profit, until you take all of these costs into account. You may end up losing money (let alone calculating your time to be worth 50c/hour!).

So, much study and planning and making sure you purchase right is critical to know what your selling price needs to be (and how much time your merchandise will be remain in inventory before being sold). Key here is also percentage return vs. time between purchase/sale of material. As an example, I would rather have an item sell for 50% profit in 1 month vs. 100% in 6 months, as long as I can re-invest the $ shortly after selling the inventory.

Cheers,

Dave

There's an article in this week's Linn's about the graying of the dealers and the lack of new ones replacing them. I'd love to be a (successful) dealer, but I simply don't know enough to be one full time. I figure that if I wanted to make a living at being a stamp dealer - where it pays my mortgage, medical bills, allows me to go on vacations, etc - I'd probably need to sell a good $10K or more every month in order to have enough profit left to do those things. That would mean selling some expensive stamps, which is OK by itself, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to detect things like repairs, alterations, fakes, etc. I'd have a really high risk of getting burned. That's what scares me off.

TheArtfullHinger

Reading your post I thought of a dealer in Ottawa who was honored. This guy writes a lot about stamp collecting and he is highly respected by stamp collectors. He has stores (brick and mortar) and on the internet. He probably has been seen everywhere there is major stamp related events around the country. I'm sure that is implication is sincere and that he likes to help and devote to the cause. But he is a stamp dealer also and his reputation bring him buyers and that is fine with me. Daniel

Is it Ian Kimmerly?

Yeah!