Based on Friday's article in "The Guardian", it looks like Stanley Gibbons is still planning to replace BidStart with their Marketplace:
http://www.theguardian.com/business...place-stampsQuote:
Enthusiasts for stamps, coins and other collectibles can build collections without donning their anoraks after Stanley Gibbons launched an online marketplace.
The philately auctioneer, established in 1856, has entered the internet age with a basic auction website. It will add features early next year to allow buyers to target particular items and sellers to price their goods by answering automatic questions.
Mike Hall, Stanley Gibbons' chief executive, said sellers with individual stamps worth more than £50 should have them valued in person but for cheaper stamps the marketplace will provide an eBay-like service that is secure. Buyers' money will be kept in an escrow account until they have received the goods and sought advice if necessary.
"We have tried to provide a website that removes the difficulties of buying and selling collectibles online," he said.
The announcement came as the company reported pre-tax profit excluding acquisitions rose 123% to £2.9m for the six months to the end of September, with like-for-like sales steady at £17.2m. The company has bought businesses including Mallett, the antique furniture dealer, so that it can sell the full range of collectible items.
Wealthy people in China, Brazil and Australia are snapping up stamps and coins, partly as a hobby and partly as an investment. The biggest buyer of stamps in the first half of the year spent £3m. In May, Stanley Gibbons sold an Edward VIII coin for £516,000 – a record for an English coin. An 1841 Penny Red stamp, which Hall said was the stamp collectors' "holy grail", is on sale at a guide price of £475,000.
The problem as I see it, given the current state of SG's marketplace, is that it is a complete unbridled MESS.
http://marketplace.stanleygibbons.com/1. The site is slower than dog poo.
2. There's no way to drill down into search results other than by country, at least if you use the site by browsing. Once you get to a country's listings, there are no subcategories like both
ebay and BidStart provide you with, e.g., 19th century used, airmail, postage due, covers, collections, etc., etc. Everything is lumped together. However, if you search, rather than browse, THEN you get categories. That's an idiotic disconnect in navigational methods.
3. If you DO use search to drill down to results, there's no way to go back up to the broader category like you can with both
ebay and Bidtsart; you have to start over.
4. It's never clear where you are within the hierarchy of the stamps category and what your options are to broaden or narrow your searches. You end up starting over a lot.
5. Site help ranges from nonexistent to useless.
The whole thing is nonintuitive. It's as if whomever designed this abomination has never actively shopped for stamps (or anything else for that matter).
Then you add the procedural issues of selling there:
Payment is not between buyer and seller. Buyers pay SG, and then seven days later, SG disburses to sellers (I think that is similar to the Stamps2Go commerce model). This makes me wonder how disputes and refunds will be handled with SG inserting itself in the transaction chain, and which country's PayPal rules will be in play. For example, U.S. seller with U.S. buyer, one would think it would strictly be U.S. rules, but with the transaction flow being U.S. buyer pays SG (United Kingdom), and then SG pays U.S. seller, who knows?
The FAQs are incredibly sparse at this point. How they are actually enforced will be interesting.
It's a travesty really, as the original StampWants showed promise as a competitor for
ebay... the most promise of any alternative we've seen thus far... and Stanley Gibbons bought it and will now kill it.
Sad.
Posted 11/16/2014 4:43 pm
