research which is available online indicates that
ebay traffic is down 33% in the last year alone.
I don't have any perspective about the
ebay market size, or number of
ebay transactions.
And I am not sure anyone outside of
ebay would have any way to confirm those trends.
That said, I think these online auction/sales communities have obviously changed stamp collecting forever.
I have built my own US stamp collection via
ebay album purchases since 2011. In another forum an older collector worried that stamp collecting might fade away because fewer publications or events are devoted to stamps. I disagree. For all the faults folks may ascribe to
ebay, here we are -- a large community of thousands of stamp collectors sharing our interests and experiences. And we have been brought together by
ebay.
Purchasing albums, pages and solo stamps on
ebay means I also sell duplicates or pages of philatelic items I don't wish to collect. I still am relatively new to this complex marketplace, so recently I sold some album pages with US stamps to a Canadian buyer and was asked to NOT ship the purchase using
ebay's GSP. Knowing nothing about the GSP service, initially I thought I had to use it if selling outside the USA. After finding I could opt-out of using the GSP, I mailed the stamps for less than US$2 saving the buyer a small bundle. Lots to learn in the digital age.
Dan Carazo
Syosset, New York USA
Posted 03/07/2015 4:57 pm
