How Are Stamp "Catalog" Values Established?

How are the common stamp prices used in reference guides determined? I have 3 US stamp pricing references which often disagree: Scott Specialized Cat., USPS Guide to US Stamps, and Official Blackbook Price Guide to US Postage Stamps published by House of Collectibles.

Stamp collection valuation struck me as I just reviewed a stunning stamp collection of over 200 WW albums in a single collection! Asking price: $650, 000.

At first I wondered how did anyone amass such a monster? Did the collector do nothing but purchase and hinge stamps 20 hours each day for 40 years? But I also wondered at the asking price for a collection indicated to be worth > $4 million CV.

I am a far more modest and recent collector of US classics. Since 2011 I've been attempting to gauge the true stamp market valuation reality. When bidding on an album or lot I try to stay below 20% of SCV for those issues that I want if I can estimate their value. Yet I frequently see winning purchases for higher value US classics to approach 50% or more SCV. It appears as many of us collect and gather all the lower denominations in a set, some folks will break the bank to haul in the 30 cent or 90 cent Pictorials (#121 & #122), or the $2, $3, $4 or $5 Columbian, or a Zeppelin.

When I see many auctions sell for 5% of CV, I wonder what really are our stamp collections worth?

I find it very interesting to see the "catalog" price for a particular stamp to jump many percentages in valuation between 2010 and 2014, while other stamps depreciate significantly in value during the same period.

I'm not sure about the others, but Scott's method is explained somewhere in the catalog. It really depends on the stamp, but basically for really expensive ($1000s) stamps, they use auction realizations. For stamps commonly bought and sold by dealers, they use dealer price lists and the like. For recent mint stamps, the default is 2x face value. 25 cents is the minimum value for any stamp in any condition, a category populated almost exclusively by commonest and least popular stamps.

All this is bearing in mind that the values are for stamps in the grade of very fine and 100% free of faults. Most classic-era stamps are not VF and this is actually a pretty high grade for some stamps, particularly 19th century. The average "classic" stamp you see for sale on ebay is not VF and sound. The ones you see going for higher percentages of catalog are probably nicer, well-centered and sound examples. There are many other factors that play into cat values and realizations besides these and it really just takes experience to figure out which stamps you're going to have to reach a little higher for.

Obviously you've never owned a business or you would know the answer to your own question: Dealers drive the pricing in Scott's - period. Stamps are a "commodity" and like all commodities, this is market driven by supply and demand. ANYONE, can print a Stamp Guide, Stamp Catalog, Stamp Book, Stamp List, Stamp Record, Stamp Pamphlet, Stamp Synopsis, you name it and put a price next to an item and call it gospel. Well, it isn't -- especially in today's market!

I have been collecting for close to 60 years and for the last 50 years I've heard the same whine and droll about SCOTT's (and everyone else's) pricing. Why, because if you're not in business for yourself -- you have no comprehension of supply and demand… that is what stamps are - plain and simple. Want to learn pricing - follow the major auction houses and you'll see what the market pays for a Zepp or Columbian, and today, it's less and less. Why? We have a diminishing collector base. You own an "EDSEL" and people aren'y buying them in any number. WhY is that???

Because kids and middle-age men have no interest in the hobby. The APS has lost (over the last ten years) something like +/-50% of their membership .. all clubs membership has declined in like. And if three references disagree on price, why should you be surprised. When you go to a store, do you see the same price for an item in three different stores? Of course not! Publications and authors compile prices from different sources that may be as many as 18 months old! Then, people, you need to add the time it takes to take a publication to go to press; in SCOTT's case their catalog is compiled and edited in sections every 3-6-12 or 18 months ON TOP of this, price information is given to them given which could be another 6-12-or 18 months old. (SO add that up.)

The market prices changes on a daily basis -- it swings with the effect of the national and global economies. As an example: in the 1980's JAPAN is the hottest item out there to collect with prices going through the roof. Japan's economy tanked in the 1990's and their stamp prices followed suit. That's just one pricing affectation on stamps. IRAN's was another good country till their politics changed -- that was another pricing affectation in the U.S. You learn what going -Up; what's going down ; what's in the future; and you network with a group of top Auction Dealers and top Dealers and knowledge collectors that attend the national and international stamp show circuit. You started in 2012… I started following market trends (Auctions/Dealers/Shows) beginning in 1975. It took me 5 years to build a workable database to gauge pricing, markets, emerging and declining stamp markets. Learn the Geo-demographics and buying patterns, and I was considered a snot-nose kid fresh out of college with a base knowledge of stamps.

When it comes to prices -- no STAMP: catalog/book/handbook/bible price is every current - it's out-of-date the moment it hits the street. No publication price is ever current. The only current price is Auction-based, and understand that requires you follow auctions, the same way you would follow any "market" - and market driven pricing. And right now, there is little or no demand for "stamp" product, with the exception of top, quality scarce items and covers (one-of-a-kind postal history) -- clusters of everything (Example: Japanese Mihons was a cluster, Ryukyu was a cluster; Segments of the French Classics, and Greek Classics; Zepps and Columbians are two old based clusters, learn what the upcoming clusters are and follow the trend line. You are on the sideline; what sells today was set into motion to sell 6 to 9 months ago. And most importantly, find out if one or two people (collectors) are driving the cluster or many; weight that accordingly.

Finally, Want to change the current downward trend?… Then you need to change demand! -- that means increasing the young to become interested-in and middle-aged to become collectors of stamps -- PEOPLE NEED TO GET INTO the hobby. Otherwise, this hobby will go the way of collecting old horse shoes and buggy whips. They'll be pretty to look at, but no one will want one. Anyone out there interested in some old Ferrier tools?

Well the SCV is arbitrary as far as I can see. I know on ebay they sure like to list it, as if it has anything to do with the quality of the stamp they are hawking. I know with the lots, they are a crap shoot, I do not see how one can tell what stamp you are buying. Cant see water marks, perfs, so I have to assume I already have some of those stamps, but I need too many to buy one at a time. At 20% I think one looses the lot, everyone is interested in the stamps I want, so I probably pay to much, but I walk on many of them.

Where is this???

Dealers are not the only ones driving Scott prices. There is a group of experts for various areas that are consulted about catalog prices every year, and their input is a part of the process.

As already noted, Scott CV's, for stamps, are "very fine with no faults." They are also estimates of retail prices, i.e. what you might expect as a "list" or "sticker" price if you were to pay retail to a dealer.

But who pays retail to a dealer? If my recent first visit to a stamp show was any indication, dealers will sell for less than their "sticker" price. I've purchased many items from online auctions (not ebay) at prices well below the "suggested price" in the auction catalog.

And then there is ebay. I've purchased a few thousand items now from ebay, and my seat of the pants rule of thumb is that most items go for 1/3 to 2/3 catalog value. I can set a snipe for 2/3 of catalog value on an item, and win the auction more than 90 percent of the time, usually with a closing price of closer to 50 percent. Now there are always exceptions to such generalizations. The more scarce or unique the item may be, the closer it comes to what might be considered catalog value.

And not all items have a catalog value, especially when considering covers, simply because many are one of a kind items. For first day covers, Scott notes that its CV's are for "the most common cachets." Right now, I'm on a hunt for FDC's of a couple of issues with very uncommon cachets, for which no catalog can guide me, I have to rely on my own experience and willingness to pay.

Someone said dealers establish catalog values. And that's true, as far as it goes. But not all dealer prices are catalog values. That is why auction catalogs, at least in my somewhat limited experience, will have "recommended" or "suggested" bids, rather than catalog values. If the item is not in a formal catalog, it cannot have a catalog value. Catalog values and retail prices are not strictly synonymous.

Hal, thanks for the collected wisdom! Your observations are spot on to my thinking. I may be new to stamps, and not yet a philatelist...but I'm not naive. I admire your mature clear-eyed appraisal of the stamp world as a "market" which it absolutely is.

In another SCF conversation a lifelong collector older than my 65 years questioned is stamp collecting has a future. a vigorous conversation ensued. Being an eternal optimist led me to point out that stamps is most likely NOT to fade into obscurity. Rather it will likely continue to morph into a large "niche" marketing within "collectibles" as it has already. Global population has increased so despite a shrinking percentage of the population having any interest in stamps, there appears to remain a substantial market that has shifted from bourse, clubs and retail dealers with brick n' mortar stores to online auctions.
I admit you may be right that stamps will become an oddity that interests no one. But it won't happen in my lifetime, or yours.

You also accurately describe the economic forces that shape markets and impact stamps. Well, the USPS evidently is ready to phase out gummed stamps. And postal mailing is fast becoming a rarity as folks globally chirp to each other online without mailing anything on paper (or email each other as we are doing in this Forum). This suggests to me a growing rarity for the postal history of the past. Check out PBS' "Antique Roadshow". Pricing gurus drool over an 1820's desk or a 1920's baseball card. Because there is a finite number that have survived. Same is true of my US Pictorials.

I believe you threw down the gauntlet to all serious stamp collectors when you pointed out that this pursuit cannot appeal only to old retired men. Our "future" market is dwindling. That's the biggest problem we face.

There are actions that might alter this decline in youthful interest: marketing and communications has changed in amazing ways since the stamp collecting heydays when kids wanted to start their own collection of "exotic" stamps from places they had never heard of. Most kids are into technology, amazing graphics, and fast-paced activities. Are these cultural shifts compatible with quietly affixing tiny bits of paper into scrapbook pages to later admire? Stamp collectors and our associations an membership groups need to get creative in order to make stamps more appealing to younger generations. This is no small challenge. Some say stamp collecting is boring. Some say baseball is as well. The difference between the two "national pastimes"? Baseball recognized its economic vulnerability and changed in many ways. Those changes were to appeal to a broader audience, including Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, families, parents with kids and inner city youth. MLB has camps in Latin America where pros school kids with talent.

Meanwhile, how has stamp collecting addressed social changes? Not so well is my observation. Stamp collecting has no single business entity that acts as our commercial "voice" like MLB, NFL, or the automotive or pharmaceutical industry. We are a bunch of small manufacturers, dwindling clubs and individual solo collectors. What can we do to unify, boost and promote our loved hobby? I'm open to this discussion because I think it can be addressed. But ONLY if a ultra-traditional field is open to new ideas...and change.

BTW-- I've been self-employed in my own marketing consulting businesses a good chunk of my 35-year career. But the difference between pricing business services and a commodity -- like stamps -- is that service providers negotiate their value with clients. Clients will pay more if they really need your services. No one prints a "pricing catalog" for marketing services as do AMOS and these other publishers of stamp products.

Cheers,
Dan Carazo
Syosset, NY

It is technically possible to develop an online database which would gather and compile actual price paid for a stamp over time. ebay already has much of this data for their sales. Add other auction venues, retails outlets, and private sales and you would get a extremely accurate understanding of the true market value (or course there would always be some sales you could not reach or were left private, but these would be not statistically important if you had enough sale info).

Since this is within reach, I expect to see this happen within the next 5-7 years. When it does, it will have an interesting impact on other published catalog values. Who will bother with unrealistic catalog value if they can access the true market values? Will people like Scott be forced to revisit their valuations? Can deal be cut with a company like ebay to access this data or will we all be buying catalogs directly from ebay? Will ebay simply add a feature that lets you see the pricing/sale price trends over time on their site? What will Amazon do? They already have the technology to gather this kind of info, but if they harvest this info from ebay would it drive new legal challenges? (Anyone can write a bot or spider which can harvest info off a site automatically, but web sites can then be configured to block specific bots and spiders or put certain info out of reach.)

One thing is for sure, I wouldn't want to be in the catalog business right now without having a direction and vision of working towards this solution. I would be scrambling to add this technology.
Don

CVs will also be affected by whether the catalogue's publisher is also a stamp dealer. I don't know whether any or all of Scott, Michel or Yvert actually sells stamps, but SG does. That means its prices will have to reflect its costs, which will not be those of an ebay seller or a dealer with a small shop. And SG makes it plain that it has to set a floor price for individual, common stamps.

My experience in the UK is that auctioneers will ordinarily set an estimate of 10% of SG's CV for most material, even higher value material. That percentage will rise for better material or material in greater demand (which here often means GB and Empire).

People have mentioned taking soundings of groups of specialist collectors in setting values. Fraught with risk if these collectors talk up the value of their own obscure material, which then becomes a trap for the newcomer. Saw it happen with dire, obscure, 70s "progressive" rock records here during the 1980s.

The Blackbook Guide is pretty far off in terms of realistic "catalog values". However, the Scott Specialized and USPS Guide should be virtually the same as the valuation data is based on the same source (Scott).

For useful valuing information to be compiled via ebay, sellers would have to input the catalog publisher and number into a field when they list an item. They'd also have to create more sub-categoreies. At least for many countries, they couldn't just go off the catalog number listed in the listing title.

For example, one of the items on my want list is Germany Scott# 25. Since ebay's stamp categories are impossibly broad ("Germany and Colonies", "France and Colonies", etc) a search for Scott 25 in Germany will pull up hundreds of results including from entities like Saar, Danzig, various colonies, occupations, plus Michel #25 for those areas, etc. To even have a remotely usable search, I have to exclude a very long list of terms just to get it down to the point where there's just 50 or so listings to find the 5 or so listings that are actually Germany Scott# 25.

In the stamp category in the "sell your item" form, ebay needs to add a drop-down box for catalog publisher where one can select Scott, Michel, Gibbon, etc, and then a 2nd field with the catalog number. And of course they also need to add many more sub-categories to many countries, especially those with a long and varied stamp-issuing history. If they do that, then it becomes child's play to actually get historical pricing data. I'm skeptical that ebay will ever take these steps.

TheArtful,
I concur that it relies upon the seller entering correct information (and correctly identifying the stamp). But keep in mind the vast quantity of data they have. Even if you exclude those items you mention, give me access to the data and I can parse a catalog number and sold value out of the rest of it. ebay is WELL aware of the value of this information. It is why they have not expand their search capabilities now; they are holding back and figuring out the best way to make a buck on offering access to it. They don't want to give it away for free now.
Don

It not only relies upon the seller correctly identifying the stamp, but unless ebay adds specific catalog number and publisher fields to search by, it's still going to be useless for many countries. Information about US stamps sold on US ebay would probably be useful as Scott#s are pretty universal and well...there's only one United States and there has only ever been one United States.

Germany, the example I used earlier, has only been a single stamp issuing entity for about 25 years now - prior to that there were always at least 3 or more (sometimes many more) entities issuing stamps that are considered part of the German area. ebay basically pretends these don't exist and just tosses classic German states in the same bucket as issues released yesterday. And let's not forget that many sellers use Michel numbers instead of Scott, which makes search results even harder to parse. I'm not saying that useful pricing data is impossible for Germany using ebay, but the data would have to be manually scrubbed to a very large extent to get anything useful out of it. It's so frustrating finding the actual German stamp that I'm looking for that I often will just search on ebay Germany (which is properly divided into dozens of sub-categories) using the Michel#. Otherwise I have to scroll through dozens to hundreds of totally unrelated listings to find the handful of listings that actually match what I'm looking for.

51Studebaker,

How would one account for condition in using ebay data, even if it were available? Even if catalogue numbers were always given by the seller, correctly, and if Michel/SG/Scott (the main three on ebay) numbers were equalized by some sort of computerized oncordance, and if sellers uniformly and consistently distinguished mint from used, how would one know what the quality of the Scott US 552 was that sold on April 13, 2013?

Or are you suggesting that all the Scott US 552 (plus Michel and SG equivalents) mnh, mh, used that sold in 2013 would be averaged out to yield an average catalogue value for 552 mnh, an average for mh, an average for used?

Wouldn't this really require that ebay operate via a properly constructed relational database that accounted all the necessary factors?

I'm just curious. My technically uneducated mind can't grasp how ebay data really could yield a market overview except in very, very crude terms, like an average for all Scott 552s (all that were at least identified as Scott 552s, omitting the ones identified only by Michel or SG numbers but including those where the seller gave Scott number plus SG and/or Michel). With US stamps the Scott numbers are probably virtually exclusively used and thus results might be more useable, but for Great Britain and Commonwealth, the mixture of SG and Scott numbers or for Germany and continental Europe the mixture of Scott and Michel numbers would be significant.

In my opinion, unless you're a dealer it really makes no difference. A collector buys to fill holes in his collection. We buy an album or complete collection for a couple of stamps. The rest are unimportant to us but can be passed on to other collectors at a nominal price. They get the stuff they want and you get a few bucks to continue pursuing your goals.