Pricing Of Stamps

As I continue my education as a collector newly returned to the hobby, I am puzzled by a seeming discontinuity in the discussions about prices that collectors pay for stamps. On the one hand, I see a fair number of posters talking about how they pay no more than a certain relatively low % of catalog - be it 10%, 20-25%, etc. On the other hand I see posters whose comments make it clear that they get a fair amount of material from dealers. My experience with dealer pricing based on ads, price lists and seeing what dealers were charging at a large stamp show I attended is that generally they were no way near the 10-25% of CV, at least for good material.

Am I seeing two different audiences here - folks just looking for common material and/or lower quality versus folks focusing on higher quality/scarcer stamps? Folks being patient in picking off material at bargain prices when they can get it, versus other folks more content to pay more to steadily build their collection? Or different buying venues - ebay versus dealers? Are the 10-25% folks exaggerating a bit? And the folks who buy from dealers - is there a higher range of CV that you are typically buying at; if not, where are these dealers that sell at 25% for good material because I'm not seeing them?

I know that it's difficult to make generalizations that are not misleading, but any comments that would help shed some light on these issues would be much appreciated. Thanks.

"Catalogue" is a price based on who knows what that must be considered the absolute upper limit for VF MNH and post office fresh. And IMHO any dealer charging full catalogue - even for that - is out to lunch. Scott's - and the like - are guides. Ever notice what Scott's values a recent used definitive at for most countries? Real value maybe a penny.

People who buy all that 10% or 20% of catalog know full well they are buying from the bottom of the barrel .Do they not know that type of material is common and floats around all over the internet . It takes years to understand what good material looks like and understand that to get good material they are going to fight for it .

Something I think people don't necessarily realise is that a catalogue is a sales brochure, not a price guide. I think of them like mail-order catalogues. You might have to pay £10 or $15 for a Beatles CD, but it is utterly wrong to think your copy of the same is worth that much on the market. It isn't - it's worth maybe a quarter, if you wanted to sell it.

A price guide would give you a realistic valuation - a catalogue is just a price list from that specific company, who has overheads and trust and guarantees and staff etc.

Since catalog values are necessarily an average of some kind (and are given only from the retail perspective), one thing they cannot account for is condition. Those who refuse to pay more than a fraction of catalog are collecting either only very common material or lower-quality material, as floortrader says. I specialize in the one-cent US 1851-1857 stamp. Among these is Scott #9, cataloging $100. I would not pay more than $20 for a poorly-centered (design cut into) or faulty example, but I would not hesitate (and have done so) to pay double catalog for a large-margined fault-free example with a desirable cancel and plate position.

Never having used a Scott catalogue, I don't know how it compares with SG in terms of prices quoted. One would expect SG's to be higher as they represent (in almost all cases) an offer for sale, whereas, to the best of my knowledge, Scott, Michel and Yvert represent a guide. The fact is that, for the great bulk of material, auctioneers and collectors will assume a percentage of SG price based on their experience -that percentage may go beyond SG for a small body of rare material or high quality copies of scarce material, but usually it's well below. I've bought plenty of decent stamps @ 10% of CV without scraping the barrel - although I do have a lot of barrel-scrapings as well!

My experience is that in general Scott and SG agree, if Scott says the value is $1.00, SG will say it's £1.00. That ratio seems to be quite consistent.

Stamp buying decisions depend on the market for the particular stamps of interest. A catalogue is just a guide. Like dudley, I have paid more than catalogue for stamps I knew were rare on the market in spite of their lower catalogue values. And like GeoffHa, I have purchased decent stamps for 10% of CV because they are plentiful on the market. When you decide to purchase stamps of interest, check the market (auctions, shows, dealers) to see how plentiful they are to get an idea of their rarity, and bid/purchase accordingly.

My experience also. But that only underlines what GeoffHa wrote: SG is priced higher, about 50% higher given the ratio of pound sterling to US dollar over the past decade or two.

So he can buy at 10% of SG cv without scraping the barrel because that would be the equivalent of 20-30% of Scott. Which is above barrel-scraping level but not the kind of quality that floortrader and dudley are referring to.

dudley, as you probably aready know, but I'll post here for others, the Scott Specialized does have a "U.S. Specialized by Grade" section which (in my 2011 ed) lists grade-price combinations for used #9 as follows:
VG-50 at $22.50, F-70 at $45, F-VF-75 at $80, F-80 at $120 (their standard catalog price for this stamp), VF-XF-85 at $160, etc., up to 98-superb. So it appears to be in line with your current purchasing practices.

In a word, yes.

Someone can do both, the stamps I like I will get a mint example well centered ( gum I don't care ) but many many others are just filling space so I get the cheapest one, especially the litho, I really don't care for them, engraved have priority.

For most collectors (like me), a certain level of quality/grade is "good enough". It's not that I don't care about quality, but at a certain point you're paying more for what's (more or less) invisible than you are for the front of the stamp. If the front of the stamp looks nice, I'll make sacrifices when it comes to hinging and/or small faults, particularly on higher cat items. I mean, for some German-area stamps I collect, the premium for NH is sometimes 5-10X that of a hinged stamp. Others' opinions will vary, but I'm not going to pay more for the back of the stamp than the front, particularly not a multiple that high. I expect to pay roughly 20-50% of Scott for better stamps in the level of quality I collect, less if it's faulty.

I maintain that cat price (and I'm thinking specifically about SG) is a retail price for that company. They have a destination premises in central London which must cost a fortune to maintain and staff. So, they sell high - and they can, because people come from far and wide to visit, and many will buy something just because it's SG on the Strand. Their prices are much higher than the ordinary market value, and their catalogue pricing is a reflection of that. It's their price, not the general market price.