Greene Foundation Expertization Price Hike

Effective immediately: Expertization charges increased to $40, $50, and $70 for singles/multiples/covers alike. Tier separations at $400 and $2500 (based on F Unitrade Cat value). Moreover, a $15 Expresspost charge is now automatically applied.

From VGG:

"Effective October 15, 2015 the fees for expertization are being increased. The last increase was January 1, 2009."

Rationale: "The Foundation historically has charged fees lower than other expertizing services. This was possible because the breadth of operations of the Foundation was reasonably narrow and there was quite sufficient operating income to subsidize the expertizing function. This no longer the case. The operations of the Foundation have expanded, in particular the library. There is greater use of technology throughout all operations. The volume of expertizing work has increased significantly. Postage and handling charges are higher. All of this adds management and overhead costs at a time when the past higher rates of investment income are no longer attainable."

Comments? Opinions?

Their service, they get to price it.

In our sister hobby, one wag remarked that one impact of expertization is that collectors today know less about their collectibles than ever before.

Why? There is no need to protect yourself with ante-purchase research when you can have pricey items expertized and, if necessary, exercise a money-back guarantee.

I could see that anyone in the expertizing business (even the for-profit services) might get a little tired of the growth, and decided that more money for fewer events was a pretty good deal.

Not everybody lives to manage growth; some folks just like to study stamps.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

I attended the Robin Harris presentation at the Greene Foundation.
and afterwards was lucky enough to have Garfield Porch take me through
the process involved in certifying a stamp.

I remember mentioning to him, how can you do all this for a
measly thirty bucks?
IMO, even $40 isn't enough.
Don't forget the Canadian buck is only worth 76c US.

Reminds me I have to try and get down there to check
out their library.

https://goscf.com/t/37012&whichpage=12

Interesting. I think it's a bit of a cash grab...if demand for these services is up, you'd think economies of scale would lead to lower, not higher fees.

Plus, I'm not convinced by the notion that expertization has been somehow subsidized by other activities: it seems logical to assume the reverse--expertization revenues would help the foundation put on events and sponsor low-revenue activities and programs.

Litho...the complexity of things like credit card processing (for example) is also immense, yet now costs less than 3% with Paypal and Square.

Lastly, buyers and sellers at reputable auction firms can usually be quite confident that experts at Eastern or Maresch could spot anomalies. I fail to see why anyone would expertise a stamp valued under $1,000...and if we assume that growth in expertization is due to increased transaction volume on sites like ebay...very few stamps sell for large amounts on such sites.

$85 simply seems excessive except for stamps worth thousands of dollars of dubious or unknown origin. Especially if your intent is to turn around and sell with an auction house. Just my 2c.

Maresch and Eastern, do in fact make mistakes. I have purchased some of these anomalies from both. Unfortunately, I thought the same way as you did. Sent them off to the Greene after the fact, and when it was too late to do anything about it. In instances, when I thought I was getting the rarer colour varieties, in fact it was the more common colour. By the time I did it, I didn't have any recourse, but to eat the purchases. I have even had items that had certificates from other providers, comeback not as described. One was listed as mint never hinged, and it came back with a cert that said OG but redistributed, fortunately, I was able to send that back. Nobody in this industry gives anything away, mistakes are usually in their favour. Just remember, you get what you pay for, and for the most part, on the whole, the people that you can trust, you can count on a hand!