Are Stamps On Ebay Really Worth Buying?

I appreciate everybody taking the time to share.

Thank you.

The Catalog Value may be irelevent to some buyers, but is critical to me as a seller. When I list a stamp, the dealer (kenmore or Mystic) Catalog price is shown. It serves as a reference point for establishing the price at which a stamp without issues could be bought.

For lower priced stamps, it allows the seller to ask for a higher percentage of Cat Val, since buyer resistance melts when only a few dollars more becomes acceptable for something really wanted.

For higher priced stamps, I type the Scott number into the ebay Buy It Now search tool to see what the competition is asking. My listing price will be just under the best looking comparable stamp.

carlberky, I like your approach. Since 2010, I have collected US Classics and more recently US Revenues. As a buyer I try to offer a reasonable buy price and realize that as I have sought more expensive less available items, I have paid a higher percentage of the Scott CV. This makes sense. The ebay market is rather flooded with average very common US material and as a sometime seller of my dupe material,I have been surprised at how low many winning bids have been for pages and singles.

ArtfulHinger, your approach is I think the smartest way to collect. Pay low when you can. And perhaps overpay a bit when called for -- if you want the item bad enough.

What I still can't fathom are the published auction prices I see in articles in Linn's. An example in the November 16, 2015 issue is found on page 10: which shows a US Scott #242 $2 Columbian which despite being used sold for $12,075 at auction. The Scott CV in my 2014 Scott Specialized is $650.
This year, I was very happy to add a copy of this stamp to my own US collection. Fortunately I paid far less than CV. But it amazes me that a collector shells out $12K for a better version of the same stamp!

Well, if you've got deep enough pockets (think well into 7 and 8 figures and higher), just owning any copy of a stamp isn't much of a challenge, except maybe for a handful of unobtainable rarities. A much bigger challenge would be collecting only the finest examples obtainable.

Speaking for myself, I enjoy owning stamps, but I also enjoy the pursuit and the challenge of building a collection. If I could just buy every stamp in one fell swoop, then what? Yeah, I'd spend some time admiring them, but after awhile I'd get bored with it. I enjoy the window shopping, the searching, and the anticipation as well. That's a huge part of collecting for me and I suppose it probably is for the extremely well-heeled as well. If they were satisfied with run-of-the-mill, average stamps, they could probably just buy them all in one fell swoop. And then what?

dcaraz1949, speaking as both a dealer and collector, IMO it's far better to have a few exceptional items than a pile full of mediocre.

srailkb,

"IMO it's far better to have a few exceptional items than a pile full of mediocre. "

I understand any dealer being in favor of collecting high-quality stamps. But if I followed your mantra, I could have spent my annual stamp budget each year on a single stamp of rare quality and scarcity. So, since 2010 when I began my US Classics collecting in earnest, I would now be the proud owner of 6 marvelous examples of investment grade philatelic materials.

Look at the money I could have saved by not needing expensive albums!

I may be guilty of exaggerating your point, but like ArtfulHinger, I get maximum enjoyment in the searching for, seeking out, researching, and creative bidding to win new additions to my collection. I know my pockets aren't deep enough to land me copies of those issues with six-figure CV's. BUt I am thrilled to have completed numerous US sets by adding many of the higher denomination stamps. I'll leave the most discriminating quality to the 1% who already own most of the world's assets :-)

There have been no further comments in this thread for over a week.

But if topic interests anyone, I just wanted to add my chirp about my recent online purchases via ebay. In case any Forum member has yet to enjoy the ebay marketplace, I have been having a ball starting up my British Commonwealth collection. Like the proverbial kid in a candy store, I have been accepting shipments of BC stamp lots and older albums over the past several weeks. Great fun gathering much initial material at very reasonable rates!

Today I ordered my new Scott Specialty BC album pages and binders for all but Great Britain. GB will be placed in my first Palo hingeless! A splurge that I am sure to enjoy.

If for some strange reason someone does not blow up the world as we know it in the next ten years.

Modern Australia from 2005 to now in used gummed letter rate sets & with high values & single used high value self adhesives from the same era are going to be impossible to source.

I am finding it hard to find these items now. In 10/20 years.....

KGV, any idea what is making modern Aussie stamp issues so hard to find?

Initially, I have decided to focus on pre-Elizabeth Commonwealth.
Except for your comment, I would have assumed that the newer issues would be in abundance everywhere.

I believe he's talking about the water-activated gum (WAG) versions of letter rate stamps. I soak enough kiloware to know that self-adhesive (S/A) letter rate Australian stamps (in general) are plentiful, but WAG versions of those same stamps are few and far between. Germany also issues some stamps in both WAG and S/A versions, and the S/A versions will often outnumber the WAG versions by 50 or 100-to-1 or more in bulk kiloware mixes. Not only are people using fewer stamps thanks to email and automated bill-pay, etc, but for the stamps they do use, they overwhelmingly prefer to use self-adhesive stamps.

The answer to the question is e-bay is a valuable resource for those expensive stamps available at dealers. The only problem is the mis-identifaction of those stamps. I have been targeting high value ( 50cent and $1 ) Canadian stamps vf nh. I have purchased 4 on e-bay and kept only 2! So if you don't mind returning stamps for a refund, I think it's worth it.

If you collect obscure areas, ebay can be a gold mine. If you're simply a fill-the-spot-in-the-album collector, perhaps less so. The more off the beaten path you collect, the greater the possibilities; areas where the Scott Catalog values are less relavent.

Hi dcaraz




There are many reasons and I talk about 2005 to now used stamps.

1. It is the S/A letter rate stamp rules not gummed.

2. kiloware use to be easy to get 100kg per month at $10 per kg. Now I am getting beaten with over $100 per kg bids. So if I get 40kg per year now...

3.People are not using stamps as the PO's are using stickers over the count + ebay has the sticker as well.

4.Some issue now I can only source as CTO and the buyers have adjusted to this trend.

5.Interpost S/A are the scarcest of the scarcest. Do a ebay search and I am mostly all alone unless ebay searcher are stopping the info. I have invested heavily in this area of used Australia and is my best seller by far.

6. Interpost are basically all high denomination stamp and sell for a premium and I collect about 20-30kg per year at very high prices.

I'm new to collecting and I had that very question when I saw the difference between ebay and some of the large auction houses (for what I thought were exactly the same stamps.)

Someone mentioned miss-identification and I worry about that as well. However, I think that if a stamp was certified to be something other than what was advertised the seller would surely make it right.

So far every thing I have purchased on ebay has lived up to the description but I haven't bought anything very expensive.

Plus, I have a very rigid set of rules when purchasing from ebay. Not the least of which is that the seller can not have less than a 99% positive feedback. Also, I always read buyer's responses to any negative feedbacks. Bad attitude or passing the buck...huge red flag.

hope this helps
wp62