Where Have All The Stamp Sellers Gone?

Depends on the quality of your stamps. Scoot cat values are for VF centering with no faults. A large percentage of US classics are have worse centering and/or have faults nd are worth less as a result.

It is well known that ebay auction buyers will underpay for good stamps and may overpay for bad stamps, especially in groups. I believe that many auction buyers assume that every stamp has undisclosed damage and they bid low to avoid being stuck with stamps they don't want or can't return. Auction sellers are more successful if they list regularly and develop a following. Sound US stamps often sell at 75 to 100 percent of Scott retail, based on centering, as fixed price listings assuming images are good and the description is complete and accurate.

There is definitely two different markets on ebay. Sellers who use the wrong format will lose money on good stamps at auction or their reputation with junk in fixed price listings.

Clark

Hi bluegrass, I asked same question back when I was new to this forum about a year ago. Most of the experienced members indicated that they prefer THIS forum for connecting with and helping educate others, and share experiences with online stamping friends, rather than commerce.

Personally, I don't find ebay to be an expensive market. ebay may not be perfect, but I've relied heavily on ebay as I've built my US collection, and am now building a British Commonwealth collection. I find ebay's charges very reasonable when compared with the 20% charge a major auction will add to your winning bid -- och!

artful, you may be right. I sell infrequently and am certainly a small fish since I am no dealer -- just selling off my dupes. You can tell by the number of historical bids and buys which folks have been long time buyers and which are relative newbies to ebay.

eyeonwall, Yes, of course. In my example, when selling on ebay I am not expecting anything close to CV. But, on the other hand, it is disappointing when you receive a winning bid of $1.99 for a decent stamp with CV > $200.

Of course, as a buyer on ebay I have benefited from many good value deals for which I have won.

I have the same feeling as OP, lots of sellers are gone.
On the other hand, I understand them perfectly, seems many sales on my ebay are going without much gain for the seller. I do about the same as Floortrader, bring my leftovers for a local auction. If I was to sell on ebay, I think the increased profit would not do defend the time spent. And personally I love big boxes of 'junk', so in order to maintain the local auctions, I supply some boxes for my fellow locals...

The question may be where have the buyers gone. If there were a lot of buyers, there should be more sellers but no data to substantiate the statement.

If the hobby is shrinking I would expect buyers to be also dropping and therefore sellers decreasing with supply increasing along with falling prices.

If most dealers in US price off Scott's prices will go with Scott to some extent for more common material.

Al

You almost cant put auctions anymore but if you sell for a reasonable price there are some buyers. There are a few sellers with a large quantity of auctions not doing bad, they seem to have their own group of buyers. This has caused alot of people who were buying to resell to go away. I mostly just buy and sell a little to get stamps for my collection since I'm on a fixed income and my wife has fixed my share at 0

I still recall a chap in one of Studs Terkel's oral histories saying, "My wife has a private income - me".

"A winning bid on an item of >$200.00"?

I would suggest that if you don't want low bids like that, you should make sure that you place a minimum bid on your items. If there is only 1 bidder and you've placed a MB of $1.00, even if the bidder secretly bids$100+, the winning bid will be at the $1.00 level.

KGV, I think the stamp business is somewhat geographic. I don't have the longer perspective as a collector that you have, but I wonder if most US stamp collectors are focused more on collecting US stamps and have less interest in stamps from other nations.

I'm in the US and when I was collecting only US classics nearly 100% of my buys were from US dealers/sellers. When I decided last year to start collecting British Commonwealth I got nearly all of my ebay old album buys from dealers/sellers located in the UK.

Stanley Gibbons has opened sales office in Hong Kong to serve the growing Asia market. I could be wrong, but this seems to point toward regional preferences among active collectors.

I've also found far fewer US collections available from European dealers.

Glenn, when selling my dupes I have more recently set BIN prices. Previously I experimented with BIN, best offer, and auction pricing. Personally, I have enjoyed bidding in auctions to win lots and albums, so because I enjoy the "ecstasy of victory" I prefer to sell through auctions. But as you point out, if the buyer market for common items is soft one or two bidders are not likely to generate more competitive sale prices.

My most recent buys of better single US classics have been via negotiating with the seller by making a fair best offer. This usually yields a win/win deal.

GeoffHa, cracked me up! I recently retired but my wife hopes to work another 3 years. When she leaves for work I tell her to bring home the bacon so I can invest in my stamps

Fortunately, she has a sense of humor.

Talking to various club members who sell stamps on ebay ,the general opinion is that the bidding for lots have changed over time and most of the bidding is at the last minute and it is the "gotcha" type of bidding. The bids are at opening bid or just a few cents above the minimum .
So they have quit the auction style bidding and gone to BIN pricing .The good news is that a lot of stuff is coming up that has been difficult to find for many years and is showing up at out of date catalog prices .
As a worldwide collector trust me there is a lot of material that the catalogs misprice or have no basis to raise the price and dealers and collectors are unsure of the rareity so they list it at a low price ,which is great for me because I have not seen the stuff for sale for years .

Only 1% of the stamps I've auctioned were resold at higher prices, so I think the winning bids of 10-80% SCV are fair prices.