Hip Stamp?

I suppose this is the separation of bidStart from Gibbons. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

https://www.hipstamp.com/

-IBFS

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

IBFS, If you buy anything from them it calls the company "HipComic, LLC". The website seems to work very smooth.

Peter

Agreed. There doesn't appear to be a large selection of stamps yet, but I actually found one that was OK for one that I needed. The purchase did run pretty smooth. I'll see what happens from here. I wonder what the future holds for this website vs. ebay.

...HipComic?...Hope that's not an omen...


-IBFS

This is Mark Rosenberg's new venture. He was the original founder of StampWants, which became bidStart, which he sold to SG.

They want people to spend money on their site but do not have any 'Who We Are' information? Why would anyone be willing to share their personal and financial information when they do not bother to let anyone who they are? Yes, it is a 'secure' web site (https) but without an indication of even the jurisdiction of the site owner(s), it seems odd to me that people would blindly do business with them. Is his history too embarrassing to mention who owns the site? Mark Rosenberg's LinkedIn page says he is "the most well-known, respected and trusted name in philately and collectibles." Apparently this reputation is not worth adding to the site information? I'm confused.
Don
APS #094826

Don, well said. I do not know how deep you have gone into this, but all of the Bidstart merchandise seems to be on Hipstamp. From all the same sellers. It does makes one wonder.

Peter

Peter,

If Hipstamp takes off, the sellers that are posting both at bidstart and now Hipstamp will probably drop their bidstart listings. But for now, it makes sense to keep both listings.

Basil

Basil, Don, I just got a letter from Michael Flanagan, who sells on Bidstart and Hipstart under the name Mikey1st. He will cease selling on Bidstart as of April 30, due to the many problems of the website.
It is very strange, but I have not had any problems with Bidstart - must be a regional thing!

Peter

Re Mark Rosenberg's LinkedIn page, it looks like he was calling Stanley Gibbons "the most well-known, respected and trusted name in philately and collectibles." Also it appears that he started a comic book business called Hip Comic first, which may be why the stamp website refers to this company name.

He probably had a non-compete in stamps for a year.

All of my listings disappeared from BidStart, so I closed the account. Why pay for nothing? It looks like HipStamp is almost ready for prime time while BidStart is rapidly failing. Last year, BidStart sales declined about 80% from the year before while ebay sales increased. And sales on the SG site never took off.

Clark

How much did SG buy bidstart for?

Rosenberg's LinkedIn page notes the sale of bidstart.com to SG in Nov of 2012 for $1M. Another article states that under the terms of the deal, Stanley Gibbons paid $600,000 in cash and issued 20,035 new Ordinary Shares to minority shareholders and deferred consideration of 91,588 new Ordinary Shares to the majority shareholder, Mark Rosenberg, eighteen months after closing. That article also notes that BidStart was started as StampWants in 2005, had revenue of $300k in 2011, and had sold 3.5 million items up to the time of the sale.

Hipstamps is Mark Rosenberg's new venture. Sounds like he has parted ways with Stanley Gibbons. Mark contacted some Bidstart sellers and offered to port their listings to Hipstamps. I did that and have made 3 sales in the last week, which is 3 more than I have had from Bidstart or Stanley Gibbons. SG's site never got off the ground and It sounds like Bidstart is going away soon. SG's disasterous rollout of their own site and destruction of Bidstart will make for a good business school case study one of these days.

Bob

Well the stamp came ok, took 5 days. But I'm getting alot of email spam from the place.


-IBFS

IBFS, That is weird. I have bought two items, and have not gotten any Spam or Emails from or through them.

Peter