New Player On The Block

What's your opinion of the new online stamps website; http://hipstamp.com

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

Some earlier chat about Hipstamp you may have missed:

https://goscf.com/t/49009&whichpage...rms=hipstamp

It will be interesting to see how the current Stanley Gibbons legal issue plays out.

I have a store on HipStamp so need to be careful about my opinions.

If you are primarily interested in buying/selling within the US market, then I believe HipStamp is catering well to that small niche, with sales now on a par or better than MR's defunct bidStart site.

On the other hand, I sell mainly stamps from the Pacific area and use SG catalogue numbers, so I feel like I'm swimming against the current there, with just the occasional sale.

All currency is US$, 99% of stamps are described using Scotts, sorting by catalogue favours displaying all Scott numbered stamps first and there is a separate 'Catalog' feature that only supports Scott numbers.

At least SCF knows the meaning of 'International'.

I lasted about 2 weeks on Hipstamp.
They have no option to block sellers, until they fix that, they do not have my business.

I abandoned Gibbons, and use Scott, I found Hipstamp to have a easily searched
option in Scott (as stated above) , and I was initially impressed.
Then I found swathes of stamps listed with no images, The more valuable Turkey issues, were constantly misidentified, images upside down, overpriced, always in favour of the seller.

"Can't be bothered selling outside US too much hassle" one vendor suggested.

The Turkey I did buy, were very budget priced, and the service, excellent.
But the hassle isolating genuine vendors with good trade practices, was not worth it, for me.

It has promise.

And how is this any different than ebay?

I for one do like Hipstamp. I have one problem - I can not seem to contact a particular seller. Does anyone know if this is normal?


Peter

I have several issues with hipstamp, although I've bought a few items there.

1 - I've never received a notice that my purchase has been shipped

2 - Most sellers do not post their policy regarding time extensions for obtaining certificates.

3 - I question the efficiency of their messaging system. Only one seller ever replied to my questions, even on items selling for almost $1000. I'd prefer not to put a seller on my "Do Not Buy From" list if they aren't getting the messages I send.

4 - the vast majority of items are "Buy It Now"; not many auctions.

At this time I have no interest although I received ads from them.

As I've said before, I have nothing but good wishes for hipstamp, but so far I have found NOTHING on the site that I would want to buy. As a result, my purchases are made from ebay and delcampe.