Opportunities For Discount Postage

1.) ebay needs a category for DISCOUNT POSTAGE. Persons looking for discount postage should not automatically miss listings that say BELOW FACE VALUE or the like.

2.) Discount postage needs to become more sophisticated. Descriptions should say how many of each denomination and whether or not precancels are included. Then shoppers would look for the words NO PRECANCELS in the description.

3.) More of these discounted stamps are landing on the market, faster than people can use them up. Get the word to Joe and Jane Suburbia, who bring in the mail. The cemetery association needs money for routine operations and to fix the fence. Let's chip in $500. On second thought, looking at our checking balance, they can make do with $400. WAIT: Telephone them to ask how many first-class stamps they use in a month? Answering genealogists, mailing 60 copies of the bulletin, they use up 83 a month, which is about 1000 a year, for which they are paying $470 at the post office. Send them 1000 18-cent; and 1000 29-cent and tell them to use these up while the price stays 47-cent saving any Forevers until later. With all the non-profits out there and all the people supporting non-profits, there is ample opportunity to use up discount postage at full face value and much of it will end up in kiloware.

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

Somebody smart ?

Well and good; however many people are naturally suspicious and do not trust "discounted postage." They suspect the stuff is phony, or stolen, or illegal in some way. But I agree with the objective - get that stuff used up. It could help raise values over time.

Lot of those offers are for stamps taken off envelopes that missed being canceled and that is ILLEGAL , not to mention a lot of those stamps have been WASHED of their cancels and that is illegal too .

Floortrader: It's pretty obvious that booklets and rolls of stamps are not skips. I don't like skips either because I want cancels. Some of those lots on ebay look like skips soaked off envelopes. It's easy to tell that others are not.

The ebay categories Stamps > United States > Postage and Stamps > United States > Sheets are sufficient for selling discount postage. Unfortunately, some ebay sellers don't understand categories or fail to change the category while entering listings. Listing revenue stamps as in the Postage category should not happen. The category name Postage may be too sophisticated for some sellers, but seems to be understood by most buyers and sellers.

Sellers who fail to properly describe stamps exist for all types of stamps. There is no reason that a title like "US Postage $500 Face Booklet and ATM Panes 25¢ to 42¢ Never Hinged" should be overlooked or misunderstood.

Also, not all postage sells at a discount. Labeling a lot as "discount postage" becomes untrue if bidders run the price up over face, as could happen if a rare plate number or some other unusual piece is visible in the image.

In general, I agree, but like anything else, "it depends". There is a seller who neatly packages discount postage into multiples of the first class rate, the international rate, the 2-ounce rate, etc. For example, the first-class rate package would include (50) 25-cent stamps and (50) 22-cent stamps, so it's a piece of cake to frank a letter. He sells at 18% off of face, a decent enough deal, given the convenience factor. I've also bought postage lots in plain $25 or $50 increments where the seller simply said the stamps would be anything between 3 cents and 42 cents. I buy those lots in the 25-30% off face range. Again, given the inconvenience factor of having to cobble together the right denominations, I'd expect a larger discount off face. The total FV should always be listed in any case, but I can live with not knowing the denominations if the discount level is higher.

Be aware of two things when using ebay for modern 'discount postage'. First, there are some US counterfeit rolls coming from off-shore (I know of some 44C roll listings removed for being counterfeit). Second, understand that US postage stamps are now considered the de facto form of money in many US prisons.
Don