Delcampe And Selling/Buying Stamps There

I"m on vacations now and thinking about selling stamps at Delcampe again.
Do You buy/sell at Delcampe? Whats Your opinion about restarting stamp selling business there?

The sellers here in the States are ebay oriented. Delcampe is mostly European.
Personally I do check Delcampe and buy through them, but US stamps are not their strength.

Peter

My go to place to buy stamps online these days is BidStart...eBay imposes very high shipping fees to Canada...I collect mainly France and other European countries and will check out listings on Delcampe....but I find that a lot of sellers there do not accept PayPal and if they do..they charge an extra premium...but there are times I find an item that is reasonably priced and don't mind paying the premium. Here in Ottawa, Canada there is only one brick and mortar stamp shop...fortunately there is a monthly stamp bourse...my favourite outlet for purchases these days.
So...I think if you are selling USA ithe alternative to ebay IMO would be BidStart.

I find great German material on Delcampe.

My "go-To" place to sell stamps is Stamps2Go.com ... http://www.stamps2go.com/

I've been experimenting with the SCF auction option, but don't really know what people on SCF are looking for.

I have an Delcampe account, but have not used it to buy or sell.

I don't use ebay to sell.... just too much of a challenge.

APS sales circuit are a source for both buying and selling, but it's tough to put books together to sell that can be priced to meet the APS minimum and yet meet buyer price expectations.

I have tons of stuff to sell, but I have been resorting to SCF "give aways" as a source of entertainment and opportunity to move stuff along to those who can use them. If I could figure out how to "bundle" stuff to be of market value, I would prefer to use one of the selling sites mentioned above.....

Delcampe would never get a dime of my money or my business as a buyer or seller. They are scum that are ruining our hobbies by valuing money over at least trying to stop counterfeit sales on their site, in fact they welcome the Chinese counterfeiters. Greed, greed, greed. I asked Sebastien himself in person at the FUN show in Florida a few years back, his answer.... "Not my problem"

It is difficult to search for stamps by Scott catalog number on Delcampe. I looked at stamps2go, but the web page layout, item descriptions and search seems lacking. Not a frontrunner for sure. Finally, it is not clear how long BidStart will remain operational. Sellers may be able to jump to the new Stanley Gibbons site. They may have to jump soon because that boat is pulling away from the dock even though it seems to be sinking.

Search on ebay is also stamp hostile. Catalog numbers are confused with catalog values, prices and inventory numbers of some misguided sellers. Even worse is failure to display Condition Description, needed to describe the condition of stamps unless the Item Condition is populated. The available values are "New" or "Used". Few if any stamps are "New" (packaged in the original shrink wrap) and it is certainly incorrect to describe an unused stamp torn from a sheet as "Used". At one time ebay supported "Unused" in the Item Condition. It is fortunate that ebay doesn't display Item Condition in the Stamps category, but it is quite unfortunate that the Condition Description is not displayed unless some Item Condition is specified.

The bottom line is that many sellers ignore condition and buyers tend to bid low fearing that they will receive damaged stamps they don't want and can't return.

APS StampStore may be the best and safest site out there, but images often leave something to be desired. Although most listings are not vetted by anyone, it is possible ask for a certificate at the time of purchase. If the certificate is bad, the seller eats the cost. Buy all of the flat coils you want, even though most are bad. Just ask for and pay for a certificate. Eventually one will be good. Attempting this on ebay or other venues would be financial suicide.

I think that the APS store interface leaves a lot to be desired. The opening page to the store is a detailed search page? Asking users to navigate a complex search page when they simply want to see if anything is of interest to them is less than ideal. The opening page should present users with a quick links to filter stamps by country/category/topic/type.

The search page itself is fine, but I don't think it should ever be the 'front door' to a store. You want to the opening page to entice buyers, not to give them a lot of work filling out a detailed search form as the only way to browse the offerings.

But I concur it is one of the safest online places to buy material. And Clark's outlined process for buying US W/F coils is very wise.
Don

I buy a lot of Polish material at Delcampe & have nothing but praise for the site & sellers. I like their filtering system whereby you can differentiate between stamps and postal stationery. I don't find the ridiculously-overpriced sellers on Delcampe, they seem to stick to ebay.

Why is there a comment that implies BidStart is closing? Are there actual any facts from the owner indicating a shut down is possible. I have bought from all the sites and have had few problems with any of them, but BidStart is among my favorites.

Whats this about?

I think he is saying that Delcampe does even less than ebay in policing counterfeit and fake material listings that greatly harms our hobby. Without any oversight, they are allowing sellers of counterfeit material to rip-off hobbyists and ultimately damage the hobby.
Don

I didn't know it was possible to less than ebay in policing fakes.

Stanley Gibbons launched their marketplace site to replace bidStart a few months after the takeover. However, the new site was somewhat of a dud resulting in an indefinite postponement of the planned bidStart shutdown. Sources within Stanley Gibbons suggest that an upgraded version of the SG site will replace both sites, possibly sometime this summer or early fall.

One thing is clear. Even if the SG Marketplace re-launch fails, bidStart will shutdown or die a sudden death when no one is left to fix its creaky software. And then Hipstamp waits in the wings if ongoing litigation is ever resolved.

I get fake coins removed from ebay every day with no problem. I let them know, they take them down. Sebastion told me he doesn't care how many counterfeit coins are listed as long as the bill is paid.

According to others on this forum, that is definitely not the case with stamps.