Why Ebay And Not Bidstart ?

Actually in Delcampe its very easy to just select "organize search results by most expensive first" to achieve that goal. And of course the more detailed your search on any engine, the better. Entering, say, China by itself will end up giving you everything, but enter China 1980 (say if you are looking for Year of Monkey stamp) would get you the result much quicker, esp if the results are sorted by most expensive first.

I disagree that ebay is clueless and makes poor business decisions. I do not believe that they simply fell into becoming a multinational, multi-billion dollar company. They did what they needed to make money, grow, and appease their stock owners. Whether or not this is good for stamp buyers and sellers is certainly a discussion worth having, but there should be no denying that they have been highly successful. I agree with those who think the 'heyday' for selling/buying stamps on ebay may be over and it is in a slow state of decline now (in both quality and quantity).

But so far, no one else has been able to be successful with an online auction stamp site. I concur with the opinion that ebay certainly appears to be doing what they can to avoid low dollar transactions. From both a IT and support perspective; the cost of the transaction is the same if it is for 50 cents or $500 dollars. I think the jury is still out on whether or not anyone can make a profit running and maintaining an online stamp auction site.
Don

Purchased from 2 Hungarian sellers on Delcampe few months ago, never receive the stamps, the 2 sellers refuse to refund since it eas not register letter, they never offer me the option, I have to deal with Paypal directly, I get refund, 2 and 14 Euro.


I do have good transaction with UK and US sellers on Delcampe and they never use register

The problem with Delcampe if the buyer don't pay you can't raise an unpaid case on them and if seller don't send the item then buyer has to use paypal protection if paypal was the method used. If paid by credit card and never received item, good luck getting the money back with Delcampe. ebay may have negatives but they have protections in place for buyers and sellers. I sell stuff in my sleep on ebay and new buyers coming in every week. Not forgetting ebay sells everything so someone not looking in stamps category might not have even been looking for a stamped cover but found it. As they used a key word in the listing and found the item purely by chance. Many times someone looking for their ancestors names on ebay find the name they want on old letters in my ebay shop. ebay has a lot of pluses they are still the best place for selling despite the negative complaints we read online.

As a seller, I have tried bidstart numerous times, going back to its original launch as stampwants. I ran items in parallel with ebay on several occasions. It never was even remotely close. My sellthrough rate at bidstart was a tiny, tiny fraction of that achieved on ebay.

As a specialty buyer, it's even worse. I purchase on ebay weekly. Bidstart and stamps2go, maybe once every 6 months. Delcampe, a complete and utter waste of my time: if it's not fake, it's overpriced.

Believe it or not, the online venue I purchase from the second most frequently behind ebay, and while a distant second it is still worthwhile: the APS online stamp store.

Rev: I concur - the APS store is my second most useful buying venue.

ebay may be a very good place to sell for people that have built a reputation but for a newcomer it is terrible. A few months ago I placed a couple of dozen lots on ebay. Mostly low value (less than $10.00/ stamp) groups of British empire stamps. I tried to make the lots something that would interest me. They were all pre 1949 and were priced at about 30% of catalog as my min. bid. One lot sold. Most of the others didn't even get a view.

This is a problem sometimes I relist things 3 to 4 times to get it sold. But on ebay how many people take the time to check every item in a sellers shop? My unsold auctions go on to buy it now and sell the same day. The fact is no one will go through every item a seller has listed, to their loss I might add. People don't seem to notice some items straight away for what ever reasons. I once had a stampless letter New York on at $5 unsold for a few months. Suddenly two bidders found it and it went for $180! Everything sells in the end. But I am doing postal history. So items are unique, loose stamps there are to many common ones out there so a tough sell for some.

From a seller's perspective, I have stores on ebay, eBid, Delcampe and HipStamp. ebay wins hands down with 95% of the orders generated. I also find ebay's software more feature rich and easier to use than the others and they continue to improve it.