If You Use Michel, What % Of Cv Is Your Rule Of Thumb?

I know my question in the title is overly broad, but let me try to unpack it a little bit:

If you use Scott, you probably have a percentage of catalog value that you use to guide how much you're willing to pay for an item.

For those of you who use Michel catalogs, what rule-of-thumb percentage of catalog value do you use in your mental calculations to decide whether something you're looking at is attractively priced or not?

To narrow this down a little bit, let's say this is for post-WW2 material, not scarce, but a little harder-to-find, not necessarily common material, cataloging somewhere in the €20-€200 range. Mint never hinged, no damage, etc.

I'm especially interested in hearing from our European colleagues who attend stamp fairs and may have a feeling for how dealers price as a percentage of Michel catalog.

Thanks for your observations!

Personally I feel comfortable with 10%. But the scarcer/more-in-demand the stamp, the higher the percentage goes (in a way there is no 'middle-ground' as from 10% you easily jump to 80-100% of catalog or over. So there's just two ends of the pool IMHO).

(but as I collect used and cto only, I've got very little knowledge on pricing of mint stamps)

-k-

All the stamps priced in catalogue 0,20 can be found at 0,01-0,02-0,05.
If you buy lots, you can buy at 10% or less, but in this case you can´t choose what you buy, you buy the whole lot.
Prices grow significantly if you want to buy a specific item, dealers use to offer 30%-50%. If the material is very interesting and difficult to find, then maybe the price can go up to 100% or more.
The CV is a reference made by the sellers, and fix somehow the inicial position of buyers and sellers, I recommend you to look for the closing prices in ebay, or in your local market, to see the real distance between CV and reality. best wishes.

Depends a lot on the country. But in generel, if it is complete sets / better singles, 20-33%. For scarcer stamps or ones with certificates, from 33-50%.

Material not offered often, prices can be 100% or more.

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on this! It's helpful, even when discussed in generalities.

I'll still be following this thread, and would welcome any additional comments from anyone.

Michel values are twice that of Scott, so I generally cut Michel prices by 50% to get a Scott equivalent. Certain European dealers price material at Michel prices or they quote Michel. One collection I just purchased was priced at about 15% of Michel. The dealer probably thought that was a pretty good deal for a collection of classic material, but it was never going to sell in the U.S. at that price, which was 30% of Scott. I offered 20% of Scott and went up to about 22% to close the deal. This was early classic material but the seller could give no assurance about condition and I really wanted this collection. Otherwise I would have stayed at 15-20%.

For post classic material in a collection I wouldn't pay more than 10% unless I had some assurance the condition was VF and sound.

I corrected the above post after realizing my math was way off.

Here's a good example of mis-pricing between the US and Europe.

There's a collection of early Hungarian material for sale by a European dealer for $425.

The dealer, who I like and trust by the way, quotes this collection at 1,250 Euros according to Michel, which is more or less correct. This equates to $1,750 US dollars. The dealer wants 25% of Michel for this collection and will probably provide back-scans if you ask but no other assurance of soundness. There is nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

However, using a Scott catalog, (if I recall correctly) the CV is about $700-$800 and hence this amounts to 50-60% CV. I would not pay that price unless I could see close-up scans of each stamp, front and back, and had written description of the condition of each stamp. Even then it seems overpriced.

For the auction, as is, without additional information, I could see offering no more than 30% CV for this after seeing the back scans, which coincidentally amounts to about (approximately) 50% cut in Michel CV.

I my opinion, this mispricing is partly a catalog translation problem and partly other factors, such as the item being consigned for sale, or dealer pricing for sale at retail, perhaps to European customers, and perhaps relying on reputation for assurance of condition.

Thanks, HfS, for your observations and perspective on this. It's very helpful for you to have expanded on this a bit.

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For what it's worth, for my own thinking, I was referring to items sold individually that would catalog around €20-€200. These are booklets (not booklet panes) that Scott does not catalog.