One Of These Ebay Sellers Is A Bit Clueless

When your asking price is over 100 times that of your competitor, what is the potential buyer supposed to think?

Jim



http://www.ebay.com/itm/UNIQUE-2-DI...p3ZTC2avU3eg



http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cleveland-P...AOSwd~RZSYEr

Well, I know what I think - I have seen that first name some place before. He sells plate number coils at some ridiculous prices as well.
But in all seriousness, is that stamp listed somewhere and what is it's catalog price, just to get an idea?


Peter

Hi

Yes, it is. I've been paying five to ten dollars each for them for years. They're fairly common and frequently encountered.

Jim



Edit: Here's a listing of one of the other stamps in this "unique" listing:

In all fairness Jim, to the uninitiated it's potentially an apples to oranges comparison, as the first listing includes 2 very different stamps, and the second 1 stamp. Who knows, it may be the second stamp in the first listing that has all of the scarcity and value...

(Yeah, I know, highly unlikely; just trying to play devil's advocate... I think his pricing tends to be... um... "optimistic", yeah that's the ticket!)

Dang, you're more accepting than I am I guess.

If some collector is in fact uninitiated, then, in my opinion, the dealer should be able to back up his insanely high asking price with some documentation next to the stamp to show why the price is so high.

Otherwise it is not unlike someone selling ten dollar flashlights for $200 when the power goes out. There's a word for that...

Jim

p.s. there's a collector named Art that has a stock page of both of these particular stamps. Saw it a while ago.

Apparently anything vaguely coil-like to this seller is a) an unlisted test stamp and b) really, really, really rare.

Jim

Here's another example:



http://www.ebay.com/itm/CHICAGO-BOA...AOSwu4BV4M31



http://www.ebay.com/itm/UNLISTED-TE...AMXQKLdRzsRa

One of the "unlisted test stamps" attached to an insurance policy.

It even says, right on the stamp, what it is for: "service and inspection charge."

Jim

Jim, I think you ought to change the word "clueless" to what it really is. "Greedy".


Peter

I would reframe this slightly. If the seller is advertising a stamp as "extremely rare," but it is not, then he could be engaged in false advertising, and the over-paying buyer may have a remedy. "Rare" is not an expression of opinion, like "To me it's rare," or "I thought it was rare," or "It has been rare in my experience." It is not subject to the defense of puffery, the ordinary exaggeration of a seller of which all buyers should beware. It's a flat statement of fact by an experienced dealer that buyers can be expected to rely upon, and should be verifiable based on objective evidence such as a census, printer's records or studies of the printing, issuance, use and destruction history of the stamp. Yet here it is completely undercut by Drummond's evidence to the contrary. Some sellers may be skating on thin ice and it is only a matter of time before a well-heeled buyer discovers that a statement of "rare" is false and sues to recover the over-payment (with a demand for punitive damages to punish the seller and deter others).

Lawsuits? Seriously?

"Rare" is always an opinion, because it depends on multiple factors of supply, demand, and popularity (which is one reason for demand but is not demand itself). What is rare to one person does not have to be rare to another; it might only be scarce. And monetary value has little to do with genuine rarity, since there are a lot of very scarce to rare stamps with relatively or even genuinely low catalog values.

Yep. There are expensive common stamps and there are cheap rarities.

"Rare" to me simply means there aren't many around. A stamp where fewer than ten copies exist? Definitely rare -- but not necessarily worth a great deal of money; I have rarities of this sort with a market value of no more than a couple hundred dollars, because they were issued by an unpopular country (say, the Ivory Coast) or in a highly specialized field (say, Washington state revenue stamps). Not much demand, so not a very big price -- but still rare. A "rare" stamp is a stamp you can't get, even if you walk into a bourseful of dealers and wave a stack of money around.

On the flip side, a set of Zeppelins or a $5 Columbian is not at all rare (they're available 24/7 on demand, like Big Macs), but is expensive. That bourseful of dealers will be happy to sell you as many as your stack of money can buy.

It's the most used and abused term on ebay though, to be sure. Everything is "rare".

I don't know about you guys but I don't think that any collector in his right mind would purchase something on the blind just because it's advertised as 'rare', 'scarce', or 'unique' for that matter and dish out x amount just for the sake of having that item in their collection. I dare say, that most of us have some sort of library pertaining to our specific areas of interest or belong to a club and yes, to this community, where we can get an opinion - even if we don't like them at times. Not to mention that most collectors have budget restraints. I wonder if sellers on on-line auction sites that list such items are actually targeting experienced collectors or clueless investors with money to burn?

I can tell you don't run a business in places like Los Angeles, where seemingly everyone has a grievance and sooner or later virtually every business owner is sued by someone for something. State attorneys general also often are interested in these issues. I was merely pointing out that over-use of false descriptions is an area of theoretical risk for the large commercial seller - I don't see how that is an unreasonable comment.

For a local brick & mortar business, sure. However in this case we're talking about potentially suing some ebay seller located on the other side of the continent (or planet) with no physical presence in your state. Not likely. Unless you're thinking the Feds would get involved on a RICO statute due to interstate commerce, but again unlikely.

If anything, there's probably a better chance of success in suing or creating a class action lawsuit against ebay for not policing their platform sufficiently in this regard. With all of the onerous requirements placed upon sellers over the last decade, ebay has long passed the "we can't be held responsible; we're just the venue" justification, IMO.

There have been several threads about this seller's pricing. It does seem at times to be clueless, and everybody who might see something of his they are interested in should certainly look to see if they can find it elsewhere. I've purchased a number of items from other sellers at 1/3 to 1/4 what he was asking. But on occasion, he's had items I wanted that I could not find elsewhere, and I've found him willing to accept "reasonable" make offers. I suspect I've still ended up paying more than I could ever recoup from selling off later, but I had other reasons for acquiring the material that offset that concern.

Caveat emptor. Especially with this seller.

Basil