To Authenticate Or Not? 2017 Ebay/Hipstamp Auction Purchases

Thank you very much for getting "back" to what I asked about. I'm trying figure out how to get into meaningful collecting and clearly lots of pitfalls. Will definitely move away from Anthony's and PSE immediately! (Major take away!). Done.

Not a troll, just a guy that does not want to be buying the $40 stamp for $400 on ebay! (Sounds like this might be the case). Noble Spirit is ebay vendor of choice on auctions.

I'm honestly struggling with a better scan. It seems to modify a PDF I need to pay a monthly fee to Adobe! (Boo!) I tried the "free" converter but it froze each time, operator error i'm sure.

Thanks again everyone for sharing your thoughts on this topic tonight.

Noble Spirit?? You are bottom fishing/gambling with no knowledge. You have zeroed in on the bottom of ebay with this uneducated meandering.

There is a search function on SCF that has threads on all of these topics.
Cartel,Momen,Anthony's,NYStamps,CKStamps,Noble Spirit etc.,etc. You will hit them all I fear. Shoot from the hip. Buy now then cert. and then try and figure it all out.

Why indeed not deal with reputable auction houses that have been recommended here on other threads, such as Rasdale for just one example.

You like NobleSpirit?

Here is a #5A to go with your #6b and #8. It's just another $40 stamp but you can use your throwaway money to pay for it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NobleSpiri...AOSwZPZZ57oL

Seriously though, we are here to help you. You might get slapped around a little but it can't be any worse than doing biz with the worst sellers on ebay.

I have been rendered speechless.

Big auction houses are not the right place for a new collector to start in my opinion. ebay is fine if you take care. There are plenty of good stamps and reputable dealers there. If I could add anything to this conversation it is this:

You've obviously found the right place to learn from. This is a great forum to help increase your knowledge. I wish I had come here earlier to find out about things like the Cartel. There is nothing more important than getting to know who you are buying from. Search the forums. If you find the seller here you will be better informed. Unfortunately there are several very tempting dealers out there selling both modified stamps and/or using shill bidders to force prices up. Hopefully through all this you will have gotten the idea that ebay is not exactly a safe place to buy.

There are forum members who sell on ebay too. You can find them with the " ebay / SCF Member List" in the menu on the left.

One more thing. You won't always find agreement on every dealer. Some people will complain about a dealer who others think is ok. It is not black and white - except for cartel names. Those are all black.

ebay holds absolutely no advantage over auction houses in building a collection. None. You do not pay less for the same item if you can even find the genuine article. There is no personal relationship with anyone selling. If there is a problem I would rather be calling Andrew at Siegel than sending an email through the the ebay system hoping for a reply. A regular auction house is how I built the bones of my collection. The small items such as Kansas-Nebraska. A beautiful MNH set in a small box lot for $100 that also had great postal history (Lakota covers), a respectable 166 and so on. The enchantment with ebay is mystifying. There are 30 auctions on SAN in the next few weeks. Tons of variety and it is nice stuff from respected dealers that answer the phone and make things right if there is a problem. Just my opinion but I really do not understand the attraction unless you are addicted to throwing the dice as to whether or not you are getting what you think you are getting. Why?

I remember both 1c Franklin stamps you bought from Anthonys. If I remember correctly, the "8" was a trimmed stamp w/ dot, from Plate 11 or 12. I want to say it looked like a Plate 11 TIIIa(it was months ago, so not 100%). The other stamp is definitely a TIV with the top recut. I remember thinking to myself, "how can anybody not notice the top line"?

They are currently selling plenty of bogus stamps on ebay & have been every week now, for a while. Looks like maybe they switched from selling trimmed #35's as #13, to selling #16's that clearly aren't recut on top or bottom. Still selling trimmed #24's(or whatever they have) as #8/#8A/#5A/#5/etc. It's every week now & I highly doubt it's accidental/coincidental.

If you don't know, there's also The One Cent Franklin Plating service. They only Plate & Certify the 1c Franklin stamps. The charge is only $16/cert(plus desired insurance for return). That would probably be a cheaper way to go for those 2 stamps. I can tell you the outcome isn't going to be very favorable; either way you choose to go. Would probably be quicker also.

If you don't have a Scott Specialized Catalogue(or similar), you should definitely consider finding one. The 2018 was just released, but older copies can be found for pretty cheap. I would be lost without mine!

ebay is full of landmines, so tread lightly. If you're interested in something, try finding other certified examples online to compare to, or buy rare/expensive stamps already certified. I think there can be an advantage to using ebay over auction houses, but you need to be pretty knowledgeable & know what to look for. I say this because an auction house typically knows exactly what they are selling. While average Joe on ebay may have no clue what they even have. I've got some great deals from overseas sellers that had no idea/didn't care what they were selling. Admittedly yes, I would buy high end stamps from auction houses if I could; only problem, I don't have that kind of money. So I rely on ebay, hoping to find a neat deal. I've had my fair share of disappointment & I'm sure I'll experience more. I try to not let it bother me & remind myself what I have found, not what I haven't found.

If you have questions about anything, there's usually someone here that can point you in the right direction. Happy collecting!

YoP,
Welcome, sorry the introduction to the SCF has been as rocky as your introduction to the hobby. Since you contacted me through Stamp Smarter the other day and I recommended that you come here to SCF I feel responsible, I apologize if any of the responses seem snarky. I can verify that you are not a troll, that you are a nice person who has made some buying mistakes.

Chances are good that you have been victimized by both ebay and some of the more notorious philatelic sellers. Unfortunately your story is not unusual, I receive emails like yours often at Stamp Smarter and as some have noted here, you can use the search feature here and find countless threads regarding misidentified listings and bad ebay sellers. (Believe it or not, there are even worse ebay sellers than the ones mentioned in this thread.) This is a good hobby and a good forum. If you can post higher resolution (larger) images some of the folks here can tell you which features are used to make a positive ID of your stamps. This MAY help you get some relief from some of these sellers but note that as more time passes the chances of returns becomes much less likely.

New hobbyists cannot be expected to proactively find this forum before making purchases. And it should not be surprising to anyone that ebay marketing about 'protecting buyers' is effective enough to mislead inexperienced buyers. Typically less experienced hobbyists do not jump into the 'deep end' of the pool but it does happen. I am hopeful that your courage in stepping forward and now seeking additional opinions is a sign that you will not get soured by this introduction to the hobby. Please give this community and our hobby a chance to help guide you through some of these pitfalls.
Don

@YOP:

Why are you saving your scans as pdfs? I suggest saving your scans as jpgs with a high resolution (600 or 1200 dpi) and use the "Free Image Optimizer" (there is a link for it in when you use "full reply" to post to a topic) to reduce the image size to under the 200KB limit.

Good luck and welcome.

To answer your question explicitly, the 387 is almost certainly fake (99.999%, perfs look bad, edges look bad, shade is wrong), the 8 is almost certainly misidentified (for the reason others have pointed out), the C3 looks reperfed to me but hard to tell from the image (and who knows whether the gum is original and/or NH - impossible to tell from a scan), and the boating revenue looks OK. IMO, none are worth certifying (because the problems seem fairly obvious and would be a waste of money to get an expert to tell you such).

However, if you placed them on extension and a cert is required to return, then yes, get the 3 questionable items certified then return them when the inevitable opinions come back. But if you bought these months ago, don't be surprised if you don't get a penny back (and get stuck with $100+ of cert bills on top of that) -- you shouldn't have waited this long to raise issues about genuineness/soundness on a purchase.

This is a good lesson for why you should seek out forums like this, or buy reference books and learn for yourself, BEFORE spending significant $$'s on ebay (this is true for any hobby & ebay, not just stamps).

The truth is that while a lot of good advice has been given, very few if any started out any differently in this hobby. Getting screwed is a right of passage into the hobby. Welcome to stamp collecting. Your own knowledge will be your best protection.