Determining A "Fair" Price For Ebay Items

Thank you Redwoodrandy, I like your spirit too!

Hi jchrisler

It takes a bit of time to get the feel of things here but we are more user friendly than most.It can be very hard at 1st not to spin on stuff.

8 to 9 years ago I found this forum and a quality of life came back to me that I had not had for 16 years. An accident stopped everything I did.

Back then I had no idea how to use a computer and my ability to learn was damaged as well. A member called puzzler helped me to the max but he has passed not that long ago. Miss him.....

Can also walk but not too far. lol

When it comes to selling stamps the biggest thing is all about the stamps you choose to sell and how to buy them at a price that will offer a profit.

Maybe a topic for you to post is just that "What stamps to sell on ebay & where to buy them & pricing?"

Cut loose you can get your message across.

Julie,
Thank you, I was concerned that you might 'land hard'. We often have to 'let down' folks who have very high expectations about stamp collections which come their way; there are many urban legends about people striking it rich with rare stamps. The truth is, of course, that most stamps are not rare and most collections are not worth a lot of money.

This is why many of us try to promote the other great aspects of stamp collecting like education, comradery, and family time sharing.

Of course there are many folks who have also now turned part of their 'hobby' into a business by selling extra material. Since many do not rely on that income but rather simply use it to generate additional money for more stamp purchases; they don't mind taking whatever they can get.

(And the internet is full of like-minded folks who are doing the same with every kind item. All of this has greatly impacted the 'supply and demand' of all kinds of items.)

Please also keep in mind that the body of knowledge and experience required to be a successful stamp seller can often be a bit overwhelming. It is not something that anyone picks up with a few months of effort.

Like real estate, it may be beneficial to spend time looking at 'comps' on sites like ebay. Avoid simply looking at current listings, many people ask silly prices. Instead, filter your searches for 'completed' listings.

The 'completed' listings for similar items will give you an indication of how well they sell. For example, look for many 'completed' listings with no sales. And/or look for the prices that other sellers have actually received for successful listings.

Catalog values are, at best, a guideline to a general understanding of a stamps value. As others have mentioned, catalog publishers assist stamp dealers by assigning a minimum value to nearly worthless stamps.

So if I have 100 stamps and they each have a catalog value of 25 cents, it would seem logical that I should consider their value at $25.00. But unless I have a few stamp in the 100 that are very desirable, I would probably be lucky to sell them for more than a dollar or two.

It is not uncommon for sellers to assembly groups of stamps with a few better ones 'salted' in the mix to raise interest.

This is a good hobby with lots of good folks. Many of us also enjoy the occasional 'find' which spurs our motivation and interest, but relying upon selling stamps as income can be a difficult row to hoe.
Don

Good morning, I do feel better after a night's sleep. Thank you so much KGV Collector for your message. I can walk, but not too far either, that is why I hate shopping - walking is painful.

And KGV Collector, thank you for understanding what I was asking about regarding the auction, I was not looking for a full critique of my selling practices, but that is what I opened myself up for when I posted the link to one of my auctions. Sometimes I do really dumb things, and I hate it when I do.

Don, thank you for your message. I am not sure what I am going to do. I do sell for other people, there is always a supply of items to sell - so I don't have to sell the stamps. I was enjoying it though, that is what I was excited about is that I had found something that I enjoyed a lot. I must keep things up on ebay - I cannot continue to spend the time that I have been spending on stamps this past week, I must pay attention to nurturing that income.

Don said:


I feel that I have experience in selling on ebay, that is something that I am always learning from though as it is constantly evolving.

As for the stamps I am well aware that there is a mountain of knowledge that I don't have about stamps, all I can do at the point I am at is to keep plugging away at learning about them. I have an auction up as a toe in the water to start learning about the stamp market on ebay - don't see why I can't do both at the same time.

If my auction does not sell then the buyers have sent me a loud clear message. Generally when I am unsure of price, I look at completed listings and figure out a price in between high and low, if the item doesn't sell I knock off a couple of dollars and re-list to try again, I repeat this process until I have reached my downward limit or the item sells.

I am watching the auction that I started using the Ceylon stamps, over 80 people have looked at the auction, which to me is a lot, I do not get that kind of traffic on the jewelry and collectibles. But so far no watchers - I will let this auction run its course - it is a merely a test run - I fully expect to have to revise my price downward, but you never know on ebay, we will see.

I had my head up my proverbial arse when I first posted, I had this idea that I would hear from other stamp sellers - it was not fair for me to post the auction expecting to talk selling when I am in a stamp forum, of course the conversation centered on my "poor" selling practices (no returns, etc.) and lack of stamp knowledge, I do understand now.

Thanks to you all for being so kind here, as KGV Collector pointed out, I believe that the culture here is a caring and kind one, it seems to me that many of you have been coming to this forum for years, I realize I am a new interloper. Thanks to everyone for helping me out - really, although this one was a hard lesson, I do intend to learn from it.

Julie

OK, maybe I am a glutton for punishment but am going to take a stab at figuring out a fair price for a stamp auction using a 2009 version of the Scott catalog as reference.

I have a couple of questions, the first is related to the catalog value of the stamps listed in the Scott catalog, below is an image from the online Scott Tutorial, found here at this link:

https://www.scottonline.com/ScottCa...Tutorial.pdf

I referenced this image from that page:


Specifically I am looking at the 2 Catalog Values (#9) columns. The way I read this is that the smaller number is for unused stamps (the left column) and the larger number is for used stamps (the right column).

I find this confusing, is this a mis-print of some sort? Wouldn't the unused stamp be worth more than the used one? Am I reading this the wrong way?

The second part of this post is on how I could fairly price this Special Delivery stamp (actually 2 halves of a stamp) from 1945 Italy Sc# Q38 PP3 10c deep blue:


Using this information from the Scott online tutorial that I referenced above on page 16A it states:




it is .20 cents in the 2009 catalog which I am using. From this I can figure that the price has gone up 25% since 2009.

The above stamp is listed as either 1.30 (left column) or 8.00 (right column) (unclear which column I use for a mint unused stamp) - quite a large difference.

If I take the 1.30 base figure and multiply it by 25% and add the percentage that it has increased (.33 cents) to the base figure I arrive at $1.63 for this unused stamp - and I understand the stamp may not be Very Fine, it may be worth even less, but for the purpose of a rough gauge as to the price of a stamp I think this will work.

Does this sound like a fair way to price this stamp? I would be interested in your feedback. Is it too high or too low and why please?

And please let me know about the diagram from the Scott tutorial, please explain it to me if the left column is for unused and the right hand column is for used. I am aware that in some special cases the used version of a stamp may be worth more than the unused version.

Thank you all so much for your help - I very much appreciate it. Julie

Julie, I cannot speak to the issue about pricing your Special Delivery pair, but you are correct in your statement that in many cases (not infrequent) a genuinely used stamp is worth more than an unused one. That is the case here. The left-hand column is indeed for unused and the right-hand column for used. The italicized figures mean that the Scott-numbered stamp in the indicated condition (used, in this case)is sold infrequently enough to make an accurate value assessment difficult. The are many reasons why used examples of a particular number might be scarcer than unused examples, but one scenario might be that changes in postal rates render a particular value unnecessary or obsolete after a short period of use. Genuine used examples are thus uncommon, but unused remainders of this value can enter the philatelic market in far greater numbers.

Thank you so much dudley for explaining this to me. I am relieved, it makes sense after all. It depends on each stamp on a case by case basis as to whether the used version or unused version is worth more. I had not been paying any attention to which column I took the number from, but have always assumed the low value was the correct value to use - so glad now that I understand what the columns mean, and thank you for explaining those italics, I would gone on wondering about that too for a long time if you hadn't explained to me. Thank you again, Julie

Here is the 2009 Scott catalog entry for this Italian pair of stamps:



Am I reading this correctly, if the stamp I have is unused, isn't it valued at 8 dollars? Which brings a question to my mind, at what value does one normally decide to have a stamp examined and certified, in other words I don't think an 8 dollar stamp would be worth it - but what point is the break off point - how much does a stamp's suspected worth have to be to warrant having it certified?

Thanks, Julie

Your stamp is unused which is the first column $1.30. The second column is for used/cancelled $8. However, actual pricing value of this stamp is a whole other discussion.

As for certifying. There is no simple answer. It is not always about the $ value. So many other factors. Fake,forged,overprint,cancellation,id,perfs,gum and much more.http://www.philatelicfoundation.org...izing-terms/

The minimum value of 20¢ and now 25¢ is just an assigned minimum taking into account a retail dealer's time. The stamp may still be worth only 1¢. It is just a catalogue price. Actual value has to be determined by condition and demand and many factors. Eventually the minimum value may go up to $1 in the catalogue but the stamp may still be only worth 1¢.

Thank you so much redwoodrandy for your post. It is sounding impossible for me to come up with some sort of pricing method. Thank you for pointing out the correct column - it is backwards to what I have been thinking it was this entire time, my old brain may take a while to remember which column is used and which is unused, will have to re-check myself from now on that I am in the right column.

I do understand, you told me before, that the stamp could only be worth 1 cent and that the catalog value is just that, an assigned number, the actual value depends on various factors - which I am starting to think I will never learn.

How does someone like me arrive at a price? I did do an image search with this stamp and found nothing out there on the internet - did find this auction which is not good because it is for multiple stamps and the Q38 pair is used: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Italy-Post...AOSw8UZZ7fYs

I am starting to think there is no way to find this information out for any given stamp since the catalog value is apparently just some arbitrary guideline.

redwoodrandy said:


I would like to have this discussion if possible.

Thanks, Julie

Hi Julie,
Yes, determining an actual market value requires knowledge beyond a catalog value. At best, a catalog value gives you a general idea of the stamp's value, you really have to dig deeper to understand what it is actually worth.

For common world-wide material, something around 10% of a catalog value might be close. But this would be just a general starting assumption, more work is required to determine a better value understanding.

And ebay often does not have enough 'sold' or 'completed' listings for common worldwide stamps to get a comparison; your stamp is a good example. So you might want to search other online auction sites like HipStamp.com. They often have more listings for single stamps; I searched using 'Italy Q38' and found a number of listings.
Don

Of course you can use your catalogue for finding the prices. You just have to reduce the price to a certain percentage. In German Michel for example we say the "real" price is something between 10% and 20% of the catalogue price. In Scott it's more, perhaps 20%-30% (I think?), but others can say that better than me. Exceptions in both cases are stamps that are valuable, they reach the catalogue value or even higher. If I were you I would:
- make scans of some stamps together (higher image quality)
- sell them all together (20 stamps or 30 or more) for example at their 20% of CV and make a nice price as total (round off)
- stamps that don't sell well as nobody is interested can be sold as kiloware (also if below 1 kilo...)

---
See Don's helpful post now.

There is a pricing strategy for ebay auctions, based on published catalog values, that many ebay sellers use. They seem to start auctions at one notch over what any sane person would pay (sometimes many notches). You can scan through ebay listings to see how successful this method is. My advice: if you want to feel proud about how valuable your stamps are, use this method. If you want to sell some of your stamps, start them at a dollar - they will sell for what they are worth (if over a dollar!)

Yes, in the past I also started every auction at 1 dollar (even for valuable things, not only stamps). It's true that mostly each auction is found by enough people for that. But I learned that for some articles where there are thousands of auctions and the main keywords are very common, like stamps, it does indeed happen that some auctions are a little bit overlooked. For example I had some older stamps I tried to sell two times for 50 USD (wanted to keep some of them if not sold). Nobody bought. Then I took two stamps out for keeping in my album, and put it back. So there were even 2 stamps less. Then the stamps sold for 160 USD, starting with the same bid of 50 USD and with the same article words. So for anything that you like and don't want to give away for 1 USD, I would always put a higher starting bid - of course something reasonable.

Oh thank you everyone who replied to my last post. I was at wits end with trying to come up with something that would be fair. Don said:


Thank you Don, this is something I don't remember doing, I did a search using google, did not come up with anything useful but a link to an ebay search of active listings which included this listing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Italy-Q38-...em51f456818f

Looked over this auction, this seems to be a seller that knows stamps, the person has a store on ebay that focuses solely on stamps. I note that in this auction the person calls this stamp a "freak"- is this so? Is this why it is priced so much higher than the catalog?

As for pricing, everything that was said makes sense. I particularly like what stamperix said here:


I appreciate everything that has been said in this thread - thank you all very much! Julie