A Weird Experience When Trying To Offer To Buy A Narcotic Stamp

So there's a narcotic stamp I was thinking about buying.

It currently catalogs $20, and the seller is asking $50, for some reason.

Maybe because it has an "inverted surcharge."

I guess surcharges are the same as overprints to some dealers?

It's poorly centered and it has some short perforations and who knows what else.

Still, it's something that I don't currently have, so I made an offer.

At two and a half times catalog value, it's way overpriced, even with a genuine overprint and a readable cancel.

I think $10 more than catalog is reasonable offer though.

The seller came back with an offer of 7 dollars more than my offer.

I countered with two dollars less.

The seller declined the offer, so, after a bit, I thought, ok, what's two bucks.

So I offered with the seller's amount of $37, and the seller came back with an even higher amount, see below.

This is a strange interaction, in my opinion.

At this point I'm pretty sure that I won't be doing any further business with this seller, unless I'm looking at this weird and this happens all the time?

I feel like I'm being trolled, or just played with, for some reason.

What do you think?

Jim

One risks hurting other peoples feelings when responding to these types of request.
Against my better judgement, I'll try.

A sale is a contract between two parties, to seal the deal there must be an offer and acceptance, with some value attached.

Given your timeline, what I would suggest, is the moment you countered $2 less, you somehow affected the vendor.
His/her resultant counter, then affected you.

You are both allowing your feelings to enter the negotiations.

Tough Love : Suck it up and accept the last counter, or leave it be and look elsewhere.
You wouldn't be alone, we have all done this at one time or another.

It's a learning experience.

1. This seller is know for his... umm... "ethical lapses".

2. However, giving him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps a quick message outside the offer pointing out that your most recent offer is at the same amount as his most recent counteroffer.

3. No seller is ever obligated to re-offer at the same level as a previous offer that was either declined or expired.

I offered the same amount that he did, and this all took place in the course of a few hours.

I was basically agreeing to his offer.

To me, when a seller includes a "best offer" with his lot, that indicates that the price is negotiable.

Haggling over a price is pretty common with stamp collectors and dealers, I think.

I don't think that there's any rule that says you have a one-time shot at your offer.

Common sense suggests that:

a) the buyer doesn't offer an even lower amount when the seller comes back with an offer that is lower than the asking price but is higher than the buyer's first offer, and

b) the seller likewise doesn't raise the offered price when the buyer has agreed to a seller's offer.

But maybe I'm wrong...

Jim

Hi Jim,
I think it depend on how we perceive negotiations like this…

You can view this type of negotiation as being serial (one event at time) and each pair of offers are independent from one another. Or you can you view this type of negotiation as inclusive (the entire chain of offers) as a single negotiation.

As far as the intent of seller, I'll pass on making forming an opinion. I agree that there is probably some emotions are involved, but the fact is that no one is inside someone else's head.
Don

Hi Don,

So I should stop listening to all the voices in my own head?



Jim

Looks simple to me. By countering $37, the seller had dropped far below his first asking price. By not accepting and countering again, you ticked him off and cost him time, so he decided to charge you for the trouble. Most sellers want the offer-counteroffer process resolved in very few rounds.

You're probably right.

However, if a seller gets that easily irritated when a buyer is willing to pay nearly twice the Scott catalog value for an off-center, faulty stamp (despite their own interpretation of the stamps' "value"), perhaps they need a slightly thicker skin?

In the end, the seller not only lost the transaction, but a customer, as well.

Jim

I am with James on this since I experienced something similar almost exactly 3 years ago. I was interested in a graded stamp offered on ebay by a seller I had done a lot of business with, on and off of ebay (he also sells from a website) . Some of the off-eBay transactions included phone conversations and in-person, face to face sales at stamp shows; I considered myself a loyal customer of this dealer. The previous week I had used the ebay best offer feature with this dealer, as I had done many times in the past, to successfully purchase another stamp at approximately 90% of his price. Then he offered on ebay this PSE-graded stamp, with SMQ of $275, for $295. I offered $275, about 93% of his price. He immediately refused my offer with no explanation and no counter. Then he immediately ended the listing and relisted the stamp at $335. At that point I wrote him a polite note using the ebay message system telling him that I considered his actions an affront to our relationship and was disappointed that our past business evidently did not mean much to him and asking him to explain why he treated this situation so differently than the situations in the past, including just the previous week. I never received a reply from him; if there was a reasonable explanation of his actions evidently he did not think it worth his time to explain it to me. I have not purchased anything from him since and will never purchase anything from him again. I did track the stamp on ebay and it went unsold for over two years at $335 until he lowered the price to $295 (which at that time was the SMQ). This episode was upsetting but I learned from it that loyalty is not always a two-way street and there are a lot of great dealers out there who deserve my business a lot more than this person does. And I was able to purchase a better example (higher graded) of that Scott number within weeks of the incident. So, James, these two dealers lost two good customers; they are the losers in my opinion.

I recognize that Mr. Aldrich is not always the most popular of the dealers of US Revenue stamps, but I think that there is a least one mitigating factor. I do not yet own the 2018 US Specialized, but my 2017 edition does not price the NARCOTIC overprint inverted. It only prices the normal overprint, therefore to say that the stamp only catalogues $20.00 while true is a trifle misleading. This particular variety is not catalogued and the dealer (who has been a dealer in revenue stamps for over 30 years) independently placed a value of $50.00 on it. You may disagree with his valuation and that is your right, just as it is his right not to sell it to you at a price lower than his asking price. You are certainly entitled not to do business with him in the future.

Bill,

The NARCOTIC handstamps occur in many different orientations, horizontal, horizontal diagonal, diagonal reading up from left to right, diagonal reading down from left to right, and diagonal inverted. This is all dependent upon the local district in which they were produced and perhaps the haste with which they were produced. Some are found with multiple impressions. We specialists have never thought that premiums for these variations of the handstamps were warranted, given that some occur with great frequency.

To be sure the stamp being offered by Michael Aldrich originated in the 2nd district, New York (lower Manhattan) and was used by the well-known firm of McKesson & Robbins. It is genuine. My pair of 10¢ with the same handstamp and manuscript cancel by McKesson & Robbins also has the inverted handstamp. It is a reasonable conjecture that all the 10¢ NARCOTIC handstamps from 2nd district New York and used by McKesson & Robbins were inverted.

Perhaps of some interest is that my pair is also canceled on 4/15/1919!

While what you said could be applicable for many other areas, it is definitely not true with provisional narcotic stamps.

The overprints were applied by hand and are found single, double, triple, etc.; over-inked and under-inked; diagonal, horizontal, and vertical; complete and partial; regular and inverted; and so on.

There is no premium associated with any of these varieties; they are all simply the result of sloppy craftsmanship of the era.

A beginner might think otherwise, but a dealer should not.

The dealer would have seen all of these varieties after handling just a handful of collections, and would have realized that "that is the way that they come."

If the seller actually does consider inverted overprints worthy of two and a half times the catalog value, then there might be a suspicious attempt at falsely deluding the collector at play here.

In other words, tricking the collector into thinking that just because of the magic word "inverted," the stamp is worth more than it really is.

Just my two cents.

Jim

To Revenue MD:
Thank you for the additional information. I will note it in my electronic version of the Specialized. As you are aware I am not a revenue expert, but I am interested in all facets of US philately. Something tells me that Mr. Drummond and Mr. Aldrich do not get along in the first place and that this whole thing is a tempest in teapot. As an occaisional seller on E-Bay I run into similar situations and decided this back and forth thing is just not worth the effort. I agree that any time an item is offered with the "or Best Offer" the seller opens him/herself up to this sort of situation.

In the game of cat and mouse, you are not always the cat.

Not true, I barely know the guy.

Jim

There's another possibility that no one has considered:

Admittedly, I don't know the amount of time that transpired between the declining of the $35 offer and the subsequent offer of $37, but it could be simple oversight on the seller's part.

A "decline" usually signals the end of a negotiation, and a subsequent negotiation may not be connected with the first (I can't recall exactly how ebay frames it in their notification email).

I have had this happen before on both ends of the negotiation: as a buyer receiving a counter higher than a previous counter, and as a seller forgetting/missing what had previously been offered to a specific buyer.

It happens.

I'm with Mr. Crowe in categorizing it as a tempest in a teapot. This really is not a big deal.