What Is The Going Rate For Acquiring 1995-2001 Mint US Stamps?

hello,
the backdrop to my inquiry (and probably a little too long): I have not collected US stamps for over 20 years. I stopped primarily because I was just disappointed with how much the USPS was printing seemingly only for collectors. When I looked at my express mail stamps that I paid $50+ face value for that were just sitting mounted on a piece of paper (in a showgard mount of course) I realized I was going to need to stop soon. and for the most part did stop. I purchased a few sets from the post office (in their folders and books). Recently I decided I wanted to consolidate those and get them into my album. I didn't have the pages so I looked around and did find a Liberty album that would fit my needs. Ok that said.
I bought the album and it has unfilled pages ( a collector's nightmare) from 1995 - 2001. I started looking at ebay for these and I was really surprised that they were selling for 4x face value. Have I really missed the comeback of the US Stamp market. Are folks really paying 4x face value for US stamps back in this time frame? and if they are, then I will probably just take the pages out of the album to avoid the temptation. If that is not really what people are paying, can someone point me to a place, site, person who is selling these at much closer to face value.

thank you

and I just realized that I don't have enough posts to buy on this forum (I have more on the coin forum) but I still would love to get some pointers to sites other folks use

I usually end up with these stamps as collateral to auction purchases. They consistently sell in lots at auction for about 80 percent of face all in.

weavus135, one other route to try is Hipstamp or stamps2go. These two don't seem quite as expensive as ebay,

Peter

The least expensive method is to purchase lots that you can acquire for less than face but you end up with a lot of stamps. There are some sellers (Eagle Stamps) that do not stock a full inventory but what they have is much more reasonable. You can also look at album lots and likely pay near face.

weavus: I too had a large hole in my U.S. collection. I stopped collecting in 1992, only to resume in 2007. During this 15 year period, I did occasionally purchase a few issues that I liked. So the hole wasn't completely empty. Unlike you, I decided to fill the entire gap. The method I used was to purchase groups of stamps that filled quite a few of my needs ... I then sold the remainder on ebay, recouping some of my expenditures. On rare occasions, I even sold the remainders for more than I had originally paid. I also sold a number of items that I no longer wanted to collect (FDCs, Canadian stamps, postcards, etc.). The sales, for the most part, fueled my purchases. It took a bit less than 4 years for me to fill my hole, but fill it I did.

you are looking at the wrong sellers if they are asking 4x face

While the earlier mint stamps, prior to about the time you are looking for, do sell for 70-80% of face routinely, stamps since the early 1990's generally do not show up often in these lots.

As the price of individual stamps moved up above .30, fewer people seem to have purchased them in quantity and that includes dealers. The net result is that there does not seem to be as many of the modern (1990ish to present) stamps available on the secondary market.

It is possible to pick them up, probably near face and maybe even a little less than that, but I wouldn't expect to find the stamps in this era easy to find at a discount.

On the plus side, you'll have some fun hunting down the ones you don't pick up easily!

The challenge is on ebay is that most sell individual stamps for $0.99 due to ebay listing fees, paypal fees, and shipping so always ends up a multiple of face.

If you want to purchase near Scott value try Bardo Stamps. He carries a broad stock. http://www.bardostamps.com/index.html

Eagle Stamps http://www.eaglestamps.com/index.htm usually has lower prices but selection is less.

There is a seller on Zillions of Stamps that has many for less than Scott.

My interest has been varieties (tagging, gum, etc) so not as many dealers sell those.

You can often go to a show and pick up a sheet of many stamps for face. The era is quite common in the piles.

Risky to read across markets, but, in the UK, there's usually a good number of "decimal" GB lots (i.e. material still eligible for postal use), which go for around 60% of face value. Within these, there are, in turn, usually periods, eg decimal 1990-2000. This may be the cheapest way to pick up stamps covering a few years, and use any extra stuff for postage.

thank you all very much for these additional leads. I have been out of the US stamp market a long time as I said so some of these comments about trend and pricing are quite interesting to me.
I'll go look at these places and try to find someone to spend my Christmas money on

Merry Christmas to all