Anthony's Llc Dismal PF Report Card = Follow Up To 10/23/17 Discussion

Right now there are 56,946 current listings on just US stamps 1901-1940 unused. ebay makes more than you probably realize in stamp sales when you add in the seller fees and paypal fees I'm thinking they do very well. If you look just at Great Britain there are currently 457,754 listings. The top selling things on ebay are Video games and books.

80%+ of the listings are fixed price that won't sell on an immediate basis. ebay also pays out a fairly high percentage of their fee revenue to website affiliates. There's less there than you would think, based on raw listing numbers.

I did analysis a few months ago that showed stamp sales were about $35M/quarter or about $12M/mo which earns them about $1M/month. That is not a lot, maybe they'll sell us the stamp category.

Stallzer - ebay does not get the paypal fees - they spun off paypal a number of years ago.

rev - what website affiliates?

Sites like this one, where the links to ebay in posts and ebay listings (see top of page) click through to ebay. If the person clicking through buys or posts a winning bid within 24 hours, the owner of the originating website gets a cut of the fees associated with that item as commission for sending the visitor to ebay. It's called "affiliate marketing". I use it on some of my nonphilatelic websites.

Most reference websites out there that have a heavy ebay link/data presence are income generators. That's why you sometimes encounter sites that seem to be nothing but compilations of ebay listings but you're not quite sure why: they're link farms created solely to drive traffic to ebay and generate income.

Just to be clear, ebay only pays if they were paid because somebody won or bought.

Hmmm...

Jim




https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Stamps-...p=true&rt=nc

I don't know why you're cheering. The fact that the message appears as such means that ebay did NOT end the listing. Anthony's either ended the listing themselves voluntarily, or more likely sold it through another channel. There's no way to know.

If ebay ended the listing it would be gone entirely. No message, no history, nothing.

I am cheering because it is off of ebay. Simple. Do I believe that our efforts paid off? Yes. My opinion.

I think the idea for the ebay to examine the listing's description difficult to implement. The cost is one issue, the liability is another issue. Being a middle man keeps ebay busy enough, they have more serious issues such as fraud, money laudatory, copyright, etc to deal with. So the buyers should act themselves, reporting the fake materials to the seller and ebay without hesitation, issuing warning in the communities, etc. For example, China Stamp Society issue warnings against some ebay sellers who sell counterfeit China stamps regularly. Does this forum have a dedicated area for people to report such things?

We seem to hold the "report item" criterior to a higher standard than establishing guilt in a court of law, which is "beyond a reasonable doubt". I believe when it comes to Anthony's, if the stamp in question derived it's value from being properly attributed, and were it not would be rendered relatively worthless, it is a safe bet from Anthony's track record alone (95% probability), it probably is no good. Add to that probability, that someone, or possibly multiple people, on this forum (IMO, some of the more advanced collectors in philately) have called the listing into question, and I think the likelihood now is similar to what judges/juries use to convict in court, and reporting the item is totally justified. From what I can tell, ebay does nothing once an item actually is reported, so this whole conversation is probably nothing more than an excercize in futility.

I just read elsewhere that in regards to the original posters concerns and actions the ASDA delivered a letter detailing the complaints to Anthony's on 26 January with a two week window to respond. We shall see.

Rev - thanks for explaining affiliated web sites. You suggested ebay pays out a fairly high percentage of their fee revenue to website affiliates. Do you have an estimate as to what %.

In the stamps and other collectibles categories I suspect they dont get a lot of affiliated sales, but in some other categories it may be more significant.

@eyeonwall

It depends on the category. If you look at those affiliated websites, most of the time, stamps and collectibles does not earn any cash back. Some other categories may earn you up to 2% cash back. And the affiliates should earn double or even higher percentage.