Wake Up And Smell The Roses @-'-,-'-,--

Did somebody say ZambeZia or ZambeSia ?

Anyone who looks at philatelic lit from the 20's-70's knows there were a lot of dealers doing mail sales, there were a lot of stamp stores, there were a lot of shows. Except for the true rarities, almost anything was readily available because there was a lot more specializing by dealers in those days, and dealers were everywhere.

Floortrader: thanks for the Zambezia page. I actually have a want list into a US dealer to fill my holes for the country (of course, the list does not include Zambezia #72 as that one is way outside of my budget, if it's even available). Unfortunately, the dealer, reliable in the past, has not replied to my early January list nor cashed my deposit check. Looks like I'll be breaking in a new one, and do have one in mind.

revcollector: I do remember the 1970s...... fresh out of college, making some money, still living at home for a while which reduced expenses, and subscribing to Linn's. I'm amazed how much I bought back then from mail auctions and other dealers advertising in Linn's.

Climber Steve

A quick search on Delcampe came up with almost 500 listings for "Zambezia". Most of the sellers are in Europe, true, but in a global marketplace with the ability to transfer funds with Skype, Skrill or in some cases a Credit Card, that isn't an insurmountable task. And for continental European colonial stamps, Delcampe is usually an excellent place to search.

Note that it didn't show anyone with Scott #72, mind.

If it wasn't for the internet I probably wouldn't be collecting stamp now as I just couldn't find anywhere to purchase them from.

That said i'd be a hell of a lot richer in the bank :)

Dealers seemed and this may just be me but they seemed to be asking a higher percentage of the catalogue value then stamps that selling online today,
maybe the market was stronger back then.

All I know is for me when I started buying on ebay many years ago it opened my eyes to so many stamps, stamps I didn't even know existed, as naive as I was I wasn't sure you could even get mint/unused queen victoria stamps.

My nearest stamp shop which closed down when I was about 11 or 12 never had much more then modern issues.

DJCMHOH: thanks for the info. If the new dealer I'm thinking of doesn't work out, I've got one in Lisbon that I've done business with n the past year. Then maybe DelCampe, altho I don't do any of the "fancy" cash transfer stuff.

SMELL THE ROSES ----As Don stated The technological shift from a sellers market to a buyers market .
This change in market place actually increases my buying because now I can buy and sell stamps at a much closer spread between what I buy at and what I sell at {should add I only sell duplicates, or more accurately only sell triplicates}.

This is a major change in how much money I am willing to put into the hobby .

This changes the whole idea of what a dealer can make profit wise when his customers can sell at the same price as him . This also changes one other factor in the market place and I haven't much talk about and that is the customers can compete against the stamp dealers at the auction level . Yes there are a regular group of collectors who have shown up at all the major stamp auctions and can bid against the dealers .

Reminiscense ----Good place to add a story here about stamp dealing .

Back around 1994 ,I went out to New Jersey to view material at the up coming weekend Collections auction at Greg Manning Auctions. Naturally I found a lot of stuff to bid on ,much more than I agreed with my wife to buy and much more than I had in my stamp bank account . So I stopped in Greg 's office to see about credit for my purchases which I plan to bid on .
What Greg said surprised me and he gave me the extended credit . He said he doesn't like giving credit to full time stamp dealers because it is in most cases a problem to get paid for ,they always need to resell their purchases and many times need to extend their terms to pay . But Greg knew I was a Asphalt Contractor who was buying for entertainment ,which he figured was the safes bet for extended credit .

So the shift away from full time stamp dealers was also caused by the presence of the "collector seller"

the march of technological change moves ever forward, and those who adapt and harness the new technologies to their methods of operation as a business will succeed, those who resist or reject the change are doomed to eventual irrelevance in the new economic landscape (unless they get political protection against those who do successfully adapt to the new technologies, but that is another issue entirely.)

Overall philately as a hobby (as opposed to being a commercial business venture) has benefitted from this revolution - those who collect purely for the joy of collecting now have a global cornucopia of options for purchase that even twenty years ago few could have imagined. A buyer's market that, while perhaps financially painful for the previous generation who purchased items at levels higher than current market conditions support because supply available to a collector was much more limited in the brick and mortar era, is a boon-time for the younger generations who have entered or will be entering the market in the years ahead to build collections that they will enjoy for being collections, regardless of whatever financial value they may or may not retain.

"Overall philately as a hobby (as opposed to being a commercial business venture) has benefitted from this revolution - ... "

Yes. There is philately for pleasure and then there is philately for blood. Us pleasure seekers are diffidently benefiting from this new technology.

One old problem will always be with us but may be easier to spot on the web - shill bidding?

The latest AP journal had a letter from an unhappy seller. After getting estimates he decided to go with an auction house. The auction house put an estimated value over $2200. The auction dealer then gave him excuses why it got a low value (too common, needed expertizing. etc). Where was this information available before they auctioned the lot

The lot got $395 so the seller got around $355 (10% commission) and the seller paid $474 so the auction house made $120. Guess where the money is made?

When it comes to selling a collection, there's no easy answer, as many of the posts here tend to point out. If you do it by auction house, there's the fees and commissions. If you sell it to a dealer directly, there's the fact you are going to get an offer for about 25% of catalog. If you sell it yourself, there's the time factor as you fill APS circuit books, wait for responses to ads in Linn's and other periodicals or watch as ebay plods along to the last 3 minutes.

If we, as the ones who are collecting stamps, have these concerns and problems, how much more difficult is the job of an heir?

This is likely very optimistic especially for general collections.

Agree with angore that 25% for a collection from a dealer is very optimistic. Now IF it was chock full of scarce and desirable material, that would be something else. But if it has a lot of common material, it will be less. My guesses, is if it is about half and half common material and better than common, you might get 10%. Common? 5% or less.

Yes, the rough percentages we bandy about mask what we really pay for what. I'd expect to pay around 10% of Gibbons for a foreign country collection (rather more for Commonwealth) at auction. But I'm probably actually paying around 20% for the better stuff and nothing for most of the material.