Losts Several Lots With Nystamps

NYStamps was better to buy from IMO when they were first starting out. They didn't really know too much about stamps, so their BIN! prices were either silly high or (rarely but sometimes) silly low, and in the bid auction format they had a lot fewer people following them so there'd sometimes be a bargain even there. If you were reasonably knowledgeable about any area or era you could do quite well buying it from them.

They've been playing this game long enough now (15 years or so?) that they know to remainder country collections and part the best stuff out, and they've always been sloppy with descriptions, then and now, so count on way too many items having hidden/undisclosed faults. Add in their bigger following and you have worse material at higher prices; accordingly, I haven't bought anything from them in donkey's years.

On the plus side, they do better than many ebay sellers in that they usually give you lots of photographs, including the backs of the better stamps. They also do enough volume that they don't mind losing money on the occasional lot; they'll start it at a penny and let it go for what it goes for. (I've done this before when NYStamps outbid me at the original auction -- bought the lot a few weeks later from them on ebay for less than it realized.) Accordingly, I'm pretty sure they don't use shill bidders or hidden reserves -- besides that, if they did, it would cost them a very profitable family business if they were caught out. So if you're really patient and can snipe aggressively, I expect you might get a nice lot from them once in a while. Though I myself don't buy from them anymore, they might still be worth watching.

They still dont know too much about stamps.

I find their photos very small and often done on a whitish background making it hard to tell if there are perf issues. Another thing I hate is that they will take complete sets and split them out with 3-4 top values as separate individual lots, with the low values all as one lot. Not worth messing with if you want the whole set. This is an old and fading trick on ebay but still practiced routinely by NY Stamps.

As far as their descriptions my impression over time is that they are a high-volume turn and burn operation utilizing limited filters for their descriptions so one should definitely expect to return a lot of stuff to them.