Sometimes You Have To Do The Right Thing (Rja Series)

The stamp sold at the minimum with just one bidder.

Seems like the normal level for the stamp in its condition.

Actually it really isn't, it's a genuinely rare stamp. Even in that condition it should have been worth somewhat more.

Which really surprised me that there wasn't any competition.

This is what the seller sent me today:



I'm glad that she got a fair price for her stamp.

Jim

Barely. I am also amazed that no one bid on it. It should have brought about twice what it did bring.

So... the implication is that ebay isn't the best platform for selling rare revenue stamps then?

Hmmm, go figure.

Jim

I have found that timing and/or luck play a large part in ebay auctions.

Sometimes its just auction pyschology, if it had stayed at the original list price, spirited bidding may have pushed it above the sales price. A low starting bid may increase competition.

For any successful auction you need 2 or more potential buyers at a given price range, in order to bid up the price. If only 1 shows up, you get a sale at the opening bid.

It can be a trick, especially for more specialized material, to get the right buyers all focused in the same place at the same time. With ebay, there is no advertising to promote the fact that a particular item is for sale at a particular time.

This is where the major auction houses clearly provide a major value-add above ebay, in that they promote sales at specific times, targeted at certain audiences, for maximum participation.

I wonder if some ebay sellers in general, might consider doing promotion for certain special items, or groups of items when they come up for sale, and have the sale at a pre-determined time....

ebay is really hard to deal with.... they allow somuch fraudulent activity- I wish we had more regulation and fairness.

Auction realizations on ebay would be much healTheir in general if ebay actually made some effort to clean up the bad actors that permeate it. I for one stopped buying on ebay because everything for the most part must be approached with a jaundiced eye which means conservative bidding in order to mitigate potential losses due to not getting what an item was purported to be. They are their own worst enemy and do a great disservice to honest sellers by refusing to address the fraud, scamming, misrepresentations etc..

Before this thread goes even farther off track....

James Drummond - good for you! It is rare that we see decent behavior in the stamp world, and you exemplify the type of behavior we only dream of seeing. What you did was certainly not required - we live in a world of everyone for themselves - which is absolutely acceptable in a venue such as ebay. You went above & beyond what was expected; if the world is still spinning in the proper direction, then this extraordinary act of kindness will come back to you in spades...

Out of curiosity - can we assume you already own one of these stamps? One of the ones you showed in your census? (Which one??)

Hi

Stamp number eight.

Jim

I asked the seller if she had a backstory on this stamp and this is what she wrote:

When I was a teenager in the 50s, I had a stamp collection, lovingly kept in my Mingus album. I purchased two Harris albums, full of stamps, in the 70s at yard sales to introduce our two sons to collecting.The stamp must have been on one of the albums.

I dug out my stamp collection in 2013, to cope with fear when my husband had to go to an Alzheimer's home.

Oh to make such a find!!!!!!!!!!