What's A Reasonable Price For Stamps

It's fascinating how many stamps with small catalog values (say $5 or less) there are that are very hard to locate. By CV alone you'd think they were common, but they seldom turn up in collections or on ebay.

Gibbons brought out a new edition of their South American catalogue a few years ago. I'm told the CV's are virtually unchanged from the previous edition, published getting on for twenty years earlier.

At about the same time I was at a stamp fair looking at a dealer's stock of various South American countries, a lot of the stamps were hundreds of percent more than the CV.

We had quite a discussion and he was saying that as many of these stamps never appear on the market he could pretty much name his price. Next to me was a guy looking for a particular stamp, which had a minimum CV that he'd been searching for for thirty years ..........

Very interesting. It begs the question of how, Scott for instance determines the CV of stamps listed with minimal CV when said stamps rarely or never come on the market. If, say, the fellow who has been looking for a minimal CV stamp for 30 years were to find one and end up paying $25 for it, then would it be enough for either he or the seller to report it to Scott for the CV to change? Or rather is a CV change only considered when the stamp is sold at an open auction?

Worth noting even if it's obvious -- buying individual stamps or sets of stamps will nearly always cost you more than buying larger quantities with entire albums being the most affordable way to buy stamps. Usually, but not always. The problem always is that after the first or second album for a country or a specialty, the next albums you buy start very quickly to repeat many of the same stamps -- for reasons noted above. The key then is to purchase the most complete collection the first time -- and then fill in what's missing stamp by stamp or set by set.

As for stamp prices, they never make a whole lot of sense to me. From one dealer to the next, prices can be wildly different. Each dealer has their own justification for the prices he asks, and sometimes it's hard to know if he's right or not. A lot of inexpensive stamps in the catalog may simply be impossible to find. So you'd be willing to pay a lot more than the catalogue is asking -- and some dealers realize that. Other dealers go strictly by the catalogue prices with some selling at a low percentage and some much higher. You have to find dealers who work best for you. I've found that at times British and European prices for some items can sometimes be better than in the U.S., so I look at UK ebay from time to time. Translation difficulties make it harder, though not impossible, to use ebay Germany, France, and so on, but sometimes they work, too. Thank you, Google Translate!

DRY TECH ------We now have a serious problem about stamp pricing . The catalogs are at a lost to figure out pricing .

Lets step back to the 1950's and 60's ,back then the Catalog editors would get 5 or 6 stamp dealers price list and figure out a value that would be in the next catalog. Life was simple and easy to explain their pricing . Then as price list started to disappear the catalog firms began to contact major dealers for their input and ask them for price trends and this became popular way of establishing pricing . This worked right up to the 1990's . Now understand we started to lose indivual stamp pricing and the talk was trending of sections of a country ,like early Germany or Australian MNH .

As we entered the 2000's and stamp dealers got away from carrying huge inventories and many dealers got away from selling cheaper stamps and if they had them it was because they purchased a collection and were trying to maxiumize their return but they were not building stock to sell ,they were just selling what came their way . This created a problem for the Catalogs because they lost all contact to the sellers of the stamps they wanted price for .

floortrader: Thanks for the response to my question. Very interesting. If you have anymore opinions on the subject I am all ears. For the last few years, for me, the first and best use of stamps catalogs has been for identification with pricing accuracy best found in the prices realized on line or at auctions.

It pretty much comes down to the old saying - something is worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it. If a gap in a series was driving you mad you'd probably pay over the odds for the stamp that filled it.

While buying a collection in an album can be a good way to get a lot of stamps cheaply, if you don't want most of the stamps the ones you do want are in fact quite expensive.

I completely agree - I'm not very experienced, but it seems to me that catalogues are most useful for ID-ing stamps and even then the different interpretations of colours, inaccuracy in measuring perforations and so on can make even that process convoluted

Yep, the real value of a stamp or anything for that matter is what a buyer is willing to pay for it in the open market. Any relationship between this amount and the artificial value, however that is determined, shown for the item in a catalogue is completely accidental. Also the price asked for anything by a merchant reflects their cost plus a profit margin. It is a negotiation starting point when you look at the sometime large discounts that are stated or can be haggled by a sharp or well connected buyer.

Thanks everybody for responding.
I've read all of your responses, and I couldn't agree more with all of them.
I haven't responded the last week because, 1. I didn't have anything to add since my experience is way shorter than most of yours. 2. I was away to turnbridge wells in England

Thanks,
Jules

It is definitely what someone is willing to pay. Case in point, two recent auctions on ebay I was watching. First about $1000 catalog value of Swiss stamps including most of the early semi-postals, discount maybe $200 for fake cancels, final price $70. Second auction, $100 catalog value of early Honduran stamps, final price $50. Took me by surprise.

value is established by what someone is willing to pay for and item that makes them happy, and I like money; it makes me happy,,