The Future Of Stamp Selling On Ebay

Just do not get what all the fuss is about concerning this issue.

Maybe it will become clearer to me as the time for the changes gets closer.

If you are running an ebay business on credit maybe you should be looking at stopping this sort of business approach.

Have never been comfortable even using a buyers payment straight away even for mailing costs.

If a sale folds and you have spent the funds and paypal is empty and your credit card is maxed..................

I expect that ebay will continue its current direction towards more 'buy it now' listings of new items and away from the listing of used items. This makes financial sense; the listing and sale of new items is far less costly than listing and selling used items. Used items are much more condition dependent and that dependency drive a large reliance upon the accuracy of the sellers description. Read as many more returns, complaints, and support needed for used items than new items. ebay strives to increase profitability and is competing with Amazon. Over the last number of years they clearly are transitioning to a venue which sells new merchandise and away from the legacy 'used stuff' auction platform.

I do not understand why some folks struggle with this; it is obvious and simple business decision. Just as obviously, this is not good news for stamp sellers. What stamp sellers want, particularly 'casual sellers', is a venue where they can list and sell single stamps (a significant percentage being very inexpensive) cheaply and easily. This is a business model that does not exist for good reasons. Developing and implementing a online venue which caters to a huge number of small transactions with all the related costly overhead would never get investors and be financed. Also note that the delivery companies (FedEx, UPS, USPS) are also trying to transition their business models away from the costly less smaller and inexpensive mailings and more towards more profitable larger deliveries.

All of this is bad news for a seller who wants to sell one stamp (or a few) at a time; the future looks bleak and I do not see any solution on the horizon.
Don

I agree with Don. Whilst this system may suite larger stores with high priced inventory it does not suit stamps and cover sellers and probably many collectible sellers. I get a lot of $2 sales on stamped covers. If 18 auctions end in a morning and all sell, what will be the process? They collect the money up, batch process it the next day? Fees out and other charges? A fee for the privilege of letting them handle all the money? In the mean time we need to ship the items. But wait my bank transfers normally take 3-5 days. Ship before seeing the $$?

Its very unclear how this will work but it will be geared better for new products. And hence ebay Catalog being rolled out soon where sellers have to find their product in the catalog to list it.

One thing occurred to me. So many buyers have one address in ebay and another address in PayPal. We are always told to only use the PayPal address to ship. Is ebay going to make sure all buyer addresses are the correct ship to address used?

I'm trying a few on eBid for now I think more stampers should consider the site as an alternative.

Whilst it is announced on this payment method change I think when it does kick in many sellers will be wondering what is going on. Because many sellers do not stay up to date with ebay changes. Some may like it but others will hate the change. I'm used to instant payments.

I'm also wondering about how quick I will have access to the payments from buyers so I can use it to buy postage. After a large auction I might need $500+ in postage (no discount postage isn't going to cut it - not a viable option). With a PayPal debit card I have immediate access and get the postage from the post office just like that. How's that going to work with the upcoming ebay payment changes? Are they going to have a debit card I can use or instant transfer from ebay to my bank account? I'll need it pronto in order to ship quickly like I do now. Will they force sellers to use their shipping labels instead? I'm not down for that. Some of these potential changes just could be the final nail in the coffin for smaller sellers on ebay.

I'll have to check out eBid. I've been using Delcampe with some success. I've looked at HipStamp, but really don't like the listing format - tedious to list anything with their selling form.

eBid is like ebay used to be the best thing is its not on the share market. I like the format. One fee for free lifetime of listings. And otherwise 2.2% fee for gallery. But the site is desparate for many more interesting stamps and postal history to be added to it, more philatelic buyers and sellers to use it. One could use it and Delcampe at the same time both sites need more stamp traffic.

Now say you only have one bank account as many do, your mrs maxed out the card, you make a big sale with the new system and you have no money to purhase the postage or probably ebay labels. Your handling time is 1 day. You don't get the actual payment till the end of the week we fees already out of it. What will you do?

The best thing about PayPal apart from immediate access to the funds is that the money can be kept seperate from your main bank accounts away from the wife. And used instantly to source more stamps. eBid uses PayPal, check it out. Good to have some on there since we don't know how the new system will affect us. And we are likely to find out anything bad in the last minutes. I'd recommend having a back up selling plan. Start building now.

eBid screenshot

Morning Don and all,

Yep, Don's analysis of market conditions in general and ebay's position in this market makes sense. It's not economically feasible to approach selling low price individual philatelic items whether on line or traditionally from the view point of making enough profit [dirty old word?] to justify your time and effort. This is sad since most philatelic matrial is not worth the paper it is printd on from a business point of view.

The future of our hobby is in the hands of folks like us who seek to receive more enjoyment than profit from this glorious affliction. The challenge is how do we establish a system or platform or whatever where our uneconomical treasures can be exchanged. The alternative migh be (ugh) our stewardship of these treasures ends in the recycle bim.

Remember, philately will always give you a better return than empty liquor bottles and cigarette wrappers. Enjoy the day and our hobby.


Best regards, Russ Ryle

I just had a post that I spent 30 minutes typing erased when the board decided I was using a forbidden word and it doesn't save the contents of your post.

I'm not going to go back and recreate it all. In short: I disagree with several of the premises stated in this thread about it making sense for ebay to abandon collectibles.

People are taking a very myopic view, focusing solely on "stamps" rather than the aggregate total of all used, vintage, anqique, and collectibles categories.

ebay is moving from a 'seller-based experience' to a 'product-based experience' (i.e. the Amazon business model). At a minimum, they will continue to squeeze their terms and conditions and make sellers 'bundle' or group items into larger value listings.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018...-amazon.aspx

The math is easy for them to do; total cost of sales / total number of listings = average cost per listing.
Don

We all need to get behind a site like eBid and also most collectible sellers need to as well. ebay will continue to squeeze seller profits and change the rules to make it impossible to sell low value used collectibles. As it is now how much profit is in a $3 sale? We desperately need to join forces on another selling platform. its going to get worse on ebay year by year. Eventually the smaller sellers will be forced off by either cost of the site or new changes. With so many filters many buy it now lots just don't seem to get views enough to sell them anymore. Sales are 30% down according to seller hub and they don't seem to be recovering. Traditionally this used to be a good time of the year selling, I've noticed sales below average every month this year.

Huh? Summer months historically are the absolute WORST time of the year for sales. ebay affiliate stats over 15+ years bear that out in spades.

Perhaps it's reversed in Australia, since this is your winter vs. our summer.

The downturn I'm seeing, both as seller and affiliate, is nothing out of the ordinary.

I'll second Dan's point with the addition of US philatelic website traffic metrics; traffic drops during summer months (US) for obvious reasons.
Don

Normally from June to December the sales are better than this for me. It seems like sales have gone cold for some months now.

I agree with revenuecollector. While ebay may be attempting to move to a "product-based" experience for new or fungible goods, they are also actively working with the American Stamp Dealers Association and the American Philatelic Society. The stamp marketplace is much larger than ebay. Oversupply of common stamps affects all venues, not just ebay. Unsaleable inventory, once squirreled away in dealer stocks, is now exposed on ebay and other Internet sites. As the number of buyers and sellers at shows have declined, activity has shifted to the internet. I am not sure if anyone knows whether fewer buyers or more available inventory accounts for price declines. It is surprising that defective stamps continue to sell on ebay while better stamps may languish.




Why eBid? Who says that ebay is continuing to squeeze seller profits? Years ago, ebay had high insertion fees that discouraged auctions of better stamps. More recently, ebay cut Final Value fees for stamps relative to many other categories. In my experience ebay fees have dropped. Few stamp dealers qualify as Top-Rated sellers because the cost of tracked shipping far exceeds Final Value fee discounts in the Stamps Category. Stamp dealers who remain as Top-Rated sellers generally don't offer stamps or covers priced at less $20 or $25. Unfortunately, the cost of tracked shipping continues to increase dramatically every year. Tracked shipping with an ebay label starts at $2.68 while stamps start at $3.50, a startling increase from $2.62 only two years ago. If anyone is squeezing, it is the US Postal Service. Also, new UPU regulations prohibit sending "items of value" in First Class Mail International.

I sell on other sites, but only if the site can sync ebay listings. I use the SixBIt eCommerce Solution to list and fulfill orders on ebay. It can also be used to fulfill orders from other sites, but l data entry is required. I don't know of any sites that will export sales in a form close to being compatible with the SixBit orders API. So far alternate-site sales have been modest at best. If I had to choose one non-eBay site, it would be HipStamp with Delcampe a distant second. HipStamp copies Item Specifics from ebay making listings reasonably easy to understand. I don't know if Delcampe includes enough information to make my listings show up in search. Entering listings manually on HipStamp is not necessary for fixed price listings. I tried a few auctions on BidStart, but all were one-bid wonders.

Finally, this post should not be generalized to non-US ebay sites. Attempting to apply experience from non-US ebay sites to ebay US could lead to wrong conclusions. In the United States, PayPal bank transfers generally clear by the next business day. Why would ebay transfers be slower?

Far too many collectors put all of their eggs in the ebay basket and are holding a cache of rotten eggs. They have been brainwashed or brainwashed themselves into thinking that ebay is a necessity to the hobby and that the end of stamp listings on ebay would be apocalyptic. You can see it in comments from veterans that believe that the cartel is not so bad. If ebay ended the stamp category it would be one of the best things to happen in philately in decades. A fresh start. Let the vacuum be filled with a quality collector centric site run by folks that know a perf from a thin. Yes, there are good sellers. They are the exception. Bring on the hounds!