Stamp Collecting According To Ebay

Found this gem in the body of Ebays description of stamp collecting at the bottom of the first page of their stamp section:

'Some of the most valuable antique stamps are the ones featuring presidents, such as President Lincoln, President Washington, and President Franklin. Civil War-era stamps in general are typically more valuable than newer stamps.'

Well that may account for all the cruddy Washington Franklin stamps novices try to sell.

President Franklin? I'd bet some 20 year old intern wrote this. The sad part's nobody has noticed.

Wow.

President Franklin, isn't he the one on the 10 dollar bill? Wait, that's President Hamilton. My mistake.

Id bet any number of philatelic writers or even staff at the APS would gladly have written a concise intro for them. Heck any of us on here could have done better. This is pathetic.

They don't stop there either...




So I guess we got it backwards with grading. Low grades for off-center stamps are better. Also, I gotta go find some double-sided stamps. Whatever that is. I suspect they meant "printed on both sides".




Always -> Often. See US Scott #39 for just one example where this is egregiously wrong. Vintage makes me want a Pinot Noir, or possibly a nice Cabernet.

As far as President Franklin goes, I hadn't realized that Franklin Pierce was that popular. (ok dry sarcasm over. They obviously meant Benjamin Franklin)

The shadow government of President Benjamin Franklin is a dark period in American history and inexplicably overlooked.

Actually I've run across quite a few folks who are surprised to learn Franklin wasn't a president.

Maybe he had ambitions and got told to go fly a kite.

Shocking!!

President Franklin, shortly before he invented lightning, said, 'Don't believe everything you read on the internet.'

What has become so obvious is how so many have it wrong on some many things. This is not something new and has been going since the dawn of time. The Internet just lets us know how prevalent they are. It is scary and they get to meet others with similar fact issues.

My understanding is that there was a session at the APS Stamp Show today with an ebay representative to talk about their stamp category. I had been planning to go to the show myself but a last minute circumstance prevented me from going. Is there a member of the forum who was able to attend this session who would be willing to share what transpired? Thank you.

I attended the Town Hall with the ebay representative at Stampshow today, here is my summary from the notes I took

So Daniel went into the den with the lions today. I was expecting demands for blood given many of the comments I have seen in this and other forums, and even moreso after the rep, before the talk began when asked what he collected, admitted that he had only been in charge of the Stamp section for a year and did not collect stamps, yet. But to be honest, the ebay representative handled himself well, was very open to listening to the issues that those in the audience (and it was a pretty decent crowd, at least for the first half of the town hall). Most of the people in the town hall meeting were people who sold on ebay, only a few (myself included) would be considered more as buyers than sellers, so much of the discussion revolved around the seller experience on ebay.


- before the talk even began one person in the audience said to the ebay rep "You know that your company is responsible for placing many stamp dealers out of business." Talk about going for the jugular right at the start. ebay rep pointed out that, while he agreed that many brick and mortar dealers may have lost business due to the rise of ebay and other online retail sites, it also allowed many dealers access to a worldwide audience that before the rise of the internet revolution they would never have reached. Most in the audience seemed to agree with that statement.

- One of the first complaints about ebay brought up was the sense that ebay was "heavy handed" in how it treated sellers, and that there was little recourse for sellers if ebay noted something negative brought up against the seller by the buyers. ebay rep said that there is an appeals process and that if the seller can provide documentary proof that they did everything in the transaction correctly, then ebay should side with the sellers and not the buyers. Not sure how well that sat with the audience, sounded to me a bit like ebay does assume more that the seller is at fault rather than the buyer, and the burden of proof is weighed heavily towards the seller.

- Another common complaint brought up was that ebay's various fees and charges were making it very hard to be a successful seller, especially in regards to the current structure of rates for various numbers of listings one has in their stores. ebay rep said that there are plans to look at the pricing structure for listings on ebay, apparently this is a common issue among many of the retail divisions.

- A good amount of time was spent talking about the recent decision by the US Supreme Court to require online retail sites such as ebay to start collecting sales taxes for inter-state transactions. ebay rep said the company is working with Congress to create a legal structure so that the process is not hugely cumbersome for either ebay or its sellers, including calling for some sort of minimum threshold of sales before tax would need to be collected.

- The related question of the Australian VAT came up, and questions as to how would that show up in the accounting of American sellers who sell to Australian clients. Fear was that the extra 10% might be shown as income to the seller, which of course might make it liable to taxation in the USA. ebay rep says they are working on a system to make sure that Australian VAT collected by ebay is not seen as part of seller's profits.

- APS executive director Scott English was as the town hall and he spoke up about greater cooperation between ebay and the American Philatelic Society being in the works. ebay sponsered the computer app developed for Stampshow '18 to remind attendees of the various events happening during the course of the show, and English intimated that more cooperation between ebay and the APS may be in the works, but no details were mentioned.

- Seller raised interesting question about whether there was anything ebay could do to reduce the number of "old listings" that are still active after extended periods of time but have not sold for whatever reason (due to set price for example). ebay rep said that the system does have triggers to send "encouragement" to sellers who have product not moving to "reconsider" the price they are asking, and that listing order is determined by a combination (if I understood correctly) of dealer ranking and how many views an item is drawing over a period of time.

- I asked about the blanket embargo of listing any stamps from Cuba, Iran etc and if there was anything ebay could do to make it possible for dealers to list material pre-embargo. ebay rep said that due to the nature of the embargo, they would have to employ people to vet every listing of items from the various embargoed places to ensure that the items were indeed pre-embargo in the USA, and that ebay did not have the resources to do that kind of vetting to ensure they remained within the law. (Cue me thinking to myself, a billion-dollar company doesn't have the resources to train a few people to vet these items????)

- Question re watermarking of images, would it be possible to create a way to be able to apply a personal watermark to images you upload to ensure those images do not get used by other sellers. ebay rep says that ebay is not fond of watermarked images, that especially on mobile apps they tend to affect the resolution of the image for those viewing it, so for technical reasons they discourage watermarks. I was going to raise the issue of how watermarks might be helpful in reducing the number of fraudulent listings by sellers claiming to have items but then not having them and disappearing with money before being found out but I got overtalked by people with questions that took the conversation in other directions.

- last major issue discussed was tracking - would it be possible in the future to have a tiered system so that lower value items would not have to incur a tracking cost, or a buyer be able to choose not to have tracking at their own risk. ebay rep said perhaps having a minimum threshold before requiring a seller charge a tracking fee for an item might be feasible. Related issue regarding registered mail as an alternative to the tracking, especially for overseas sales to nations that many package delivery companies will not deliver to. ebay rep said he would have to look into it as he did not know if that was a possible alternative.

Overall it was an interesting town meeting. Was not all sellers "whining" about how ebay is anti-seller and always taking the side of the buyer in case of a dispute Overall I think it was quite a fruitful exchange and hopefully the ebay representative will take back some of this feedback he received to help address the concerns raised.

There was a guide on buying Classic US gold, written by ebay, and one of the pics in it was a counterfeit.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your observations.

Given the makeup of the audience as mostly sellers, maybe it's not surprising that one of the major complaints voiced in this forum - inaccurate or just outright fraudulent listings, many of them from the same sellers again and again, did not appear to get much attention. Was there any discussion at all about why ebay doesn't appear to do much about these sellers or the fact that some ebay practices, such as their useless feedback system and the ability that these sellers have to establish numerous accounts and/or buy existing accounts with feedback history serves to enable their unsavory activity?

Dont think the feedback system ever came up. To be honest I almost never use ebay, I stick to delcampe, so I prob was not a good potential advocate for buyers, and most in the room were sellers so their concerns took up most of the conversatiom (most buyers were prob in the bourse buying from dealers while the town hall was going on.)

I will again say that the ebay rep did appear to be interested in being responsive to concerns from all users of ebay, both buyers and sellers. And as there seems to be growing cooperation between ebay and APS perhaps issues of fraud could be something APS could help bring further attention towards.