Stamp Grading - Of Value To You Or A Marketing Ploy?

"I don't know the percentage; when losing that kind of money it doesn't really matter. It's a lot until you are talking over 30 million cost."

Yes it is a lot of money in absolute terms, but as a percentage, you are saying anything over 10% is a lot. Unrealistic. If he bought an item for $1000+15% and the market was static and the next guy pays the same $1000+15%, even if he managed to get a 0% sellers commission he still loses $150 or 13%, which is more than your 10%. And if the market only declined by 10%, he loses 23%.

All I know is that few people can afford to lose that kind of money. Talking about percentages is really a way to pretend that it should be acceptable to anyone as a cost of collecting. That is what happens when you are the driving force in a high end area in a bull market and sell when the market is a bit flat, which it was at the time.

Any amount of loss matters unless you are in a very tiny elite group of people. Very tiny. It matters. That is money that sooner or later will be needed to work in other ways. I do not know anybody that would say that it does not matter. It does. That being said trying to corner a market segment in any collectibles field is a fools errand. If you collected to enjoy it and pumped in that kind of money with the idea that a loss is acceptable to you and then lost it that is one thing. Trying to corner a market however means that you went in fully intending to make money and losing five, ten or whatever percent is a fail and if you continue on fools errands you will soon have no money to play with.

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Cornering the market in graded stamps would require that there be no more grade-worthy stamps sitting out there, waiting to be graded.

You would have to have an extraordinary amount of information about a very small part of the market to make a corner 'work'.

Part of the problem is that running up the price is precisely what will bring previously unknown copies out of the woodwork (or vaults).

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Thank for all the discussion of pi.

Now I'm just hungry!

With regard to stamps, not a big fan of graded, let me tell you about one of my favorite late 20th century ones. Great color, definition and centering - - with a great big fat hinge remnant on back. And worth zip to an investor but I do love it so.

Greetings to all and thanks for making this thread a wonderful discussion. Yes, Virginia, there is a world of difference between expertizing and grading a stamp. The first is needed by even us veterans of the hobby, the latter can be beneficial to us veterans trying to dispose of our treasures; however, personal opinion, it inflates the price of many items especially to someone new to our hobby giving them a false sense of security as to the value of their collection - investment.

rgstamp - Would your $6 stamp example ever sell for $500 without the artificial hype of its attached grading number?

Don, well said.

Revenue Collector, pi is great by me in any season especially pumpkin or lemon meringue or apple.

Merry Christmas to all with best wishes for many more prosperous new years to come.

Russ

The 6c Garfield. What is the centering grade? I would not buy or sell this or any other stamp stamp without knowing exactly the grade. I ran the grading analysis and this stamp is Extra Fine 91 with 14% of the stamp in the margins (so it is not a Jumbo).

If this stamp is the 1894 US #256 and were mint not hinged, the difference in catalogue value between Very Fine and Extra Fine is only a mere $200. It is important to know the grade of the stamps that you buy and sell. I grade them myself with software tools and this has resulted in my pricing stamps appropriately. I graded the precise centering of the above stamp in less than three minutes..

> It is important to know the grade of the stamps that you buy and sell. I grade them myself

Important to you. I am against grading, and I use the eyeball method. I don't think the post office issued stamps with concern for this, so I am not sure why I should. It feels like an elitist ruse to declare 99.9% of stamps subpar.

While I see some use for the grading of classic stamps, I am greatly puzzled at the current penchant for grading much modern material. No one can convince me that a common 3-cent commemorative from the 1950s is suddenly worth one or two hundred bucks because some expert claims it is gem material, worthy of a 98 or 100 grade. Perhaps many (maybe even most) of the same stamps are not well-centered ... but they were produced in such prodigious amounts that truly well-centered copies are not uncommon.

This practice will not result in pricing stamps appropriately. Software 'grading' tools do not grade stamps, it simply measures stamp design centering. There is more to grading than a stamp centering (like stamp condition).
Don

As Don correctly points out, there is more to grading than centering... at least in theory any way. Sometimes examples from PSE make it difficult when they ignore issues of impression, color, and perforations, for the sake of mathematical centering.

Stamps with home-printed certs from "Bob's Stamp Centering Software" are no more graded than if I were to put "looks XF to me" in a listing (which I don't).

These are all excellent points. Nonetheless, if you are to buy or sell a stamp without knowledge of a stamp's exact centering and the stamp's condition, you are in for trouble. Most of the stamps I see for sale are listed as Very Fine, when in fact the seller has no clue as to the stamp's actual grade. The seller usually offers no proof of his claim and it is left to the buyer to try to figure it out. The solution to this problem is easy. Use software tools to immediately grade the centering and margins of the stamp. That first pass will immediate create the starting point from which an initial grade can be established and a final grade determined. Few people can accurate gauge the precise centering on any stamp by eye. Sure one can say that a stamp looks well centered, but is that stamp centered at Very Fine or Superb? Is the stamp Very Good or Fine? Does the stamp have Jumbo margins, and if so at what Jumbo percentage of the stamp? I do my analysis and know exactly what the stamp's characteristics are. I can not begin to indicate to the board the amount of monetary value this has translated into for stamps that I have bought and sold. The other factor is the stamp's condition. This is not that complicated as long as one has a good resolution image of the front and back of the stamp. One can see color, perforation quality, gun, bends, folds, thins, etc. These factors can then be assessed and reflected into the stamp's grade based on centering. The issue gets only complicated when one has a Superbly or Very Fine centered stamp that is in mediocre condition. Does the condition make the stamp drop from Superb to only Very Fine, Fine, or Very Good? This is where human judgement and experience must come into play. On a related matter, I would also add that doing proper image analysis of a stamp will yield its precise perforation count on each side and any stamp errors. I am not tell you all how many perforation error and other error stamps I have uncovered.

I recently acquired a stunning collection of 21 duck stamps, all mint not hinged with original gum, with each stamp in its original fantastic plastic encapsulation. The stamps have literally been untouched once when they were placed in the encapsulation. The seller asked for $200 claiming that each stamp was "Very Fine". I took the seller's pictures and graded every stamp. I went back to the seller and explained that all of the stamps were not as he had claimed and gave him proof of such. I negotiated a purchase price of $90. Upon receiving the stamps, I regraded the stamps based on my usual 600 dpi scans. My analysis of the stamps generally was correct, but on a couple of stamps the images provided by the seller did not have the stamps fully flat. One stamp that initially graded Fine actually turned out to be Superb 91. The difference in value of this stamp between the two grades is 100%, or approximately $50. The nature of the #RW36 stamp is such that it is extremely difficult to grade visually, so good luck with that. Even if you told me it were Superb, I would not believe you unless you had a grading document/analysis. It is pretty much impossible to precisely determine the stamp's grade by eye based on the stamp design - but computer imaging software could do it (and did do it). The value of this lovely stamp alone covers 40% of my purchase price for all 21 stamps - and there are many more valuable stamps in the bunch that I purchased. I have already sold 4 of the duck stamps, all precisely graded and priced, and the values achieved are remarkable as each stamp is priced exactly where it should be and buyers have the confidence to know what they are getting. The only possible way to achieve this is by grading the stamps myself with the appropriate tools. As if that is not enough, because I grade the stamps, which requires a bit of attention to detail, I have located three amazing perforation error stamps in the group and another two color misprint error stamps. With precise grading and analysis, the stamps get properly valued and priced. As such, I know exactly what I own and when I sell these, I price them on the mark and provide the potential buyers with all the appropriate documentation to support my claims. I have never had a single buyer question my analysis of any stamp I have sold. Many buyers actually ask that I include the grading documentation when I ship the stamp (for which I charge a nominal $1.50). It has gotten to the point now where I have trusted past buyers asking me to grade separate stamps in their collections. They send me the image and in a matter of minutes I can tell them exactly what they have (the above caveat taken into consideration). In a couple of cases, buyers have had impressive Jumbo stamps and they did not even know it - dramatically increasing the value of their collection as they see it.

I am happy as long as people do not grade their stamps. It is good for me as I have a massive marketplace advantage over people that do not grade their stamps. I get better prices for the stamps I sell and buy high quality stamps that are priced as if they are at lower quality levels.

My other case in point is the stamp that I already graded in a matter of minutes on this chat forum. The correct grading knowledge on this stamp translates into a $50 value increase.

I anyone would like me to grade a stamp of theirs here, please post a 600 dpi image of the stamp, flat with a black background. The person must indicate in advance what they think the grade of the stamp is. The grading estimate must be precise, eg Very Good 65, or Extra Fine 76. The grade must have a number as there is a big difference between Superb 90 and Superb 97, for instance.

I would add on the subject of centering grading, I always use multiple software programs to measure stamps (in both perforations and centering). I do this as a matter of quality control.

The well resected chat board member revcollector indicates that he would not trust any result from "Bob's Stamp Centering Software". I know of no such "Bob's" software programs. They do not exist. The tools that exist in the marketplace are all from highly respected experts. I would also say, what does a person think that they are getting when they send a stamp out to a "reputable" stamp appraisal service (which charge at minimum $27 for grading a stamp (and a lot more for higher valued stamps). You get a simple centering analysis and some comments about condition (like there is a bend in the stamp - as if we couldn't see that already). Well, what type of software tools are the experts using to judge stamp centering? I can assure you, they are certainly not doing it by eye. Is there software any more precise that the expert tools I use. I doubt it. The tools I use measure stamps in them of length distance and pixel distances. At 600 dpi, I think indicating a stamp's left margin being 2 pixels wider than the right margin is more than accurate enough and definitely in greater accuracy than the human eye.

What's wrong with the grading system already in place? F, F/VF, VF, XF, & Superb work fine with me.