How To Help A New Seller?

@redwoodrandy thanks for those useful links..

Hi Aravind,
I see you got some links to the references. I am a huge fan of the Farley's. They were one of the earliest "gems" of my collection around 1984. The gutter pairs are interesting as well.
The White Planes #630 was the first souvenir sheet issued by the USPS. It would be many years before I was able to add one of those into the collection, and was quite a "trophy" for me when I finally got one. (In fairness, as a dealer I have handled a lot of them over the years, and the one in my collection now had been shifted out several times before landing on this one, as I found better and better examples). To this date, still one of my favorite issues.

Well, any sympathy I might have had for the seller has gone out the window... looks like he has a shill bidder in his group... seriously a 0 feedback buyer who started the bidding and now creeps it up every few hours? Not cool.

@classicphilatelist.. Thank you for the info on #630..interesting indeed.. also nice work catching the shell bidder.

And now he's cancelled the auction...
Not interested in helping this "new" seller...

Can you believe it, the seller just cancelled the auction.
Oh well, so much for trying to help him out.

Hi ClassicPhilatelist,
I just saw your posts.
I'm sorry I drew attention to a seller that was shill bidding and then went on to cancel the auction. I had no idea this was the case. I will try to learn from this experience.

I was truly mystified with this thread but held off commenting thinking I was being too cynical.
Don

Very Sad!

Was watching with interest.

How would you pick that outcome at the beginning?

First time seller who knew enough to mention large face value but throws out his/her first listing starting at $0.01...seemed suspect to me.
Don

In spite of how this turned out I think some of the advice given in this thread was worthwhile and could be helpful to other "newbie" ebay sellers. Maybe, just maybe the subject of the thread was reading along and decided to take our advice. It was our consensus that he was going to take a beating on this sale and would be better off selling smaller face value lots and maybe he will.

He started this lot at $10 not 1c but either way the best way to get good prices on an ebay auction is to start with a low price and attract many bidders. This is especially true for a newcomer who doesn't have a following.

Hi Ken,
I agree that there is nothing wrong with the strategy of an ebay low start. My point was that this is not typical of a inexperienced stamp owner; the majority of inexperienced stamp owners think their stamps are valued at far more than they really are. And first time ebay listers are often fearful of 'giving away something for nothing'.

But if the argument is that a low start on ebay is a 'good thing' than this seller should not have pulled this listing. The listing would have found its natural market value and advising the seller to reconfigure the listing was not needed.
Don

The advice is good, and useful. But the bigger lesson here as well is about evaluating who is worthy of "help". This guy "joined" ebay on 23 Feb 2019, and basically couple days later posted up a $5000 FV lot, and no other listings. Most new comers dip a toe in the water first, list a few items, figure out how it all works. And MOST first time sellers were already ebay members for some period of time, as buyers, This guy just joined, posted up the lot. Also "sob stories" are a big give away. I have found that legitimate sellers will leave the emotional bit out. Just focus on the items. That's what people care about. They "Why" this is for sale is not relevant. It all added up to a listing with a stench.

@modernstamps I would like to say that I do really admire you desire to help a new seller. It's good for the community. But there may be some criteria to examine first, otherwise you may be helping a scheister. I think if we watch this account on ebay for a few weeks, it will be "removed".