Why Do People Do This?

I'm pretty sure that if you have thousands of common stamps, and you want to realize as much money as possible selling them, hinging them into a Scott International (in the proper spaces, don't do the thousands of Franco stamps thing) and selling on ebay as an album collection gives the highest realization by far. That's why people do this.

It isn't a good return per hour of work if you start with an empty book, of course, but if you start with an album with a couple thousand (the kind of thing often found in $100-$200 box lots mostly full of detritus) it isn't bad. Certainly if you enjoy putting stamps in the album it can be worth doing.

If you watch the collections category on ebay regularly, a Scott International Volume I with only 4,000-5,000 can sell as high as 6 cents per stamp and routinely sells for around 4 cents per stamp. I'd take pictures of the insides myself, but apparently even not doing that works often enough that sellers keep doing it.

Scott blue Int'ls tend to do the best, even if the binder is beat up, but Minkus Supreme/Master Globals and big thick Harris Citations can do very well too. Actually good albums (specialty albums, hingeless albums, etc.) don't do better, or don't do better enough to justify using them.

Codehappy ----- I always have a set of Scott Albums that I am filling up , then will match page by page to my main collection . Then one of the major firms gets it as a consignment lot for public auction .

People sure get emotionally worked up over small things. It's an ebay listing for two binders filled with what must be ordinary stamps for those years. They will be "worth" maybe 10c each on average but are selling right now for about 4-5c each. The seller has no obligation to spend time photographing pages for such an average collection. He's saying "Here it is if you want it". There's nothing wrong with that. Don't bid if you don't like it. What in the world is the point of making yourself the Judge of ebay and insisting that sellers do what you think they should do? Yes, I'd also like a lot of pictures, but there aren't any. So guess what? I won't bid. Done. Too many cranky old guys with time on their hands.

"Excuse me while I kiss the sky". That's all I have to say.

There are two reasons why people don't put pictures in an ebay stamp listing:
1. They don't know what they are doing.
2. They do know what they are doing, but would like you to think they don't know.
As an ebay buyer you can look at their other items and sales record to determine whether its case 1 or 2.
If case 1, then you might be able to make a good deal (and maybe not). In case 2 you will not get a good deal.

A lot of naive buyers don't know enough, and just assume its case 1.

I think one the of reasons that you see listings like this is due to ebay policies. Sellers who previously have had items returned to them as 'not as described' tend to then limit future descriptions. With a very minimized description, buyers with remorse cannot abuse the ebay policy by finding some debatable adjective.
Don

floortrader

Thought you might enjoy these...

I think this guy underpriced his albums, check this out:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Suprem...047675.l2557

Wait that Global album collection sold for $99,000 plus? Huh??

Looks to me like a barely usable old album with paper deterioration issues on the pages. I'd love to know what really happened with this listing.

Includes 30+ Stamps. Wow.

It's pretty strange, they sold for $204 on June 23;




and then sold as "Best Offer" on July 17th

He apparently upgraded this after buying then resold. He plastered $100 bills on several pages. I mean come on...

But I don't want $100 bills that have been "plastered" to a page. Why didn't he use proper mounts?

That strong sweet scent smells just like laundry detergent.

There's more going on here than meets the eye.

Don opens this issue really well!

For me it was not'not as described'but buyers with remorse sending me neg messages that could have turn into neg feedback. So listing info has been limited. This was my answer to this issue.