A Beginner's Guide: How To Read Ebay Speak.

Reflective of my mood after returning 3 of the 4 orders I received today; but this is meant to be humorous and a "tad" sardonic.

"Rare" = Please see 14 more examples just like this one in better condition for a lower price.

"MNH" = Hinged with a decent back.

"LH" = Dirty back, and actual back hair 50% of the time.

"MHR" = No gum.

"Some minor faults" = run through a grain thresher. Twice.

"Scarce" = because I only have one right now; so in my home it is quite scarce.

"Gem" = Fine/70

"Fine example" = toned edges, 4-9 perfs missing. Gum optional

"Quality stamp" = Off-centered and re-gummed.

"Bargain" = Not a bargain, ever.

"A few issues" = Dog chewed on it for a bit. Only a day though.

"Minor toning" = Soaked in Guinness beer and 10w30 for a few days.

"Could be a...." = Lowest value variety priced at the highest value variety that is easily identifiable as the lowest value variety.

"Very well-centered" = Blatant and obvious re-perf.

"Expertly re-gummed" = Still a re-gum, but done by someone really good at re-gumming and therefore more valuable since done by an expert re-gummer.

"Choice example" = F-VF

"Unwatermarked" = Watermarked.

"Watermark ABC, etc." = Unwatermarked.

"Laid paper" = Wove paper.

"Wove paper" = Laid paper.

"High Value!" = Not high value simply because it is old.

"A great investment" = True! For the seller to help fund their retirement.


Sure there are quite a few more; fire away!

Hey Andy - very true indeed.

Here's another one to add to the list

Fuzzy/blurry photo = obvious faults

I am sure all the members here could come up with dozens more of these.

Rich

My definition for "a few issues" is locusts were allowed to have a meal before I lotted this stamp.



May be no hinge on back but may have toning, blotching, spotting, browning, rusting, two-tones, foxing, ink transfer, paper transfer, or large fingerprints. "Didn't see any of this when I checked for hinging."



Any degree of massive hinging history, which I call "lh."



And also because "I am either completely feckless when it comes to cataloging items, or I am just to lazy to bother."



Some others:

"Shortish perf" - read about the locusts above. Or may have been caused by my pet snapping turtle.

"MNH" - the stamps are in mounts so I assume they are MNH.

"Just fine" = perfs cut deeply into the design, which is "just fine" by me for this description

"Centered NE" = there is enough room SW for a dog fight

"Unfolded, no separation" = Folded, separated

"Missing corner perf" = Corner was violently cut down in it's prime

"Unchecked" = I looked really hard for every perf, shade, paper, gum, watermark, and plate flaw possibility. Didn't check quality though, that's YOUR problem.

While humorous that is a very harsh and negative view of ebay which really needs more positive vibes.

Cheers

Personally I speak about all online stamp sales including buying from brick and mortar sellers.

I know this is meant to be a fun post, but I've had relatively good experiences with ebay. For the few that weren't, the seller immediately corrected the problem at their expense.

Cheers,
Jed

Since my father, a long time stamp collector, isn't here to comment, having passed a few years ago, I will say it for him.

"When buying on ebay, lightly hinged means there is no hinge remnant on the back".

Really Old - a stamp from 2010

Antique - a stamp from 2000

LQQK!!!!! - I have no idea what this is and I'm hoping you can tell me

Unique! -a stamp the seller owns fewer than 5 of

Upselling your product through hyperbole, misrepresentation & omission has been around since the earliest markets in the village square. I went carpet shopping in Turkey many years ago - it was scarily impressive how those guys could convincingly spin dross into gold and make you feel like you got a bargain in the process.

Yes, most sellers on EBay/Hipstamp I think try to do a pretty good job, and try to be honest and are very good about taking returns and correcting mistakes when they are made; but I am seeing a lot more material that sellers are simply not bothering to inspect at all. Seems to happen more in pages from collections they bought somewhere and then making the assumption the the original collector actually placed the correct stamp in the corresponding spot. Don't think they are trying to deceive anyone, but also don't care enough to confirm what they are listing is correct.

What annoys me a lot is the use of CV or high CV and often a price after. As though they are saying this stamp I've put up for sale has a high catalog value of ...
No the stamp you've put up for sale is a space saver and has a CV of almost nothing

Some sellers misuse philatelic terminology because ebay must have consulted a coin person when defining Item Specific values to populate left panel filters. Instead of allowing potential buyers to search on catalog number, they offer search on "Grade" and "Quality". Many stamp dealers already have a database filled with abbreviations not matching ebay's corrupted values. Because over grading is so common, how many buyers would search by grade for dealer-graded stamps? Because the primitive ebay search engine cannot handle strings with embedded minus signs, they changed F-VF to F/VF, a form seldom seen on philatelic price lists in the United States. Instead of abbreviations ebay should have used strings like "fine", "very fine" or "fine to very fine" as filter values. Unlike ebay, HipStamp search seems to have some ability to recognize philatelic abbreviations. Sellers tempted to post numeric grads should be aware that ebay will take the listing down unless accompanied by a graded certificate. "Quality", ebay's term for gum condition and used or unused condition uses the term "Mint" instead of "Unused". The Scott catalog is careful to limit the term "Mint" to described never hinged stamps. The term "mint no gum" seems illiterate to me.

When ebay stopped supporting "Used" and "Unused" for Item Condition, most sellers miss out on filling in the "Condition Description" at the top of the listing. The only way to expose the Condition Description is to set the Item Condition of every stamp to "Used". Since ebay does not expose Item Condition in the Stamps Category, this is not a problem, at least for now. After ebay switched to numeric Item Condition ID values for "New" and "Used", additional ID values were added to describe conditions between "New" (in shrink wrap) and "Used". It would be relatively easy for ebay to define "Unused" as ID 1500, halfway between "New', ID 0, and "Used", ID 3000. Since condition is the most important factor in pricing a stamp relative to catalog value, ebay has made it extremely difficult for sellers to put condition front and center. It is almost as if ebay does not want sellers to describe the condition of stamps. None of this will matter if ebay decides to anonymize seller IDs. Recently, some sellers have reported anonymized buyer email addresses. Will they hide seller IDs next?

I tend to go with the photo or scan of the stamp on ebay. If it's a high quality scan, and if they also include an image of the back of the stamp, then I don't worry too much about the written description. Who cares if they call it unique, F/VF, or whatever. A picture is worth 1,000 words.

To be fair, I never had a problem with a seller saying LH because I would never buy a stamp unless there was a back scan. There are those sellers who will not provide one and, of course, I never bought from them.

That's a wise decision. I once bought a set of stamps on ebay that was claimed to be MNH. True, they had never been postally used, and they had never been hinged. But each one had a thin on the back, where a previous owner had apparently licked the gum and stuck it onto an album page. There was no mention of this in the description, and of course no scan of the backs.

4/5 now. A "NH" souvenir sheet. Yay!