Average Price Paid Or Anticipated From Ebay/Hip Sales (Auction And Bin)?

What is your average price target for US, other countries as % of SC in auctions or via Buyitnow sales?

Does it differ based on period? (i.e. 1847-1861), late 19th century, early 20th century, modern?

For years it seems one could buy most anything after 1875 for <10% of SC, and <20% for before 1875.

I am interested both as a buyer and a seller as things seem to have changed.

I have yet to sell anything particularly valuable, mainly because I keep such things for my own collection, but I am flabbergasted when I see stamps going at auction for nearly 100% of CV, on NYstamps for example. It's all about demand, rarity, and simple exposure. I've seen circumstances where NYstamps has stuff for auction that can be found elsewhere for probably half of the final auction price. If you find some rinkydink seller who has good stuff but who has yet to really be discovered (or even better one who doesn't know what they have) stay with them until they're discovered and tell noone of your secret.

Edit: something did come to mind about CV. I have Nicaragua 8-12 or some such set listed in Scott for about 65$ for the set. I saw it sold last month on ebay for 5$. go figure. I had been planning on posting mine, but if it'll go for something so little I'd prefer to just keep it.

For US items, I'll check the US specialized catalog's "Stamp Values Specialized By Grade" section. Values here are broken down more into more categories based in centering, hinging, etc. If it's an auction, I'll set my bid for 50-75% of that value. If it's something I've been wanting for a while, I have no problem paying 100%.

For foreign, no more than 50% of stand catalog value.

Why set an arbitrary percentage of cv as a pay limit? Condition, how hard it is to find, your desire to have it etc. are three of many factors that come into play. Collectors always complain about catalog value amounts and then obsess ober buying material at "x" percentage of catalog.

I have been looking for some Russian/Soviet stamps that are under $10 in cv for almost a year. If I see them I will easily pay full catalog. The catalog value is wrong.

Why limit yourself to a percentage of CV? Like Rogdcam,there are plenty of Commonwealth stamps I have been searching for (with surprisingly low CV), some for over five years with no luck and would not hesitate to pay full CV and in some cases over CV to add them to my collection. Although I do consult the catalogues, I don't consider them as gospel, prices offered by vendors for the same stamps are usually all over the place. I usually take my time comparing what's on offer taking condition, availability and my budget into consideration. If it feels right, I take the plunge.

I started a thread a couple months ago about the average % of CV I was selling stuff at in my online stores. Some countries/areas are definitely - on average - higher than others. That being said, it's all over the map, given condition and availability. Some of the hardest items to find can be cheap ones where the minimal Scott CV doesn't reflect the actual difficulty of finding the item on the market - and dealers are less likely to list them because the CV is so low.

In my opinion CV is nearly useless and catalogs could be much more relevant to the hobby if they replaced CV with a criteria like 'rarity factor' instead.

I wish catalog publishers would all start forums where they could spend their time explaining market value vs. catalog value and setting expectation correctly. Demand is ephemeral and this makes market values ephemeral. Any hardcopy catalog value is going to be hit/miss as soon as the catalog is published (assuming the CV was right in the first place which is often not true). Why do we spend money buying catalogs when we know it takes 'special knowledge' to understand market values?
Don