Pushing 330,000 All Different Worldwide Stamps In One Collection .

"or a worldwide collector and even a country collector the most expensive stamps to buy right now are the middle price range" - A stamp dealer might give a widow 3% of catalog value for these stamps that sell for much more as supposed the normal 10% of cat value stamps.

The lower-end stamps move in bulk, the high-end ones have their established buyers, but this middle tier has become a dead zone. The solution is probably the middle tier stamps have to be repriced higher in the catalog. And the most expensive stamps need to be downgraded to reflect what they actually sell for.

"the middle has become a dead zone " true !
Years ago we had stamp shows and stamp bourses which had dealers with inventory at their tables, we had WANT LIST dealers and full page ads in Linn's Stamp News and Western Collectors newspaper ,also a very active APS Sales Division . Now we got ebay ,with sellers who buy on Saturday's and list on Monday .

What we got are stamp auctions which sell collections . The problem with buying at auction for collections is that -----let me give a example ----I have a Falkland Island collection it has a value lets just use $300.00 , Now at a stamp auction catalog a huge Falkland collection with lots of better stamps at $700.00 so I buy it .That cost me $840.00 out the door . but now I got $300.00 duplicate collection because most likely all my present stamps are the same as in this new purchase ,then remember $140.00 fee is gone . So I paid $840.00 for basicly for $400.00 of new stamps.
This is why those who deal in this mid-range stamps can charge more and get it .Your willing to pay extra for filling those better stamp holes in your collection .

I'm not sure how that follows. Middle tier isn't a dead zone; middle tier is tough because of structural changes in the way stamps are sold these days. Red box dealers are retiring from shows, brick and mortar stores have long since closed down.

It takes the same amount of time and money to list a CV $500 stamp for sale as a CV $50 for sale. Most will focus on the former rather than the latter. The truly cheap stuff can be picked up easily on ebay as tons of non-philatelic folks put this stuff up for sale all the time. But the middle tier is tough because it's not so common and requires a certain baseline of knowledge and experience with catalogues, etc. to put up, which is something that some person listing stamps from Grandpa's collection on ebay generally won't have/get.

There are a few lads on ebay UK who consistently offer good quality sets, part sets and individual items in the "middle" range.

I can personally vouch for this guy. I've completed plenty of sets at a good price over the years from his listings.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?s...=1&_svsrch=1

New page completed today. The mounts are repurposed so they aren't cut as straight as id like but I figured as much as mounts are going to cost me if I can repurpose some and save money then I better sacrifice my perfectionism a little bit.

Kyle - Nice page , Haiti always a favorite .

"But the middle tier is tough because it's not so common and requires a certain baseline of knowledge and experience with catalogues" - By repricing higher it will force people to go looking for it. Otherwise you just have the status quo.

Haiti is a cool country to collect. Nice set.

Back to the subject of medium value/ mid-range catalog stamps .

I think it is safe to say ,from my experience at many different stamp auctions and viewing the many WORLDWIDE COLLECTIONS ,it is safe to say 75% are filled with the low value stamps . I would not disrespect what many worked on as a life long hobby and never purchased higher price stamp ,they enjoyed what the spend their time and money on .Also most collections that appear on ebay are these lower value stamps maybe 90% or 95% ,this would have a bigger percent of picked over or beginner collections .

So purchasing these mid-level collections are harder find ,It is also true what a poster named KEIJO on another chatboard posted in Dec.8, 2016 which also holds a lot of truth ,he said "kind of hard to image any person collecting 100K stamps would end up with nothing but common stamps " which I agree with ,there is always some mid-level stamps in these larger collections .

So a deciding factor these Stamp Auction firms figure on putting a value on any Worldwide Collection or even a large country collection is how many mid-level stamps are there . We all know if any high value $100.00 set or rare stamp is immediately highlighted in the stamp firms catalog .Stamp Auction often will pull a high value or rare stamp to sell separately , The middle range stamps are left alone by the auction house but pulled by stamp dealers and ebay sellers to be sold most of the time as separate items .
I have to believe when Kelleher Auctions sold the inventory of A & D stamps , their inventory of 594 RED BOXES {maybe the largest inventory ever sold as one stamp auction lot } that from the price realised at auction . That someone pulled out the better mid-range items .

So it is my strong belief that better mid-level {$15.00 to $80.00 } other than buying large country collections ,your going to have to pay a per stamp or per set price for them .

Floortrader - These articles that you write are more interesting than most articles I read in Linns or APS magazine. Keep up the good work. For those who are not experts in every country. One of my tricks examining a WW collection is to look at the countries that I know well, and if they are free of forgeries and have strong sets, then I assume that the rest is probably pretty good. This idea does not hold up all the time, but does work for me. I do agree with your ebay assessment, most of the collections sold are beginner collections with the goods striped out.

I don't think that's how catalog valuations work. Perhaps you could adjust values up on a handful of items if they truly are underpriced, but raising values up on a ton of mid-range items (assuming dealers took the lead of the catalogue and adjusted prices up of this inventory accordingly) would also depress sales as many of these stamps aren't 'iconic'.

Penny Blacks and the 1847 Ben Franklins, etc. will always sell pretty well, so you can price them high and folks will still bite. I'm not sure that logic holds for the mid-range material, which is mid-range for a reason: rarer than the common cheap stuff, but not desired to the same extent as the blue chips.

"I don't think that's how catalog valuations work. " - The catalogs (Scott) have not been updated in a long time for many countries as least the ones that I follow. Maybe US stamps are. The issue is that the print runs of some stamps (World Wide) are low and Scott has them selling for nothing or not at market price. Meanwhile cheap and expensive stamps are over valued.

Maybe some specific examples of catalogue vs market price discrepancies would help...

Have to decide where this stamp should be placed in my collections .

It could be placed into my CINDERELLA COLLECTION

It could be placed in my "A STAMP FROM EVERYWHERE COLLECTION " as a "stamp from every country " as some call the collection .