Do You Trust It When Seller Says Stamp Lot Is Unchecked

The sad part of our hobby when buying and selling is trust seems to be hard to find. But then consider this is not much different than the marketing of most products. Buyer beware.

Absolutely the right take (not that the others are wrong). Every time I buy an album on ebay where I can't see all the photos, I know I'm taking a bit of a risk. Can't spend hours in front of the computer looking at the images with a Scott catalogue open and creating a spreadsheet of SCV.... but then again, the gamble is part (or should be considered a part of) the entertainment value you pay for.

Uncheked???


And no doubt graded UN will be the next big thing.

I think we have a big misunderstanding about what kind of people are looking for "unsearch lots ".

These are "Bottom Feeders " they want to spend very little money but want a treasure from a stupid or lazy seller . But they are falling for something out of the book ---Stamp Dealers Guide to Early Retirement .

I have been collecting since the 1970s and I have never seen a truly 'unsearched' lot, accumulation, or collection. But I guess they could possibly exist.
Don

I was approached with a collection in a big box, dead dad's collection with zero interest from son. It was unchecked by the current owner. I offer to buy it at 10% over what the highest written offer from one of three dealers and I would take it to the dealers or I would check it and we would have a different split after the contents sold. I carried the box "as was" and got the three written offers. I offered again to take my time to work up the box but at that different split. Son just wanted money now. I paid.

Assorted aged new issues repaid the box's cost to me.The Japan paid for the first family vacation. The second family vacation was paid by Australia. And it continued as I sold material to the three dealers and more from the box.

Unchecked is out there, if uncheck means the seller has no idea what is in the lot. As to the seller I mentioned before, he does not put together the uncheck lots. That job is assigned to a non-stamp collector to toss together by weight from the piles of stuff he has that he has no time to go through.

I am a seller who does list occasional "unchecked lots" but I have two clarifications I make in my auctions.

In one subset, they are unchecked for any type of varieties, postmarks, watermarks, Etc etc, and I point this out. There is very little chance of a baseline valuable stamp. These are often bulk lots of the same type or series of stamp. This has resulted in several lifetime customers who happened to score off of my pure laziness. In one situation, I sold an entire collection of rare and small town cancels in a stock book as I didn't bother to look at what the owner was doing with organization. In a second and more financially impactful, I sold several pounds of Canada Admiral series and the buyer found 40+ major re-entries and errors listed in Unitrade. Such is. I made $ off the lots with minimal effort and they got a great deal - everyone wins. The majority of these that I've listed though are probably just as they appear though - just mass amounts of the same thing.

In another subset related to laziness, I do sell large bulk WW stuff on and off paper. In these, I actually literally do not check anything BUT I do only dump stuff into these boxes that has an overall look and likelihood of being all from a local bulk bin. As an online seller, I don't care about much with a CV under $20 so even those books/envelopes/boxes end up getting dumped in as well so there can be some "value" but highly unlikely to have wild surprises. I don't sugarcoat these sales and actually enjoy writing ridiculous descriptions for these lol (ie in one lot, I wrote "please send my tongs back as I think they got dumped in too, along with some paperclips". In other words, this is a literal scrap heap.

But I would highly doubt that the vast vast majority of any "unchecked" lots, including my own, will yield some remarkable auction-house quality material. At best you might find a mid-level item to fill an album spot. The real winners are the specialist collectors who can spot something not likely listed in a generic catalog.

If buying these lots, at least off ebay, assume it will just be something to sort through, fill some WW album spots, and then maybe make some stamp packets to resell or trade off.

ParcelPost,
"unchecked by the current owner" LOL, nice qualifier You see lots of ebay listings using this qualifier?

I take the term 'Unchecked' as meaning something like a pre-WWII collection (i.e. original owner died before 1946 and no one knowledgeable has seen it since).

And even with that, I question anyone who might think for a second that the material was not already viewed by dealers, family collector friend or neighbor, etc., before popping up on ebay labeled 'unchecked'.

At this point the vast majority of older material, especially on ebay, has been viewed by generations of people. It gets bought and sold, moved, broken up, re-assembled dozens of times.

I can't tell if you have a lot of ebay stock or are just being argumentative.
Don

For me, anytime I see marketing puffery terms like 'post office fresh' or 'unchecked' I stop reading and assume that the description is overly filled with adjectives meant to influence the reader.

EDIT: I think this topic also falls into the category of 'know who you are buying from and build good relationships with sellers'. If someone is buying material based on adjectives and/or dicey images, I think they should seek to improve their buying decisions.

I have neither listed nor sold on ebay or any other internet market place. I have sold via brick and mortar auction firms and as noted previously directly to dealers.

I am not being argumentative but reacting to the cynics who claim nothing is unchecked. Sorry but that is projection. Of course as I already pointed out every item saved for collectors was at one time "checked' to be saved or the paper would have long been ash, worm food or recycled.

Many here seem to think "unchecked" means they should get thousands of dollars catalog for a couple of buck from, really, really, uninformed sellers.




What I wrote in my first post in this thread was:


So we are in agreement, mostly.

Now a direct to you question as a buyer, what words do you want or how do you want a unchecked by current owner lot identified?

Everyone who says they do not believe the words or believe in uncheck lots will have self fulfilling prophesies, right? Never buy one and never then find one.

To answer the OP's question, no.

"I just bought this lot cheap and want to turn it over for a profit. Highest offer over what I paid will be accepted."

Why is "profit" required. Stamp collecting is not a for profit activity for collectors, just dealers. By the way just because someone sells a few stamps on ebay, they are not a defacto dealer. "Collecting" means acquisition and subsequent disposal.

From a 2015 post (not mine):


What is the per hour value for having fun looking through material. Or is such activity just an overhead cost to collecting?

And what a feeling that is eh?

Addictive and you want more, like anything that triggers the pleasure centers of the brain.

I feel like such a dumb-dumb. Whenever I see "unchecked", I always took that to mean they weren't making any assurances regarding quality. Now I see that what is really meant is "We didn't skim the good stuff out of this lot..."