Do You Trust It When Seller Says Stamp Lot Is Unchecked

It can, and often does, mean both. In my own such lots, I'm also pretty clear about what "mixed condition" means and it should be assumed any "unchecked" lots would be like this.

When I "dump" stuff into boxes, it is literally just that. Upside down it all goes into a banker box and when it's full, it goes up for sale. That said, if I see a stock book or shoebox of stuff that's clearly a disaster, such as noticing everything has scotch tape, water damage, a bad smell, Etc, I don't bother dumping it in. As Don pointed out, getting to know your seller is important and I would rather try to avoid having a buyer deal with that to keep them coming back in the future. Other sellers may not follow this though!

It still always come down to who did the "unchecking". A seller may have purchased 100 cartons of stuff from Kelleher and is stuffing it into mailing boxes unchecked BY THEM but that is not unchecked material in the truest sense. Generally speaking, Kelleher is selling a 1789-pound lot of stuff because it has been processed to death.

That applies as well.

Now "floor sweepings" that can be a group with condition issues. But don't expect the vacuumed C3a.

My two cents on this:

There are so many ways to collect: mint/used, quality, shades, varieties, papers, cancels, topics to name a few.

Maybe a cancel collector has extracted a few nice items but has not examined for minor varieties. Maybe a topical collector picked for birds, mushrooms etc. and had little interest in the rest. Maybe a collector bought a lot to cherry pick 1-2 prize items and his/her time is more valuable than extracting maximum return. Maybe the quality is mixed, and collector wishes to move it without making promises on condition. I've done all these, and more.

Nothing is truly unchecked, it often means "I haven't looked at this from every collecting perspective, maybe you'll spot some value I didn't". As many of us do, if I resell something I won't use the outright term "unchecked", I'll leave a little mystery in the lot and suggest what buyers might find in the leftovers.

"When I see unchecked or "RARE" I just keep scrolling."

Just scrolling ebay.

I will add "Vintage" to my list.
I think it means anything older than last Tuesday.

pat

My own first hand experience begs to differ, but it's the rarest thing

The word "unchecked" is superfluous in the title of a stamp lot for sale.

The lot was most certainly "checked" by someone at one point, perhaps not by the seller.

I can't imagine a seller has checked for everything there is to check for.

When I have gone through my own lots I can revisit them and find things I did not see the previous time I "checked".

No.

My simple rule of thumb:

The only person who uses the term 'unchecked' is someone who knows what it means - a collector or a dealer, not someone outside the hobby who's putting their grandmother's album on ebay.

And if the term is being used by someone who knows what it means, then that person has almost certainly already 'checked' it.

So, if I see that on a casual ebay posting, I know it's already been picked through. (As others have mentioned earlier, the odds that it was picked through at some point in its journey is already pretty high.)

The caveat, of course, is if the seller says 'unchecked', but then proceeds to qualify what it's actually been checked for (again, as others mentioned, it could be that it's been picked through for something, but not picked through for something else, and therefore could still qualify as 'unchecked')

I checked the paperwork of my two 'unicorns'.

One was from a dealer and they used the word 'unchecked'. It was a bundleware lot. Hadn't been touched for over 100 years.

The other was from a guy who put together some bundles in the 1970s with a desire to become a dealer in the future, but that never eventuated. He didn't use the word 'unchecked'.

Both were on ebay.

Like I said, I never had such luck prior, and I've have had no such luck since.

Sometimes stamps from charity are indeed from charity. There was a seller who introduced himself as selling from charity to fix their church roof or something, and they did seem unchecked on paper stamps.

On the other hand, there's another hoax, similar to the unchecked fantasy: I see stock-books filled with stamps, no suspicious spaces, but a closer look shows that the countries are mixed, the same stamp appears on several pages, and it looks like the dealer packed the stock-book so it would look as if a real collector owned it, and the dealer's goal was to get rid of common stamps and heavy old stock-books.

There is another factor a buyer should factor in .

If a seller is selling 50 to 100 lots per month and has a active selling business with other stamp offers . It is safe to say he doesn't have the time to check everything passing thru his business . If a stamp auction house is selling 5 to 10 tons of bulk collections ,do they with 2 or 3 staff really have the time to check each album page or stock page .

Every firm and most dealers don't mess around with stamps under a certain price range .

It really comes down to "UNCHECKED " for what ?

Simply put, I think that 'unchecked' can basically mean one of two things;
1. Unchecked by current seller
2. Unchecked by anyone since the material was gathered for collecting

In terms and context of a current listing…
#1 – How much does it matter if the current seller has checked it not? Does it really add significant value to the listing? (my opinion...no)
#2 – This has significant meaning and can certainly add substantial value to the material being listing.

The ambiguous meaning can is being used to make the material sound better.

I think that #1 occurs the vast majority of time. I think that #2 is incredibly, incredibly rare and with each passing decade becomes rarer and rarer.

Sellers can avoid ambiguity by not simply using 'unchecked' but rather add a more descriptive qualifier like 'unckecked by us'.
Don

The most you're likely to get with the second is "untouched", i.e. an auction house might not have pulled out individual material from an ancient album for separate sale. But they'll have checked it first to make sure of the beat method of lotting.

Here's an example of what to look for, for a real unchecked lot of stamps:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/385749064187
The seller should not be a stamp dealer, most other offered materials aren't stamps, and the concept of "charity" is involved.

This one, on the other hand, I find suspicious:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/256141283643
If he had the time to arrange an attractive set of stamps to show, he had time to pick whatever he wanted. I fear that in the actual batch of stamps, there will be a majority of simple definitives and duplicates.