Can The Stamp Market Be Used For Real Hard Criminal Actions?

Can it be used for money laundering?
I saw an offer on ebay, 64 sides A4 stockbook with stamps, no certificates, mostly or all used, arranged in a simple stockbook, the seller also sells music albums, currently this is his only offer, and the average price per stamp is US$600.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/364191752741

Interesting: one of the feedbacks is from the guy who replies to anyone who does not agree with his phantastical stamps (e.g., a pre-cancelled British stamp that is a complete phantasy) that they do not want to find out the truth. He also cherry-picks part replies and uses it to confirm his ludicrous phantasies as "a step closer to the truth."

I've been following this lot for awhile and the seller offered me the lot for $725,000. I responded that there was nothing special about the lot and the stamps were quite ordinary.

This was his response:

Becase ebay allows 24 photos and there are 64 pgs.

So explain how they know what's on the other pages.

What do you have French Louis Pasteur with "Paris" bullseye.

The Pasteur with 10Fr overprint are worth 30k and there are 900 of them.

What about Czech 120 Imperforate with no plant with 100 Doplatit overprint.

There are on the photos.

Let's face it- if the lot were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, he can't invest in more photos for the lot???

There are, realistically, I think only two possibilities: 1) 99% the seller is a crank or in some other way no-quite-right-in-the-head (there are plenty of those, including on this forum), or 2) 1% this is a planned sale, with a designated "buyer" somewhere who will buy the album and transfer the cash, laundering it.
I mean, no genuine buyer/seller would close this transaction without certificates, references, etc (such as through an auction or brokered sale).

I do not understand how someone can launder money by buying something unless they can then turn around and resell it. So if I have $1.5M in illegal drug money, I buy this collection, how much laundered money can I get for it? $100?

I do understand how someone can cook the books of a company by making fake transactions and then sell the company using the baked books to fool a buyer of the company.
Don

Hardly money laundering. The whole premise behind laundering your money is to turn dirty money into clean money AND fly under the radar which a million-dollar plus ebay transaction hardly accomplishes. File this one under "deranged".

Agree with those who vote for deranged.

shermae, the seller made two strange remarks:
1) If he had a 30k stamp, why hasn't he shown it?
2) The 24 limit is not always so, see the next example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/305035867010

If the seller and the buyer work together.
Instead of the, let's say drug dealer, putting his 1.5M in a casino, he puts it in an ebay deal.
The receiving side earned the money legally, and no one know he worked with the drug dealer.

It's just a "wishful thinking" *asking* price.
If it was a Sold Item at a similar high price, then it might be more interesting.

Given that ebay gets a percentage of the sold price, it's an expensive place to launder money.

I asked them if the price was a typo and they actually meant $14.25. Their answer was, "The treskilling is on one of the other pages." So, of course, I asked them to delete one of the common pages and show us this treasure. We'll see what they do next.

You can also ask him how much he charges for laundering money. The answer might surprise you.

Anyway that this transaction is completed, it cannot be to launder money.

There is no way to introduce the dirty money into this transaction. Now it may be easier to introduce the money as a seller but it just does not make sense. Remember the first issue when cleaning money is how does the dirty money enter the legitimate money stream. It cant be casinos, banks, real estate, stamp collections, etc., as any transaction which exceeds $9,999 will be reported. If you can solve the entry of the money where it wont get reported then you are well on the way to become a successful launderer. Yes there are instances of casinos taking huge deposits, foreign and even domestic US banks do the same but most get caught pretty quickly.

You people are being mean to this seller .

Poor guy ,he put that on ebay to impress his friends or the girls at the local bar ......like excuse me "but I have to check my Iphone to see if I sold a 1.5 million dollar transaction that is due to sell tonight . "

The other possible case is someone spend their family life savings at the casino with gambling and hookers over the last few months and needed to explain to the family ,that they are going to get a big return on a stamp investment as a excuse for the missing money .

What's a hooker?

I guess that you never played rugby?

Full disclosure, I was a high school hooker until a broken ankle in grade 11 put an end to it.
Clive