The Biggest And Most Destructive Lie In The Hobby Of Stamp Collecting

This thread certainly has found some traction. Much work and thought went into the original commentary; now its ideas are bearing some fruit here. If I may chime in, with a few brief thoughts.

1) Regardless of values assigned, without a catalogue of some form there would be no organized hobby to speak of.

Values are estimated by input from knowledgeable dealers in the trade. That they reflect a selling price on a stamp's best day, after marketing it and generating competition from buyers, is reasonable to expect. Of course few individuals put in the time, money and effort to achieve this return.

2) To the title of the original article, in my opinion it comes to the wrong conclusion after presenting some reasonable arguments. Essentially it states that stamp buyers who reject catalogue values are " self-serving liars out to destroy the hobby". What could be further from the truth. If one is knowledgeable and buys to advantage at public auction, they are still supporting the hobby. Dealers who wish to remain so long-term have an interest in conducting a fair trade. Stamp collectors, in most circles, are a fraternity that abide by a code of integrity because they want to have friends to share their collection with.

I

No it does not.

It states that the argument is used primarily in two self-serving situations and that a lot of collectors echo the argument without giving it a thought, thus doing the hobby a disservice.

1. Dealers use it as an excuse for unfairly low offers when people who inherit a collection and have no interest in maintaining the collection want to sell.
2. Some collectors use it as an excuse to convince dealers their unrealistically low offer is their only chance at selling their stock.

Literally

Yesterday, I followed a scandinavian based internetauction with greenland stamps.

Most of the lots contained stamps with high quality cancellations, variations, and stamps printed in a low number (30-70.000 pcs). The bidding was quite aggressive and with prices in the high end, often 2-3 times higher than I have seen recently.

Today, I am more convinced, that stamps with certain qualities, more reflect a true value in trading. And the majority of stamps, in fact dont have a value their make sense to be mention with a catalogue value.

There have been a number of comments about who provides imput to Scott on values. There is a long list near the front of the catalog that lists the people they have relied on the most. Not all are dealers.

HMM lots of cherry picked facts and interesting arguements. Let the stampdragons shed light on the truth. At the high-end auction houses. The highest end. For most stamps sold (not covers) actual stamps, most do not sell at catalogue value. Some do but most don't. We are not dumpster diving here. The auction houses that list close to catalog have passed lots. And when I mean close, 50% of catalog. The stamps that sell for cat or more, have something special about them. They were undervalued to begin with or they have a cert on a stamp whose value is depressed by fakes or the stamp is in pristine condition. But that is few and far between. Go to the stampauction network or others not listed on SAN and just check for yourself. Go straight to the high-end auction houses and compare cat value to sold price.

Mostly I don't think that the catalog companies have the staff to reprice at market value. They likely price it high so that they don't have to change it much. Second the dealers want it that way so that they can give collectors "good deals"

So, basically, there is no incentive for them to try to reprice at market value.

Plus, it's not like there is a huge mob of stamp collectors with torches and pitchforks demanding retail as opposed to reference values in the catalogues.

Actually Scott tried it in 1989. Went down like a lead balloon. With both dealers AND collectors.

We all learnt early in our collecting days that all stamps sell at a % of catalogue price.

I collect British Empire as listed in SG Part 1. I work on 10 to 20 % of Gibbons.

I wanted a UHM pair of the 1948 Silver Wedding from Gibraltar as missing from my collection. Gibbons list it at £60. I got it on ebay for £10 and it was no different than if I had bought it from Gibbons themselves. Some people were willing to pay more on Buy It Now listing but NONE above 50% of Gibbons.

Will Gibbons change their price in the next edition? They might, but it will more likely be £65 rather than £30

I'm happy to pay full catalog for these used stamps (2022 Scott catalog)

Scott #300 Cracked plate) $0.30
Scott #599A (pair) $60.00
Scott #5212e $0.50
Scott #5610 $0.40
Scott #5611 $0.40
Scott #5614 $0.40
Scott #RS21 $27.50
Scott #RS214 $11.00

I'm sure that this should not be a problem for all of you who can get whatever you want for 50% of catalog or less.

thanks

Joe

There are quite a few US modern stamps, I would buy but have never seen them before and noone can locate.

Yes but I already acknowledged that. Some of you can't read a full post well. Some stamps in the catalog are undervalued. Esp stamps which don't show up much. There are stamps that are cheap in the Scott catalogue that don't show up for sale often. It's just more evidence that there is not enough staff to change the prices much. For those of you who think that the catalogs are correct, by all means pay 100% cat. I would not advise that. And yes, us stamp collectors are now trained on % of cat. But % of cat is mickey mouse math. Ideally we would have market prices in the price guide. Too much to ask I guess. It's no wonder they don't sell as many catalogs like they used too.

Mystic Stamp Company has a 48,000 square feet facility in Camden, NY. They send me a stamp catalog every week or so. They have to be selling a lot of stamps. I assume they have to be selling a lot of stamps to make it worth their while to maintain that facility and keep sending me catalogs.

So I have done a side by side of their current catalog and my 2022 Scott catalog.





I just picked stamps that were easy to line up. their whole catalog is like that. and they have to sell a whole lot of stamps to keep sending me that catalog. That means a whole lot of people out there are paying those prices.

Mystic has to be selling a lot of stamps, but not only are their prices high, the centering of many of the stamps are not VF which is what the Scott catalogue prices are supposed to reflect. I bought a few from them some time ago just to fill some spaces quickly and had no luck trying to get them to actually send nicely centered stamps. If you want even VF centered stamps from Mystic, you have to pay even more.

LOL.

Hope you include yourself in that grouping sir.

I laughed at this nonsense by Mystic

"As more and more are locked into permanent collections, it becomes harder to find, so consider adding the White Plains sheet to your collection now."

That's the sort of spiel angry old Glen in Oz would be proud of.

My, you certainly value your opinions highly. Rather than spending time proselytizing and attempting to convert the poor unwashed heathens from their wayward misguided methods of catalogue utilization, perhaps instead take up a hobby... like stamp collecting?