Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
There are certain collecting areas , hot property once, now with their best days behind them. Israel and Vatican come to mind. Certainly UN. What I find interesting is how dealers manage to inflate sell prices for key sets of these areas in some cases to an unrealistic level past their true scarcity. DDR 82-4 runs in the $75 area these days for a NH set. It is not a scarce set. It is however one that collectors seeking completion will need to buy. Thus the price. Israel 7-9 is another example. You cannot find this set at under $100 even for hinged. Try to sell a set with a Buy it Now and you'll wind up selling it for under $50. Probably its true value.
At a show last week I tried to find a hinged set of DDR 82-4. There seemed to be several, all of them priced at a level well above current levels on Ebay. Even there, prices seem unrealistic.It's a set you will need for completion and dealers know it.
Israel 7-9 is a good example. This set is selling today at lower levels than decades ago. It is not a common set but it is offered at a price that seems out of touch with reality. I know someone who listed a nice hinged set at a BIN of $100. It sat there for a couple months, he finally lowered the price to $75 with a 'make offer' and it sold- for $35! Some items are expensive more out of tradition it seems.
Probably some will point out where I'm wrong, and that's OK. Just find this interesting.
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I think what you say makes sense. Why, at times, certain countries/areas suddenly spring in to high demand can be a big mystery. Prices shoot up as dealers are inundated with demand from collectors. Dealers put out buy ads in desperation to fill customer needs. Often they over-pay for the stamps in order to replenish stock. That requires them to sell higher than the stamps are probably worth, but at prices that the "collecting fever" will support. After a year or two, the demand subsides, and dealers are left with devalued stock for which they paid too much.
Catalogs and dealers are slow to reflect the lessened demand, since catalogs are supposed to be a reflection of "retail" price. That's a different issue. The dealers can't really afford to take a loss on the stamps either. So, they try to sell the stamps at the higher prices to try to recoup their initial outlay.
Whether these pockets of sudden demand as a result of collector interest, gossip, speculation or fraud, collectors and dealers are often the ones caught on the short end of it all.
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To me pricing should be directly linked to print volumes, demand and the relative difficulty or ease to find what you need on the market. Often times it is not linked to any of these. Items issued in print quantities of 15,000,000 sell at the price of items issued in quantities of 100,000. Quite often stamps that are difficult to find have catalog values equal to those of very common stamps.
Currently someone is trying to sell the 1982 Burundi 85F hyena for $399 on Ebay. It may not sell for that price, but for $25 it will likely go. You will find these mint and used, sometimes in pairs, sometimes on a cover, but try to find some used South American fauna stamps listed at 10 cents in the catalog.......good luck with that.
So, I do my own subjective pricing in my head before buying an item. The bottom line for a collector is how good we feel looking at a stamp we have. If it makes us feel good and it doesn't break the bank, it must be worth it.
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The market is red hot!
Perhaps sellers just have not yet found the right venue; these folks certainly have!
http://www.ecrater.com/filter.php?cid=5985&sort=price_desc
Don
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OMG Don! We are all rich! 
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I found some duplicate images under different seller names. No doubt about fraud here.
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I Googled this company and the owners sound to have Russian names. Based in California, but I'd stay far away from their site in any case.
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04:22:53am
".... Items issued in print quantities of 15,000,000 sell at the price of items issued in quantities of 100,000. ...."
An interesting point, but there are complication factors that can be at play. If that high print run stamp of 15,000,000 is produced by a nation with a couple hundred million population, while the one with 100,000 issued in a print run that has a population of but a few million those comparisons would not be valid.
Also some set of five stamps issued in a very large quantity that contains some particularly interesting stamp that excites topical collectors` or is celebrating an event of worldwide significance can affect the demand and inflate the price.
Finally the literacy rate in different nations, I think would have a direct relationship to the number of collectors could toss all the comparisons completely awry.
Then, of course different catalog publishers have different criteria for establishing their listings.
As someone recently said some things just aren't as easy as one might think.
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eBay has made the rare common! Think about how difficult it was to find rare stamps back in the old days. Today you just have to log in and most everything is right there, often with multiple copies to choose from. And if you don't see it, just set up an eBay search agent and they'll email you when one pops up.
Things that were issued in very small quantities appear regularly. For instance in my Ben Franklin world, I had never seen the booklet pane 300b in person. When I first saw one on eBay back in 1990 or so, I dove on it. I had finally achieved this holy grail! Then over the years whenever one appeared to be selling cheaply I would grab it. I now have 8. Today there are 25 of them available right now!
Same with the private perforations on this issue. Over the years I have found all of them, including the varieties, on eBay. So rarity has gone out the window! And that's part of why stamp values are down. When you can easily compare 10 copies of US No 2, you can price shop. And for many people the "thrill of the hunt" is gone since you can basically order things.
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11:11:49am
I suspect that much of that is due to the demise of elderly collectors and accumulators
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This is a paste of my comments made in another thread that I felt perhaps deserve a seperte one to discuss a bit:
There are certain collecting areas , hot property once, now with their best days behind them. Israel and Vatican come to mind. Certainly UN. What I find interesting is how dealers manage to inflate sell prices for key sets of these areas in some cases to an unrealistic level past their true scarcity. DDR 82-4 runs in the $75 area these days for a NH set. It is not a scarce set. It is however one that collectors seeking completion will need to buy. Thus the price. Israel 7-9 is another example. You cannot find this set at under $100 even for hinged. Try to sell a set with a Buy it Now and you'll wind up selling it for under $50. Probably its true value.
At a show last week I tried to find a hinged set of DDR 82-4. There seemed to be several, all of them priced at a level well above current levels on Ebay. Even there, prices seem unrealistic.It's a set you will need for completion and dealers know it.
Israel 7-9 is a good example. This set is selling today at lower levels than decades ago. It is not a common set but it is offered at a price that seems out of touch with reality. I know someone who listed a nice hinged set at a BIN of $100. It sat there for a couple months, he finally lowered the price to $75 with a 'make offer' and it sold- for $35! Some items are expensive more out of tradition it seems.
Probably some will point out where I'm wrong, and that's OK. Just find this interesting.
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01:36:32pm
re: Rarities that Aren't
I think what you say makes sense. Why, at times, certain countries/areas suddenly spring in to high demand can be a big mystery. Prices shoot up as dealers are inundated with demand from collectors. Dealers put out buy ads in desperation to fill customer needs. Often they over-pay for the stamps in order to replenish stock. That requires them to sell higher than the stamps are probably worth, but at prices that the "collecting fever" will support. After a year or two, the demand subsides, and dealers are left with devalued stock for which they paid too much.
Catalogs and dealers are slow to reflect the lessened demand, since catalogs are supposed to be a reflection of "retail" price. That's a different issue. The dealers can't really afford to take a loss on the stamps either. So, they try to sell the stamps at the higher prices to try to recoup their initial outlay.
Whether these pockets of sudden demand as a result of collector interest, gossip, speculation or fraud, collectors and dealers are often the ones caught on the short end of it all.
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re: Rarities that Aren't
To me pricing should be directly linked to print volumes, demand and the relative difficulty or ease to find what you need on the market. Often times it is not linked to any of these. Items issued in print quantities of 15,000,000 sell at the price of items issued in quantities of 100,000. Quite often stamps that are difficult to find have catalog values equal to those of very common stamps.
Currently someone is trying to sell the 1982 Burundi 85F hyena for $399 on Ebay. It may not sell for that price, but for $25 it will likely go. You will find these mint and used, sometimes in pairs, sometimes on a cover, but try to find some used South American fauna stamps listed at 10 cents in the catalog.......good luck with that.
So, I do my own subjective pricing in my head before buying an item. The bottom line for a collector is how good we feel looking at a stamp we have. If it makes us feel good and it doesn't break the bank, it must be worth it.
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re: Rarities that Aren't
The market is red hot!
Perhaps sellers just have not yet found the right venue; these folks certainly have!
http://www.ecrater.com/filter.php?cid=5985&sort=price_desc
Don
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re: Rarities that Aren't
OMG Don! We are all rich!
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10:07:02pm
re: Rarities that Aren't
I found some duplicate images under different seller names. No doubt about fraud here.
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re: Rarities that Aren't
I Googled this company and the owners sound to have Russian names. Based in California, but I'd stay far away from their site in any case.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
04 Aug 2017
04:22:53am
re: Rarities that Aren't
".... Items issued in print quantities of 15,000,000 sell at the price of items issued in quantities of 100,000. ...."
An interesting point, but there are complication factors that can be at play. If that high print run stamp of 15,000,000 is produced by a nation with a couple hundred million population, while the one with 100,000 issued in a print run that has a population of but a few million those comparisons would not be valid.
Also some set of five stamps issued in a very large quantity that contains some particularly interesting stamp that excites topical collectors` or is celebrating an event of worldwide significance can affect the demand and inflate the price.
Finally the literacy rate in different nations, I think would have a direct relationship to the number of collectors could toss all the comparisons completely awry.
Then, of course different catalog publishers have different criteria for establishing their listings.
As someone recently said some things just aren't as easy as one might think.
Login to Like
this post
re: Rarities that Aren't
eBay has made the rare common! Think about how difficult it was to find rare stamps back in the old days. Today you just have to log in and most everything is right there, often with multiple copies to choose from. And if you don't see it, just set up an eBay search agent and they'll email you when one pops up.
Things that were issued in very small quantities appear regularly. For instance in my Ben Franklin world, I had never seen the booklet pane 300b in person. When I first saw one on eBay back in 1990 or so, I dove on it. I had finally achieved this holy grail! Then over the years whenever one appeared to be selling cheaply I would grab it. I now have 8. Today there are 25 of them available right now!
Same with the private perforations on this issue. Over the years I have found all of them, including the varieties, on eBay. So rarity has gone out the window! And that's part of why stamp values are down. When you can easily compare 10 copies of US No 2, you can price shop. And for many people the "thrill of the hunt" is gone since you can basically order things.
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
05 Aug 2017
11:11:49am
re: Rarities that Aren't
I suspect that much of that is due to the demise of elderly collectors and accumulators
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