European Stamp Prices & News

In the last few weeks our traffic has grown very well, and we have noticed more and more users shopping through our listings, making purchases on eBay, and then returning to do it again, multiple times.

That says to us that the project is genuinely useful to people, so we’re glad our (continuing) hard work is beneficial to stampers. As word gets out, hopefully more collectors will be able to find what they want on eBay by using our interface.

We don’t make people register or anything, so we only have our web host statistics to go by when learning who finds out site most useful. So far, it seems to be people outside the United States who buy through eBay.com. That is probably a result, partially, of our making a separate version of each page for every country on Earth (you can see what we mean by looking at the sitemap).

Another thing we’ve noticed is that people tend to buy multiple stamps/lots at a time. As you might expect, the higher the price of these items, the fewer at one time are bid on. Buyers also seem to win a very high percentage of what they bid on — perhaps pointing to the fact that Europe Stamps not only makes it easier to find stamps hidden in strange places on eBay, but also that there isn’t overall as much bidding competition for these items (due to difficulty with using eBay’s search and inadequate categorization).

Finally, eBay reports show that the vast majority of people who click over to eBay and actually make purchases do buy from the Stamps section. This means that the users of Europe Stamps are focused on what they want and don’t often shop around at random on eBay itself. That’s fine if they do, but when most purchases come from the Stamps category, it is a good indicator of the helpfulness of this site.

Thanks to everyone who has been coming here, using the eBay stamp interface, and also spreading the word. More stamp action means a healthier market in general, and every stamp that is sold teaches the buyer something new, philatelically. This generates more appreciation and discussion in various online forums.

So continue spreading the word in discussion forums, email, or with the icons under articles like this, and we’ll keep fine-tuning our mechanisms and adding new categories and features!

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This is an interesting blog. Southwest Stamps Blog (http://blogs.ebay.com/gsquared7/) is hosted on eBay by a longtime seller of stamps, and it is used to warn people about scams or other things to look out for, to opine about eBay policies, and to offer helpful stamp guides.

Unlike many vendors, the author (gsquared7) doesn’t make all his posts crass attempts at funneling buyers to his auctions. That’s obviously a priority, but his blunt opinionated posts are genuinely helpful, and he doesn’t seem to care whose toes he steps on to make a point.

He picks out specific listings that catch his eye, and if necessary warns possible buyers or gives opinions about the stamps for sale. The basic thrust of the blog seems to be, lately at least, that people are selling “junk” stamps on eBay and hyping them as if they were more valuable or interesting than they really are. Given eBay’s safe buying policies, buyers are generally happy with their purchases; the issue is that misleading descriptions can lead to a sort of false sense of buyer happiness. gsquared7 aims to educate.

For example, in this post from December 2007, he describes how he bought two stamps from another eBay vendor, but was unhappy with how the language in the original description was somewhat misleading. He asked for and prompty received a refund from the seller, but noticed the stamps re-listed on eBay with the original description intact.

The posting frequency of this blog is rather low - about once every 2-3 weeks or more. The layout, too, isn’t much to speak of - eBay’s usual color scheme and a distinct lack of HTML formatting give the blog a very no-nonsense air (note too the complete lack of pictures accompanying the posts). But as a window into the inner workings of stamp buying and selling on eBay.com, it is a great resource.

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The huge German stamp collection mentioned in our previous post ended up getting no bids.

That made us wonder, what is the hard data for higher-priced auctions on eBay for what people are actually buying?

So we did a little research and compiled the statistics for the last month (which included the Christmas season) here. This is how many auctions there were for a variety of price ranges, and how many of those received at least one bid high enough to get a sale (prices are sale price for successful auctions, opening bid for unsold auctions):

Click price range to see up-to-date eBay auction info from the last month

None of these price ranges had a decent percentage of auctions that ended up being sold. Compare this to the auctions below $1,000. Of over 92,000 listed, 50% or more ended up being sold (estimated).

So although eBay is a great place to find rare, higher-end stamps, it is only popular with those buying smaller lots, single pieces, common issues, and low-priced items.

(Anyone can do searches on eBay with various parameters, analyzing the data in any way. For advanced searches including number of bids, ending times, price ranges, etc, you’ll need to register first.)