Stamp Blog Review: “Southwest Stamps Blog”

By Eurostamper — March 6, 2008
See more about: Collecting tips | Stamp Blog Reviews | eBay

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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eBay not a good place to sell quality stamps and collections?

By Eurostamper — January 6, 2008
See more about: eBay

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.)

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