I knew of a seller at one of the stamps shows that was known for selling regummed, repaired, and reperfed items. And no he didn't always tell the buyers that. And he was at most of the shows in the Milwaukee area.
Reno,
That type of thing if it's not what he says it is would fall under fraud and should be dealt with.
For the most part, ignore the Forums. So few individuals ever read these messages that they are essentially meaningless. HipStamp supposedly has over 1000 sellers and over 100,000 buyers, but most Forums messages have been read by less than 100 individuals. So any post in the Forums is by a very small percentage (of those who actually post comments) of a very small percentage (of those who read the Forums comments) of the individuals who access this site for its intended purpose - to either buy or sell postage stamps.
And I agree 100% with Michael Duehr's comments.
My store on HipStamp probably has about the same type of material that you describe as your stock. My store sells virtually all items that I list expect for the higher priced items (greater than $20.00 list price). Mint sells and used sells. Pristine copies in Mint-Never-Hinged condition sell and used stamps that are tattered and torn sell. Sometimes multiple copies of the same stamp sell (I usually list five copies at most at one condition, so I might have five Mint-Hinged copies and five used copies). Stamps that I have listed from 3 Cents to 5 Cents sell the best, even if they are common stamps or higher priced stamps that have been marked down due to faults. Once I reached a bit over 5,000 items for sale, I have found it impossible to exceed that number - the number of lots sold equal or exceed what I have time to list. And this is after I limited my sales only to United States buyers.
The reason that I use HipStamp for selling rather than another site is because the fees are not excessive, especially for selling individual copies of stamps at 3 - 5 Cents each. Other sites often times have a per item charge for each item sold. One European site where I used to sell instituted a per item charge of what amounts to about 13 Cents - when they did that I moved over to this site. Here the percentage charge is based upon the total invoice amount, not each individual item sale amount.
One additional point - I do not pay attention to what other sellers are listing. My time is better spent adding stock to my own store rather than picking through what others are selling. So ignore comments by other sellers unless they are pointing out a mistake in the identification of one of your items you are selling.
Since I have stopped buying for my own collection and changed to just selling what I have on hand, I have never looked at what other sellers have for sale. What would be the point? Base the items you list for sale and their pricing on what has sold well in the past. If you are listing material that it priced too high or isn't what buyers are interested in, you will quickly find out by having very low sales.
Michael/Richard Thankyou for your responses and you certainly helped me reset my perspective and I will steam ahead with Hipstamp and you never know might sell some stamps. I have a young grand daughter who is showing some interest in stamps and cant tell you wonderful it is to spend time with her while she builds her collection. Michael again many thanks for your response.
Dave, welcome back aboard. Sorry you feel the way you do. You shouldn't. Your stamps are just as important to this site as anyone else's. Price does not matter. You should take pride in your offerings.
My stamps run the gambit from low to high, from torn to MNH and from one copy to nearly 6,000 copies of the same common stamp, I don't offer sales, some of my listings are from BidStamp and StampWants days with SCV from 2010 or older and my international shipping is $10.25. Therefore I might be one the those dealers some others don't like and criticize. Quite frankly, I don't care what others say and you shouldn't either.
I continue to sell stamps and fill many orders daily. In fact, I'm currently filling an order for over 4,700 of the same common stamp. The same buyer purchased the other 1,000 of the same stamp a few weeks ago. I also have another buyer interested in buying over 1,500 of another common stamp I have listed. Had I not previously listed the stamps, these buyers wouldn't have know I had that quantity available for sale.
The point of this post is to let you know that it's OK to list whatever stamps you want and don't worry a few other buyers/sellers don't like them. More importantly, please don't feel you made a mistake returning to selling on HipStamp. You will develop both new and repeat customers over time.
I remember the seller of the regummed, reperfed stamps because he used to always come to shows in the Chicago area. He wanted to set up in shows that I was running and I always told him I was sold out although I usually was. He would never get a table from me period because that is fraud.
If you did read some of the comments about some of the complaints that some of them have about certain issues. The comments are so generalized they have no meaning unless you know what the person is referring to. Take the ones that talk about the high shipping charges, what do they really mean by it. Are they one of the buyers that think that unless you're shipping charges are only suppose to be exact postage and anything above that is excessive? There are buyers that do have unrealistic expectations about certain things.
Unless they make statements that are a bit more specific, they mean NOTHING, and they come across as nothing more then a general rant about things they don't like.
And I finally come up with an answer for some of those buyers that they didn't want to pay the amount I have postage. (Which basic is only $2 per shipment unless it's an oversized item.)
I had a guy from Waukesha,WI and where he was at was about 15 miles from me. He wanted to know if he could pick it up and I would take off the shipping charge. I told him I had no problem doing that as long as he would meet me at my PO. I told however you may want to rethink this a bit. I told him if I send it through the PO you should have it within 2 days with door to door delivery. First it's going to be a 45 minute to 1 hour round trip for you,2nd you will have the extra wear and tear on your car, 3rd you are going to use about a gallon of gas to get here and back. Now I don't know about you but I think you might be a bit further ahead by just having it shipped. (He did ask to have it shipped.) If the buyer doesn't like my shipping they can always come and pick it from me.
There is no seller that can correct any type of issue if all you get is generalized statements. Unless you know the person you talking to, you will have the same range of people posting in here are just as you have buyers have on the site. Just as you have buyers that range from some of the most pleasant people to deal with, you also have some the biggest PITA's that are so anal retentive that if you don't dot every I and and cross every T, they are going to complain about it. And the forums are no different. You have the same range of posters that you have in the buyers and sellers on the site. So if you do check out the forums from time to time take the statements with a grain of salt and if you can find something that will help you out, use it.
Michael thanks for what is very sound advice. I appreciate the comments which make me realise that being true to yourself and sticking to the plan are key to being successful. I wish you every success and thank you for the time you have taken to respond to me. Cheers David
So called "Bad Dealers" are wasting their own time and effort listing over priced stock on sites like this with now days educated buyers. Eventually the market police's itself and these types fall by the wayside!
David, You're welcome. It's really simple. Treat your buyers the same way you would want to be treated. List material that you yourself would want to buy, at the price you want to buy it, as if you're buying it for your own collection. Do that and you will do well.
In the suburbs of Chicago. I had monthly bourses and it started as 2 stamp bourses and then I had them multiplied to 8 bourses as the Card, Coin and Stamp Shows at various hotels in the Chicago area. They started to go down in the '90's and I sold what was left in '94. I knew they would soon be dying as the Internet was starting to come alive.
We use to be in Wheaton,Il. And we did a few shows down there till about 1985. (We did that as long as my Grandma was living in Lombard. We would visit with her while we did the Glenexpo shows.)
Is it too much to ask that if the claim that a seller is doing what is said in the OP, that the person that is making the claims would actually back it up with actual listings that can verified and checked? Is it too much to ask if the claim is made that there so many 3 c greens on piece that you post a link with the type of search you're doing can be verified?
And the claim is made that there are comments being made on other sites without knowing who these people are and whether or not those people have some sort of agenda. Are they ex-sellers who got booted off? Are they ex-employees? Did they just take a quick glance at the site? Are they just someone who wants to bad mouth the site just because?
Without verification to back up those statements, all you have I opinions of what may or may NOT be actually happening. Is it too much ask for people to back up those statements with proof? And can you also show any from a factual basis which is not based on personal preferences or opinion? (Outside of the one that Rene showed that has a 99.99999 chance of being fraud no one has really posted anything outside anything that could be nothing more a simple mistake)
And that could be fixed if someone wanted to do the work. Someone could come up with a subprogram that would flag any issue that is questionable and should have a cert and if it does not have a cert along with a picture of stamp, a picture the cert and the name of company that did the cert and the number of the cert, it would not allowed to be listed.
Just one last thing for you all to think about. There is already 1 person that was looking to start selling and due to the comments almost decided NOT to sell on here, if that is what 1 person is thinking on this what do you think a buyer that if this is first thread that he sees would think? Did it occur to you that by the very nature of this thread that you are turning buyers off to this site? What is happening with the buyers that reading this and not posting? Were they good buyers that were turned off by this thread never to return without ever looking at the site?
How is a buyer to know from this whether this is becoming rampant or are they isolated cases in which it's a small subset of the sellers or a small subset of listings in a store that has 10,0000's of listings or a smaller store in which most of their listings have problems? What do you think you're doing to the sellers that have been with Stampwants since the beginning and have 100,000's of positive feedback, have 10,000's of listings and have an excellent reputation? Never mind that the vast majority of the listings are listed by reputable sellers that have doing this for years, that the vast majority of stores are being run by reputable sellers. who are human and once in awhile will make mistakes, admit those mistakes and correct those mistakes.
Well Mike , quite respectfully, ( and meaning to be kind ), I’m an open marketplace kind of guy . I think ALL expressions here are valuable , even ones I don’t agree with . I don’t think your intent is to publically shame folks in free dialogue. I’ve found HS to be good , bought from a lot of folks and found some amusing and weird things for sale . HS is sound and not the frail platform collapsing under free expression . But we are all error prone humans , no exception here .
It's not the what about the free expression, it's about the HOW this is coming across. It's about the fact that this site is growing and you have people coming from outside that may be checking out the forums for the very first time to get a feel for the site. And remember they most likely would not know anybody in here or the posting styles of the people who are posting, and may or may know any of the sellers. I don't about you but if the first thread title I see is this
Concerned about the worsening quality of dealers here
Would that instill any confidence in you about this site?
And what about this little tidbit at the very end of the OP?
There are too many dealers and too many listings now to even attempt to maintain a certain degree of integrity.
Is that really something you would want to say or imply about the sellers who have maintained their integrity for all those years? Now I don't believe he trying to say that none of the sellers don't have that integrity, but the problem is someone will read it that way because of the way it is stated.
I would disagree with you that all expressions are valuable, when the expressions are trying to point to perceived problems on matters of opinion and are spoken of in generalities, please explain how that is any different than my late wife (God rest her soul) getting mad at me and not speaking to me tree or more days without ever telling what was wrong? (Opps I forgot I'm suppose to be a mind reader.) Please explain how you can get any value out of something that never changes after almost 16 years and everyone keeps going over the same ground over and over and over again. I don't know about you, but I'm not a hamster. I think the better way would be to find ways to resolve the problems so we don't keep going around and around the same old treadmill for another 20 years.
Let's take the easiest one to start with, inflated shipping. No one disagrees about high charges, but how can you ever come to any type of agreement or consensus when few if any will ever give any dollar amount on the shipping? Hipstamp could take a survey to ask those questions about shipping with the buyers and then pass that on to the sellers .Hipstamp could also show from a factual basis for sales where the price point on shipping is the best. I don't know about you but I think ideas like this would be a win, win win.
And I never said HS was a frail platform collapsing. My point was that you do have people like David who read the thread and then leave because of the comments. And I doubt highly that he was the only one that did read this and was coming from the same place he was. My point that some of this could be turning other people like David away from here.
Appreciate your points Miichael, well put. Personally , I see this as robust because people are actually interested. But nonetheless , things do have a way of working out ( for the better sometimes). Have a good weekend and please stay on the Forum, you have good thoughts to share.
Actually the cold hard facts already are showing that what Hipstamp is doing with the filters is working and many of those listings are not as big of an issue as is being made out in this thread. Because the logical outcome should be that sales on Hipstamp should either plateau or be decreasing, we should be continuing to get new buyers, and older buyers should be leaving Hipstamp because they can't find what they are looking for and it should be affecting the vast majority of buyers and not a smaller subset of buyers that will have problems. If the OP is based on an actual factual basis and not a matter of perception then it should be provable by cold hard facts.
At one time I was closer to the other side of this issue, what convinced me that my opinion of some of this was wrong was the cold hard facts that showed it wasn't having the effect that I thought it would have. Let's look at the cold hard facts. First we are getting in new buyers weekly,. 2nd just going by sales over the last 15 months, sales have been better here than at any time on Stampswants or Bidstart. Last year was the best year I ever had and for the 3 months of this year I am already at a third of what I did last year. And from many of the comments in the forums it seems that most of the sellers are seeing the same thing. And that indicates 1 of 2 things that the vast majority of the buyers are either being able to avoid those listings by using the filters or are not bothered by them to the degree it's being made to be.
I can agree that they are very likely in comparison to the stampwants and bidstart days that there more of those type of listings because Hipstamp is getting bigger, but does that mean that there is actually a higher percentage of those type of listings than back before Hipstamp ever existed?
And either it's not factored in or it's not known by a number of people, but there is a general rule of thumb in this type of system. 80 % of the listings will be posted by about 20% of the sellers, 80 % of the sales are going to be by about 20 % of the sellers. Those are the core group of sellers and as long as they maintain their integrity the site will never fall below that minimum. And that's assuming the whole other 80% of the other sellers have lost their integrity. (That's not going to happen. Most of those are going to maintain their integrity also.)
And if you look at the store numbers over a period of time you can see that it does work. Many of those sellers that don't have the integrity won't survive more than 6 months to a year. About 3 weeks ago the number of stores that were on here was at 1155, as of this morning the number is at 1127. So that begs the question which stores do you think are closing up? The best sellers aren't going to close unless it's a major life change, the rest are closing up because they can't make it because they are either not selling anything or very little and unless they change their ways that is going to be their fate. Give the buyers more credit for shutting down a number of these sellers because their not buying from them. And the system is working better than it ever has at any time before.
I have been a stamp dealer most of the time since the 1960's. Mail order, auctions, pricelists, stamp shows, approvals, and now online. Over the years I have seen many dealers come and go. The "dodgy' dealers always seem to to last a year or two and then disappear or move on to other areas. Try to supply customers with what they want in a decent condition at a fair price and a dealer can do ok. Charge high prices for junk ( or junque) and the word gets around - just like it would back in the pre internet days.
There is a dealer right now that has a mint used 2 cent Jefferson stamp in the Featured Listings for only $500 The stamp is obviously used. He also has a one cent Prexy for sale which is listed as mint although that is cancelled. Only $999 for that stamp. The dealer has Zero Feedback. Another dealer that Mark should give the boot to.
He's been a member for 6 days and wasted $5 to feature those absurd listings. He also has another 10 cent stamp listed for $100. Hopefully they will be taken down soon.
as a new in this :hobby" and ride .. well taken advise and as happens often with me .. paid by learning dues. see my forum comment.. return or not to return ..yes if the wash-machine is broken washing dirty clothes in public is necessary I have the well taken advise from seasoned "collectors" by now ..do not feed the trolls. stay in your limits.. be aware of your surroundings .. have the courage to walk away .. yes nobody places a gun to your head to buy something . . my solution is clear as my forum title was to return or not to return not necessary limited to my purchase of a very suspicious "classic "vintage "collection (see those two words ..start to run .) by now I did get my last order in ..very nice and fair priced 1850 Spanish stamps . that is it! No more , Mostly is packed away in Storage boxes and waiting when I have the necessary mind set to get going in this again. . . As said if you cannot take the heat stay out of the kitchen .. a big thank for the many sellers of fair priced stamps , as it takes hours and hours to present such and go to hell to those "dealers ' just miking the system .
Comments
Reno,
That type of thing if it's not what he says it is would fall under fraud and should be dealt with.
For the most part, ignore the Forums. So few individuals ever read these messages that they are essentially meaningless. HipStamp supposedly has over 1000 sellers and over 100,000 buyers, but most Forums messages have been read by less than 100 individuals. So any post in the Forums is by a very small percentage (of those who actually post comments) of a very small percentage (of those who read the Forums comments) of the individuals who access this site for its intended purpose - to either buy or sell postage stamps.
And I agree 100% with Michael Duehr's comments.
My store on HipStamp probably has about the same type of material that you describe as your stock. My store sells virtually all items that I list expect for the higher priced items (greater than $20.00 list price). Mint sells and used sells. Pristine copies in Mint-Never-Hinged condition sell and used stamps that are tattered and torn sell. Sometimes multiple copies of the same stamp sell (I usually list five copies at most at one condition, so I might have five Mint-Hinged copies and five used copies). Stamps that I have listed from 3 Cents to 5 Cents sell the best, even if they are common stamps or higher priced stamps that have been marked down due to faults. Once I reached a bit over 5,000 items for sale, I have found it impossible to exceed that number - the number of lots sold equal or exceed what I have time to list. And this is after I limited my sales only to United States buyers.
The reason that I use HipStamp for selling rather than another site is because the fees are not excessive, especially for selling individual copies of stamps at 3 - 5 Cents each. Other sites often times have a per item charge for each item sold. One European site where I used to sell instituted a per item charge of what amounts to about 13 Cents - when they did that I moved over to this site. Here the percentage charge is based upon the total invoice amount, not each individual item sale amount.
Since I have stopped buying for my own collection and changed to just selling what I have on hand, I have never looked at what other sellers have for sale. What would be the point? Base the items you list for sale and their pricing on what has sold well in the past. If you are listing material that it priced too high or isn't what buyers are interested in, you will quickly find out by having very low sales.
And that changes the dynamics as the seller could have simply made a typo in the listing.
Thankyou for your responses and you certainly helped me reset my perspective and I will steam ahead with Hipstamp and you never know might sell some stamps.
I have a young grand daughter who is showing some interest in stamps and cant tell you wonderful it is to spend time with her while she builds her collection.
Michael again many thanks for your response.
My stamps run the gambit from low to high, from torn to MNH and from one copy to nearly 6,000 copies of the same common stamp, I don't offer sales, some of my listings are from BidStamp and StampWants days with SCV from 2010 or older and my international shipping is $10.25. Therefore I might be one the those dealers some others don't like and criticize. Quite frankly, I don't care what others say and you shouldn't either.
I continue to sell stamps and fill many orders daily. In fact, I'm currently filling an order for over 4,700 of the same common stamp. The same buyer purchased the other 1,000 of the same stamp a few weeks ago. I also have another buyer interested in buying over 1,500 of another common stamp I have listed. Had I not previously listed the stamps, these buyers wouldn't have know I had that quantity available for sale.
The point of this post is to let you know that it's OK to list whatever stamps you want and don't worry a few other buyers/sellers don't like them. More importantly, please don't feel you made a mistake returning to selling on HipStamp. You will develop both new and repeat customers over time.
I remember the seller of the regummed, reperfed stamps because he used to always come to shows in the Chicago area. He wanted to set up in shows that I was running and I always told him I was sold out although I usually was. He would never get a table from me period because that is fraud.
What part of the Chicago area?
If you did read some of the comments about some of the complaints that some of them have about certain issues. The comments are so generalized they have no meaning unless you know what the person is referring to. Take the ones that talk about the high shipping charges, what do they really mean by it. Are they one of the buyers that think that unless you're shipping charges are only suppose to be exact postage and anything above that is excessive? There are buyers that do have unrealistic expectations about certain things.
Unless they make statements that are a bit more specific, they mean NOTHING, and they come across as nothing more then a general rant about things they don't like.
And I finally come up with an answer for some of those buyers that they didn't want to pay the amount I have postage. (Which basic is only $2 per shipment unless it's an oversized item.)
I had a guy from Waukesha,WI and where he was at was about 15 miles from me. He wanted to know if he could pick it up and I would take off the shipping charge. I told him I had no problem doing that as long as he would meet me at my PO. I told however you may want to rethink this a bit. I told him if I send it through the PO you should have it within 2 days with door to door delivery. First it's going to be a 45 minute to 1 hour round trip for you,2nd you will have the extra wear and tear on your car, 3rd you are going to use about a gallon of gas to get here and back. Now I don't know about you but I think you might be a bit further ahead by just having it shipped. (He did ask to have it shipped.) If the buyer doesn't like my shipping they can always come and pick it from me.
There is no seller that can correct any type of issue if all you get is generalized statements. Unless you know the person you talking to, you will have the same range of people posting in here are just as you have buyers have on the site. Just as you have buyers that range from some of the most pleasant people to deal with, you also have some the biggest PITA's that are so anal retentive that if you don't dot every I and and cross every T, they are going to complain about it.
And the forums are no different. You have the same range of posters that you have in the buyers and sellers on the site.
So if you do check out the forums from time to time take the statements with a grain of salt and if you can find something that will help you out, use it.
I appreciate the comments which make me realise that being true to yourself and sticking to the plan are key to being successful.
I wish you every success and thank you for the time you have taken to respond to me.
Cheers
David
You're welcome.
It's really simple. Treat your buyers the same way you would want to be treated. List material that you yourself would want to buy, at the price you want to buy it, as if you're buying it for your own collection. Do that and you will do well.
Michael
In the suburbs of Chicago. I had monthly bourses and it started as 2 stamp bourses and then I had them multiplied to 8 bourses as the Card, Coin and Stamp Shows at various hotels in the Chicago area. They started to go down in the '90's and I sold what was left in '94. I knew they would soon be dying as the Internet was starting to come alive.
We use to be in Wheaton,Il. And we did a few shows down there till about 1985. (We did that as long as my Grandma was living in Lombard. We would visit with her while we did the Glenexpo shows.)
And the claim is made that there are comments being made on other sites without knowing who these people are and whether or not those people have some sort of agenda. Are they ex-sellers who got booted off? Are they ex-employees? Did they just take a quick glance at the site? Are they just someone who wants to bad mouth the site just because?
Without verification to back up those statements, all you have I opinions of what may or may NOT be actually happening. Is it too much ask for people to back up those statements with proof? And can you also show any from a factual basis which is not based on personal preferences or opinion? (Outside of the one that Rene showed that has a 99.99999
chance of being fraud no one has really posted anything outside anything that could be nothing more a simple mistake)
And that could be fixed if someone wanted to do the work. Someone could come up with a subprogram that would flag any issue that is questionable and should have a cert and if it does not have a cert along with a picture of stamp, a picture the cert and the name of company that did the cert and the number of the cert, it would not allowed to be listed.
How is a buyer to know from this whether this is becoming rampant or are they isolated cases in which it's a small subset of the sellers or a small subset of listings in a store that has 10,0000's of listings or a smaller store in which most of their listings have problems? What do you think you're doing to the sellers that have been with Stampwants since the beginning and have 100,000's of positive feedback, have 10,000's of listings and have an excellent reputation? Never mind that the vast majority of the listings are listed by reputable sellers that have doing this for years, that the vast majority of stores are being run by reputable sellers. who are human and once in awhile will make mistakes, admit those mistakes and correct those mistakes.
It's not the what about the free expression, it's about the HOW this is coming across. It's about the fact that this site is growing and you have people coming from outside that may be checking out the forums for the very first time to get a feel for the site. And remember they most likely would not know anybody in here or the posting styles of the people who are posting, and may or may know any of the sellers. I don't about you but if the first thread title I see is this
Concerned about the worsening quality of dealers here
Would that instill any confidence in you about this site?
And what about this little tidbit at the very end of the OP?
There are too many dealers and too many listings now to even attempt to maintain a certain degree of integrity.
Is that really something you would want to say or imply about the sellers who have maintained their integrity for all those years? Now I don't believe he trying to say that none of the sellers don't have that integrity, but the problem is someone will read it that way because of the way it is stated.
I would disagree with you that all expressions are valuable, when the expressions are trying to point to perceived problems on matters of opinion and are spoken of in generalities, please explain how that is any different than my late
wife (God rest her soul) getting mad at me and not speaking to me tree or more days without ever telling what was wrong? (Opps I forgot I'm suppose to be a mind reader.) Please explain how you can get any value out of something that never changes after almost 16 years and everyone keeps going over the same ground over and over and over again. I don't know about you, but I'm not a hamster. I think the better way would be to find ways to resolve the problems so we don't keep going around and around the same old treadmill for another 20 years.
Let's take the easiest one to start with, inflated shipping. No one disagrees about high charges, but how can you ever come to any type of agreement or consensus when few if any will ever give any dollar amount on the shipping? Hipstamp could take a survey to ask those questions about shipping with the buyers and then pass that on to the sellers .Hipstamp could also show from a factual basis for sales where the price point on shipping is the best. I don't know about you but I think ideas like this would be a win, win win.
And I never said HS was a frail platform collapsing. My point was that you do have people like David who read the thread and then leave because of the comments. And I doubt highly that he was the only one that did read this and was coming from the same place he was. My point that some of this could be turning other people like David away from here.
Actually the cold hard facts already are showing that what Hipstamp is doing with the filters is working and many of those listings are not as big of an issue as is being made out in this thread. Because the logical outcome should be that sales on Hipstamp should either plateau or be decreasing, we should be continuing to get new buyers, and older buyers should be leaving Hipstamp because they can't find what they are looking for and it should be affecting the vast majority of buyers and not a smaller subset of buyers that will have problems. If the OP is based on an actual factual basis and not a matter of perception then it should be provable by cold hard facts.
At one time I was closer to the other side of this issue, what convinced me that my opinion of some of this was wrong was the cold hard facts that showed it wasn't having the effect that I thought it would have. Let's look at the cold hard facts. First we are getting in new buyers weekly,. 2nd just going by sales over the last 15 months, sales have been better here than at any time on Stampswants or Bidstart. Last year was the best year I ever had and for the 3 months of this year I am already at a third of what I did last year. And from many of the comments in the forums it seems that most of the sellers are seeing the same thing. And that indicates 1 of 2 things that the vast majority of the buyers are either being able to avoid those listings by using the filters or are not bothered by them to the degree it's being made to be.
I can agree that they are very likely in comparison to the stampwants and bidstart days that there more of those type of listings because Hipstamp is getting bigger, but does that mean that there is actually a higher percentage of those type of listings than back before Hipstamp ever existed?
And if you look at the store numbers over a period of time you can see that it does work. Many of those sellers that don't have the integrity won't survive more than 6 months to a year. About 3 weeks ago the number of stores that were on here was at 1155, as of this morning the number is at 1127. So that begs the question which stores do you think are closing up? The best sellers aren't going to close unless it's a major life change, the rest are closing up because they can't make it because they are either not selling anything or very little and unless they change their ways that is going to be their fate.
Give the buyers more credit for shutting down a number of these sellers because their not buying from them. And the system is working better than it ever has at any time before.
Ya can't make this stuff up, folks.....
PS: he does not accept returns.........
as a new in this :hobby" and ride .. well taken advise and as happens often with me .. paid by learning dues. see my forum comment.. return or not to return ..yes if the wash-machine is broken washing dirty clothes in public is necessary I have the well taken advise from seasoned "collectors" by now ..do not feed the trolls.
stay in your limits.. be aware of your surroundings .. have the courage to walk away .. yes nobody places a gun to your head to buy something . . my solution is clear as my forum title was to return or not to return not necessary limited to my purchase of a very suspicious "classic "vintage "collection (see those two words ..start to run .) by now I did get my last order in ..very nice and fair priced 1850 Spanish stamps . that is it! No more , Mostly is packed away in Storage boxes and waiting when I have the necessary mind set to get going in this again. . . As said if you cannot take the heat stay out of the kitchen .. a big thank for the many sellers of fair priced stamps , as it takes hours and hours to present such and go to hell
to those "dealers ' just miking the system .