Are Scott Catalogs an accurate reflection of retail prices?
Scott catalogs state their prices are based on samplings of what you might expect to pay for an item in the retail marketplace. Is this your experience at stamp stores (what's left of them) or at dealer's tables at shows? Here on the west coast, I commonly find dealers pricing at 50% or less and they offer a small fraction of scotts when buying. It's not unusual to find material on HipStamps, whether fixed price or auctions, at around 20%. This can be rather off-putting when trying to buy from a person who is unfamiliar with the real stamp market. They see a price in Scotts and may question a buyer's honesty when offering a much lower price and subsequent excuse. I notice this degree of disparity is not found in the coin-collecting realm. What are some of your thoughts on this matter?
Comments
I find that in most cases( for me) I sell no more than 25% of Scott and thats on premium material. On common material( sets short sets ect.) I price my items somewhere between 7.5-15% depending on condition. The one exception is Scotts minimum of a $0.25 I list at a nickel-scanning ,posting ect cost a $0.05. I wont bother with a seller who thinks his common items warrant 50% or higher because I know I can find it cheaper by buying collections or larger lots then resell what I dont need.
Coming from a brick and motor store background I learned at a very early age"It's what the market will bear" is how pricing was done-now with the internet its a whole different animal on" What the market will bear" Its more value driven and shipping that dictates price. Price your items high and your inventory languishes- see what items have and are selling for you can move inventory and still make a little $$$.
So the answer to your question is No its only a guide to give you an idea.
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
As far as pricing, I list all items at 10% of cat. If an item is very well centered the it goes for 20%..IMO Scott cat is like the police...this is what it should be worth. I just have a hard time with listing anything below 0.99usd. It's a waste of time....paper envelopes, my time..etc.
In closing, shoot for 10% unless you have a cert or perfect condition or you just gotta have it!!!
In the past- say pre-1985 Scotts values where more in tune to actual selling value. With the deluge of stamp material now being offered on the web medium to lower value items will continue to be a small fraction of Scotts. That being said very well centered, nice gum ect Higher value stamps often go for many times Scott, early 19th century stamps that are MNH( early collectors would soak the gum off 19th century material to keep the stamps from curling) will always demand a premium as they are quite scarce.
Dealer buy to resale and collectors buy to collect. Before the net collectors had very few avenue's to sell or trade their duplicate's -clubs small show's and not to forget the old APS circuit books. Now almost every collector has a venue Hipstamps-Greedbay ect. therefore driving the values down.
I also refuse to get into "Graded" 3 cent stamps and up(early graded material I can understand as a third party opinion but not the $$$ assigned to them)-just a scam to empty your wallet and mislead new or young collectors.
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
I'm sure one of the last things Scott wants to do is go through that grief all over again. Besides, it would not be productive to the hobby to do so, as it creates a vicious cycle that results in a race to the bottom.
To illustrate: I'm sure you have seen ridiculously low prices by some dealers on Amazon. Some of this is attributable to the fact that some dealers can afford to put a nominal price of 1 cent on a paperback or CD, and make their profit on the difference between their actual shipping cost and the amount that Amazon charges (you notice you never see "combined shipping" for these low-priced items).
However, many other products can be found with incredibly low prices (say, an item that would reasonably be priced at $20, but found for 12 or 13 dollars from multiple dealers). What's going on here is that Amazon offers 3rd party dealers a feature called "Match Low Price." This is how it is described on Amazon:
"Match Low Price
The Match Low Price feature helps you to quickly and easily match the current lowest prices on Amazon.com for the products you offer. "Current lowest price" is based on your Low Price Comparison preferences in Manage Inventory."
What happens when one of the Low Price dealers sees that he is no longer the single lowest price? He lowers his price further. But, then, Amazon's MLP feature lowers everybody else's prices automatically again. A vicious cycle.
Rather than get caught up in this game of ever downward spiraling values, it is best to keep values unchanged except as dictated by an actual change in the market price, and for collectors to realize that there are several tiers of values for any stamp, with the catalog value being at the top, and going downward through retail, discount, wholesale, and dealer buy prices. That doesn't make the catalog useless for valuing stamps, it simply means that collectors and dealers need to understand that Scott Catalog values are merely a reference point, and they need to familiarize themselves with the various discounts that normally apply to stamps based on all the factors, grade, condition, rarity, etc.
Ted
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/tatyszka-stamps
As far as coins go I can still clearly remember as a kid 13/14 years old people bringing bags of silver coin's still sealed from the mint into our store and being bought of a percentage of smelt price. Every day the cut off time for "Today's" price was 3 pm. We would load up the silver and off to the smelter we would go. I can only imaging that from 1974 to 1981 our little store destroyed several tons of coin silver. If you can remember the Hunt family tried to take over the silver market driving the price up to $60.00 and ounce. How many silver coins do you think where melted down- tons upon tons from all over the world then "Crash" back down to $9.00.
This period is what has created some todays market and also helped to establish a stronger coin market. How long has it been scene you got a silver dime or quarter in pocket change.
I dont believe that there has ever been a period where stamps have been destroyed for monetary gain except 1. When Author Hind purchased the second rare 1 cent Magenta Br. Guyana in the 1920's and then destroyed it. But this to is a rumor.
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
That too may be changing. I live in the Chicago area and last week I finally got the last ripe tomato off the vine be it only a cherry tomato it was my first November tomato.
Ross
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/ross-stamps
Even items going into 2015 still have this catalog value! My question here is this: how much of this material is even used as postage? I am having a horrible time finding this material (I have a circular and slogan cancel collection) and am happy to buy any items I find at 150% catalog.
I came across various sets of small sheets that were broken down and used as postage (example Wild West or Civil War). In general collectors bought the sheets and put them in their collections. Today's experience in buying postage at the post office is this, I go in, ask for stamps, and the tellers go straight to the definitives in rolls or booklets. They don't even offer commemoratives unless you ask for them.
Better material going for 15-20% of catalog. I don't think that this is realistic in many situations either. How about US 85A or 85F, do you think that you can buy them at 20%? More likely at 120%! Even a decent Columbian $5 MH you cannot find under 50% -- most are around 70-80%.
When reading how the values were calculated they were all valued at VF, which is Very Fine.
So the, paid for by me, Scott 2017 Australia Catalog, finishes at Christmas 2015.
So no 2016 Cat numbers.
Question IS ?
Why is a Scott value(RETAIL) the be all and end all of value. I have no idea.
I then went to EzStamp, purchased the British Commonwealth database, $canadian 145-00.
They have access rights to Scott numbers(values as well ?), otherwise I would not have purchased it, I am in Australia and thought this would be the answer to end all answers.
Guess what ?
You tell me.
Sam
your original question to the Forum
"Are Scott Catalogs an accurate reflection of retail prices?"
The answer is NO
I have never -- ever -- heard anyone say it is.
So your interpretation of LISTED Scott #'s Retail/Value is ?
Just been through my retailers here in Australia.
This mob is fairly big here.
Have a look, can't do any harm, worth going through.
http://stampsaustralia.com.au/index.php
Some perspective from me, US stamps are not my thing.
Plenty of US on HipStamp, but there is much more out there.
check out the above Australian Retailer site
Respectfully Sam
The more information one absorbs the better, a seller/collector acquaintance here(Oz) has a saying "Knowledge is power".
Here in "The Land Downunder", from about the year 2000 and on, a fine used can bring the same price as a MNH.
Why, because new issue stamps rarely get used these days, a printed label is the norm.
The Catalog makers, all of them, need to understand, MNH can be ordered from all the postal authorities all over the world.
Fine used is harder to find to make complete sets 2013-2016, some of the cancellations are horrible obliteration's.
Finding a Miniature Sheet/Souvenir Sheet postal genuine used, it has to be harder to get than MNH, and therefore in my book, has a higher value than MNH, that's my thoughts.
I totally agree with you on modern F-VF used stamps being scarcer than their MNH brethren (for the most part). I haven't actually looked at modern SSs in the catalogues lately but if I recall correctly they are close to the MNH prices. On a similar note weren't you all down under responsible for the Used NH craze back in the 90's, Is that still going on?
Speculators purchased new issues by the sheet, me included. Prices went mad, then we all got burnt badly.
Late 1980's, early 1990's. I have heaps of them somewhere.
I was buying Late 1980's, early 1990's FDC's at 30% of face(from Dealers) in the early 1990's, cutting them up and selling them as used sets, thematic/topical collectors liked them, birds, trains, butterflies etc.
In Australia a FDC can be purchased and sent through the mail, since Official Australia Post FDC's appeared in 1970 to today.
What has become hard to find is solo [DECIMAL] usage of the high values on cover from this period, Late 1980's, early 1990's, that naturally went overseas, I stress correct DECIMAL SOLO usage. And if the post mark is within the issuing dates of the stamp it will bring a premium, sometimes $100 to $150 for a 70cent stamp.
But that's here in Oz.
For myself I have purchased a heap of CTO set's, sheets, with full gum, why, because to get pristine used set's from 2010 onward is a hard call.
Sam
First, there are different "levels" to collection. While this isn't an area hard defined I will give my thoughts.
First, the new collector. Everyone had to be new at some point. And we generally start as new collectors at a young age. I find most collectors start either late in primary school, to early high school, often prompted by some other activity, like scouting or a school activity. This gets you started. Collection is fascinating at this stage, and is almost cost free. You quickly enlist your neighbors for stamps that you can have off their envelopes and cut or tear them away from the cover. you end up with a big pile of them, and they you learn to "soak" or "steam" them off, so you can arrange them in either specific books (modern day albums) or even just similar to scrap booking. This "new" collector phase may last for 2 or 3 years and if you get past it (and often times that will come even decades later), then you move on to the next level of collector.
Next comes the focused collector. By now you've either decided to "collect the world", or focus on some typical collection (like fish, or animals, or even just commemoratives). You may have settled on one country, or even one period of time in a country (Like 1930 to 2020). Usually this will be in line with the attainability of your financial capacity. You may decide to focus only on used or only on unused stamps. But the overall budget will still be relatively small. (A few hundred dollars a year or less). Plus the cost of your collecting supplies (we soon find that "mounts" are costly, and the books to put them in even more so, especially if you go with specialized pages, like Harris albums, or Scott albums for example). This area becomes just tricky enough that all it takes is one shady dealer to really put people off collecting. But hopefully you make it through this. This period could be as far as you go, and may continue the rest of your life. No criticism or judgement about what level you want to invest. And hey, you can learn a lot about some of the more scarce items, and go looking for them at estate sales, yard sales, even in old books in libraries! (One of the greatest rarities in US philatelics was found in a library book in Indianapolis -- multiple Scott #2 on cover. So the hunt is where it's at.
Then enters the intermediate collectors. This happens usually around 30ish where the school loans are paid, a good job at hand, and starting to make a little more disposable income, and you come across that dusty album on the shelf... start turning through it and go "WOW, I remember that Columbus series... (or whatever favorites you liked to star at in the missing holes in the album). And the next thing you know, you're discovering that "dealers" have moved on line, and there are places like Hipstamp and eBay and you might even find the local collecting club, or sign up for APS on line. You start to dig around and think $100 for a stamp isn't to bad, and you start to discover a new realm of stamps that had previously been out of reach (or at least not a priority). This is where it starts to get dangerous. Because in the previous "layers", there wasn't a lot at stake in terms of really getting ripped off. But start to enter into the $50+ range (not saying people don't try to scam for less, but this is where it really starts to hurt), and "collecting" begins to be more a mine field. You MUST educate yourself more fully here. (And cert's aren't everything either... and costly, sometimes paying more for the cert than the material in great disappointment). At the intermediate level, you need to begin to be more attentive, more learned about the material you approach. There can be some real hidden gems here too! But you have to be very careful. Take the time to read some books, more than just flicking through a Scott catalog. (And at this point, if you're collecting US, by all means buy a Scott Specialized Catalog of United States Stamps and Covers.) And get on forums, and talk to people, ask questions, find experts (who know their limitations), and learn form them. This will make it more enjoyable, and from time to time, you'll hit the "jackpot" with an item. This is great fun. You'll also start to focus more on "centering" than just "do I have that in my collection".
Advanced collectors come next, and this one starts to enter into a field where you are becoming one of those experts. You know more than the average bear about stamps, and you are starting to recognize a lot of the subtleties, even if you don't "collect" Washington-Franklins, you know that there are valuable ones there, and you may have figured out how to spot a few. You're likely now up to speed on all the "early" US classics, the nuance of the 1851 and 1857, the difference between American Bank Note, Continental Bank Note and National Bank Note (at least where secret marks are concerned, but some papers and colors might still be tricky). Upping your spend to $500 or even $1000 for a single stamp may not be second thought. But advanced collecting doesn't HAVE to be about high value either. It can also be a very specialized or topical collection. (I met a guy who only collects used multiples with maps on them... crazy theme, but I happened to have one, and he bought it for $9 -- full used souvenir sheet of the Byrd Expedition). But advanced collectors KNOW their area.
Lastly, there is what I would call the "Investment Collector". This is a tricky area, which requires DEEP pockets, (or luck) and a lot of patience (and time to build if you're starting with not so deep pockets). Investment collecting is just what it sounds like. These stamps are rarities (I define a stamp as "rare" when it reaches a minimum value of $10,000 so it's possible to be rare in one condition (like the $11,000 used 39) but not in another condition (like the $3,000 MNH 39). Not all investment grade stamps have to be thousands of dollars, but they DO have to be pristine.
Now, how does all this relate to Scott catalog, and retail values of stamps. Scott is one source. In the "investment grade" world, Stamp Market Quarterly (SMQ) is more often quoted for the real value of a stamp of that condition. So many of the stamps you see for sale on eBay are NOT VF centered (and this is what Scott catalog's "Catalog value" is based on). If you have the Specialized Catalog, there are a section of pages in the center with yellow edges. This gives you the range for classic stamps valued in their proper GRADE. The grading was introduced originally by the PSE (Philatelic Stamp Expertizers) but has been adopted by all the stamp grading services (APS, PF, PSAG, Weiss, and a few other private expertizers). The reason you see 20% of CV being sold on eBay is because these stamps don't grade at VF or higher. (The ones that do, are the ones that are generally worth getting certed). You will note that stamps with certs that reflect "Sound and genuine in all respects" mean the stamp is sound (no faults, no creases, no pin holes, no tears, no stains, etc). And if they are graded (Minimum 80 for VF and sound) THEN they are equal to the Scott catalog value mentioned for that stamp in the catalog. (In the specialized catalog, those yellow pages give values for VG, F, F-VF, VF, VF-XF, XF, XF-SUP and SUP where SUP is a grade from 98 - 100, and these stamps demand enormous values over the "CV".
This brings me to my last point. If the stamp is of incredible quality (or even if it's just a little valuable) utilize the Siegel Power Search. Go in there, put the Scott # into the "Catalog value equals" and click search. You can see what the stamps of all conditions ever sold by Seigel are worth.
Scott catalogue values are not updated by thoroughly reviewing number by number each year. Sometimes countries languish with old catalogue values for many years or more. In addition, the 2022 year date catalogues are coming out now in 2021. The catalogue year, set in the future, does not match the values for 2022, which hasn't arrived yet. The reviews that were done for the revised catalogue values for the 2022 year set were completed starting in 2020. So, if you go by simply the year of catalogue issue, the values are at least one year or more out of date upon catalogue publication. By the time 2022 comes around, the values will be upwards of three years out of date.
Catalogue values are out of date estimates at best, and act only as a guide to those buying and selling. They have no true value.
It's past time, Michael, and we're all anxiously waiting.