@Michael Duehr, you've actually said the same thing I have...
Now there is one feature that I had wanted "the Bay" to add (and also why we stopped selling $1 stamps, back around 2013), and that IS the "Add On". In other words, like Amazon introduced, you can only get some very cheap items with free shipping if they are ADD ONs to a minimum order of $25.
This takes a lot of complex programming actually, so I wouldn't bother even suggesting it here. The way we dealt with it instead is to make groups for various "like" (or not) items. It took us a while to figure this "formula" out, but once we did it transformed our selling, especially of the "cheap stuff". Now we spend very little time with it, and make the same we would if we sold everything in one-offs, and faster, which has the merit of clearing old albums off the shelf to make way for new ones as we buy new collections with better value.
Depending on the material, we deal with each differently. I'm suggesting, we've been very profitable this way, just as happy with those good feelings of knowing we're filling holes, and our effectiveness is personally very satisfying. (It has the added advantage that in many of our "small collections" we don't need to take the time to identify and list every single item in the group, it's sold just as it is, and if you spot what you want in it, then there you go... now the secret here is we create the "someone else's problem effect" with all those things we could list at 1c or 5c and 10 years later they'd still be chokings up the inventory. Depending on how some people browse, that could make it very difficult to find the "good stuff" in our store. And small collections for buyers are low risk, and they still get to do the "treasure hunting" that many collectors (self included) love.
Maybe we're giving away our secret sauce here, but online dealing since 1994 has taught us a thing or two. (And full disclosure for about 4 years before I was a stamp dealer, and before there was even eBay, I was selling Magic the Gathering cards over "Usenet News Groups" for those of you tutored enough to have experienced that.). 90% of what I learned about being a stamp dealer I learned first from being a Magic the Gathering dealer when we still connected to the "internet" by 9600 baud modem.
You are correct. I got caught up in the fees being included in my $1.10 shipping cost when I was calculating cost for a 25 cent stamp. After deducting the actual fee cost on this transaction and bumping the "store cost" factor to 30 cents for this order which reflected my actual costs over the past year, I was left with a net of $27.16 or $10.86 per hour, not the $3 Bill had originally suggested.
This is what you said in one of your earlier posts.
"No matter what business you are in, there are 2 ways to make money: High margins on small quantities or small margins on huge quantities."
While it is correct that you did mention the top heavy stores in lower value items, you did leave out the fact that a store that has a blended inventory that has a better mix of price points can also work and one can make money at.
The reason I am trying to point this out is on Weds I got an order for 54 pieces. The order total came to $171 with shipping. On those 54 pieces 35 of them were under $2. The total on those 35 pieces came to $44.72 extra if I had set a lower limit of $2 per item that I was listing. As add ons that type of material can add a bit to the orders.
Ok Michael, you're really nitpicking on a point that isn't relevant. I cover the High value high margin, and if a store has a bunch of "low value" to go with it, it's still in the former category. You're just maximizing the "leftovers", so my point still stands. That seller is going to "make money" because of the high value high margin stuff, the rest is just gravy.
In an attempt to steer this thread back to John's original post.
John,
I've been checking in on your store every so often and I see you have been adding new items pretty regularly which is a good thing. Your material looks to be of good quality and pricing is fair. You've added some store policies which is good too and you will probably discover as issues arise that you will have to add to and/or enhance your policies. Most folks do. Store policies are a kind of living thing I've found and I edit my own as situations warrant. I tried to write them from the perspective of what a customer would like to see. I.e. "What would this dealer do if I bought a stamp from him and (something happens)" That kind of thing.
The other thing just as important I would suggest is to go ahead and bite the bullet and get a good flatbed scanner. It is probably the one best equipment investments I have made beyond a current set of quality catalogs. I use an Epson V550 Perfection myself but the V600 at about half the price would serve you just as well. Amazon has the V600 at around $250 I think. https://smile.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Negative-Document-Scanner/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=sr_1_3?crid=29FLEKK0U8D2N&keywords=epson+v600&qid=1652542917&sprefix=epson+v600,aps,328&sr=8-3&th=1 Others will recommend other scanners and even high end photography equipment (Scott Payton). In any case, the point is to produce and present the very best image of the item your are selling to the potential customers. My process is to scan at a minimum of 600dpi with no color or image enhancements at all save maybe a dust filter. I will scan items on black Vario stock pages or black "102" cards with the very rare exception of black or very dark colored stamps. Those will go against a white or maybe yellow background. This is the exception however as 99.9+% are scanned against a black background. I use Windows Paint to crop the images with a regular border and my images are ready then for listing. Pretty much any good image editing software will do though but resist the temptation to enhance or "clean" the image. You want the customer to receive exactly what they saw in your store, not some cleaned up stamp that looks nothing like what they receive. The biggest reason I bring this up is that, again, looking at our stores from a customer's point of view, I want to present the very best image that I can for the customer. Unlike a brick and mortar store, the customer cannot pick up the stamp and inspect it personally so the image is the only thing beyond our accurate descriptions that will tempt him or her to buy the item. It's kind of like the old saying about making a good first impression.
Anyway, I thought I would throw those two things at you for your consideration. Have a great day!
You said in the initial post that it took 21/2 hours to FILL the order and that is what I used as a basis so I also added the time to sort, scan, fix and list an item.
Scott,
I am also going to only start listing items at a minimum of $10.00 because of the time involved and put all of the cheaper items in lots. Time IS money.
Perhaps you missed it, but I didn't say "FILL", I said .. "I estimate that it took me about 2 1/2 hours to process these stamps including selecting, listing and packaging." To me, the first two cover what you added and the last was the FILL.
Again everyone should only list what they want. If you want a $10 minimum, that is OK with me.
I just think that if you and I both had a similar $10 stamp listed and I also have many "common ones" listed that buyers also need, my $10 stamp would be included in their purchase. That's my marketing strategy. Who knows which will result in higher total annual sales and profit.
Greg....follow up on your scanner thoughts. I have been taking my pics with my iPhone at 2x mag. After I import them to my MacBook Pro, I crop them, and tweak angle, if need be. This results in clearly better pics than my initial stamps pics. I've attached a few. Will I get serious improvement on this with a scanner as you recommend? Certainly not poo-pooing your suggestion, just want your thoughts.
I think these are better than scans. Scanners also have a tendency to result in a bigger color variance when viewed mostly due to the brightness of the light that is used during the scanning process. (It tends to wash the color out, or some will over correct on brightness or contrast to compensate). They also have the disadvantage of bein SLOW compared to photography.
I do think these images are an improvement in that they are cropped better (all that black space distracts from the item), they are "flatter" (but as a result of the image manipulation, they are not geometrically correct), and there is quite a bit of color variation from the camera flash though. Granted, modern cellphone cameras typically produce high quality and high resolution images for most applications. Taking pics of the kids playing in the yard, pics of scenery, that sort of thing. But close up photography is not their strong suit in my opinion. Probably 99% of the images in my store were done with the V550 and the rest were done with the flat bed scanner on my cheap little HP Envy 4500 printer. I guarantee that if one to look for those, one could pick them out easily. Both were done with default settings, 600dpi resolution, and no image enhancement but the cheap little Envy produces sub-par images. Washed out color and crappy images. Point here is that a high quality scanner will produce high quality images. If you closely at your images, you will see quite a bit of color variation, especially on the top two stamps. One of the big issues with phone cameras is that it is difficult to hold the camera even close to parallel to the stamp. This will result in at least two things. One, it will exaggerate the flash effect as can be seen in your top two stamps. These are brighter/whiter areas on the stamp compared to the true color seen elsewhere on the image. The second thing is that it results in a geometric issue that needs to be corrected by manipulating the geometry (or squareness if you will) of the image. This can easily be seen in all three of your images. They are not rectilinear as most stamps really are. As far as speed of acquiring the image, yes, I suppose that simply taking a picture with the phone camera can be done very quickly, but as you said, you then have to import the image, then fiddle with it a bit to get to where you are now. My process actually takes very little time. I scan the front of the item first, flip the stamp over and while scanning the back I am cropping the front. RInse..repeat..etc. It takes me more time to write the item description than to process the images.
So, while a bit long-winded, a high quality scanner will produce high quality images and the time savings (in my opinion) is really not any savings at all. Here is a great example of what a high quality scanner can produce from a potentially difficult stamp to image. This is a 150 year old Mexican Hidalgo stamp with a Moire on the back and it is pin perforated. The image is clear, the color is very representative of the real thing, the Moire is easy to see along with the pin perfs. I think this would be a very difficult stamp to image well with a cellphone camera. https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/mexico-scott-100-uhr-1872-12c-hidalgo-profile-scv-300/46109105
Anyway, my 2.5c cents. Keep on doing your thing though and looking for ways to improve. You've come a long way already in a short time.
While you can keep tinkering and get close to "perfect", I don't think it's that necessary. The shots you provided are better than 95% of what I see on Hipstamp. They are more than "good enough". Greg makes a point, the do have some alterations from the manipulation, but they are not so drastic as to detract from what the item really is... This part can take HUGE amounts of time. When we last shifted from scanners to overhead cameras, our ability to process listings nearly tripled. (i.e. we could list 30 in the time it was taking to list 10). That was a huge game changer for us. We never looked back at scanners again. If you go to the major auction houses like Siegel and Kelleher, you will find they don't use scanners for their images. There's just not enough lighting control.
Scott and I are, kind of, on the same page. Having said that, most if not all dealers on this platform, are not major auction houses. Likely never will be. I can't even get my dang cat Bentley to stop shedding in my office and he certainly has issues with his general interest in his own endeavor (being a lazy cat).
There is competition out there no doubt so why would "good enough" really be good enough? I will share some images here of the same Canadian Beaver, all offered by several dealers on HipStamp. Don't focus on the stamp itself or its various qualities. Concentrate on the image presentations. With all characteristics of the stamps in the images being equal, i.e. perfs, centering, price, etc., which would be more attractive to a potential customer? So here they are for everyone's dissection.
After reading again what I thought I was trying to get across was not very clear. First and foremost John is just starting his store and trying to figure out where his price points are going to be. I do believe it's incorrect to make the blanket statement that there are only 2 ways of making money in this business. (By doing so you can discourage someone from looking at a middle ground between the 2 extremes.) And that's by dealing with the material that falls in the moderate range. This is the point I was trying to make.
Also unless you define what you mean by low value and high value, those terms are far too ambiguous because those terms have different meanings to different people. And you need to remember that when you are talking to a newbie you need to let them know what you mean by those terms, because how are they going to know unless you define those terms?
So, giving the images consideration as if I was looking to buy one, clearly the first two images are better than 3 or 4. Not because of all the black space, but because they are garbage images. I can tolerate a lot of black around a good image. The second image is sharper than the first, and the first image is slightly askew; but the fact that the first image is slightly askew makes no difference to me. Again, I can tolerate a lot of imperfections if it is a good image in the middle of it. Now would any of these photos rule out my purchase based on the image alone? Maybe, maybe not. There are many other factors that contribute to the final decision. Including but not limited to price, written condition and dealer reputation.
John -
I sell because I want to collect and have accidental excess, so I thought I would sell it to feed my philately monkey. To this day I only sell intermittently. I started (a long time ago on ebay) with my cell phone camera. I took me a couple months to decide that I didn't like the quality of the images. I bought a scanner and haven't looked back. Over the years, I have replaced/upgraded my scanner. Mostly because I wear out the printer portion of it. Recently I bought one of the cameras that Scott recommends. An Ipevo V4K and its use is hit and miss. While the scanner takes longer, the camera is very fussy and is proving difficult to master. It takes awesome images, when I get it right. My advice in all of this is to find what works for you. I sell expensive, I sell cheap. I sold overseas, I stopped selling overseas. I agree with all the points made in this tread. Some of the stuff I learn here I take to heart, some of it gets filed for future consideration. This past weekend after reading all of the stuff on here about price points, I adopted a minimum listing of $2 because of the hassle of doing listings for me. Stamps lower in value than that are going to become bonus give away material for purchases. I spent all day Sunday doing listings and at the end of the day I only added 35 to my store. That is what is going to work for me, at least right now.
Fair assessment Don. Again, all things stamp-wise being equal, what is the "red flag" with the second image? One of two things are apparent. This stamp has either been chemically "cleaned" or the image has been digitally enhanced (strongly brightened). There is no way that this stamp would or should look this white and if one were to buy it, one would either receive the chemically altered version or a stamp that looks nothing like the one in the store image. This one would raise the red flag for me anyway.
Here is an example of the same Scott number from a 2006 Siegel auction. Nowhere close to the white stamp in the second image.
Yep, fair enough. I saw how much more detailed the image was but missed that bright white going on. Either of those scenarios say more about the lister than the stamp to me though. Which was probably part of the point you were trying to make...
Yessir, exactly. Which also goes to your point about dealer reputation. Granted, the lister of this stamp may have described it as a chemically whitened stamp or a digitally enhanced image (doubtful) but still......either way.
Just one more point of feedback and why we changed last year from scanner to overhead photos, I have an admin that does most of our listing, but sometimes I do listings as well. We were both using the same scanner model, but we started to get some questions over "image manipulation" because the image color didn't match that of the stamp. Now that is a can of worms for sure, but the ONLY manipulation we ever make to stamp images is cropping. We discovered however that the scanners we were using are susceptible to SURROUNDING LIGHT. This was an interesting bit of a surprise, but if we scanned in at night in a dark room, the color would be different from if we scanned in the daytime in a bright room. (Kid you not). And we could repeat this over and over. We had been using those scanners for about a year, when this started to happen. In addition, daytime light shining through a curtain (with a color other than white) would also influence the image. We made no alterations ourselves, but as noted by Einstein "The act of observation changes the outcome", where the 'observer' in this case is the electronic eye of the scanner. Same result. So something else to be aware of. Scanners have all kinds of difference in their calibration for brightness, contrast, and color, and many are not user adjustable. So part of the point of the "assessment" of the 2nd image, may just be scanner settings and environment and nothing to do with user manipulation. In fact, I don't believe image 2 was taken with a scanner, I believe it was shot with a camera, as that "white" being referred to affects the upper left, but not the lower right. this is the result of a bright(er) lighting source near that area of the stamp (could even be reflected light from a monitor, as I have found my monitors can easily effect the appearance of lighting on my stamps if I don't have a counter brightness from the opposite direction). So many things can influence the appearance of an image without it being "altered" at all.
You are correct of course regarding image #2 and I kind of thought that myself but in any case, this is clearly not representative of anywhere close to the real color of the item. That's really kind of my point. As I said before, modern cellphone cameras can indeed acquire quality images if used properly, but so many don't. Just snap a pic and post it is what many do without a thought about it.
Agree. And the quality in those cameras is heavily subject to the environmental lighting conditions and other influences (like color of the room or curtains). But when someone is too lazy to bother cropping images, it's unlikely they are taking the time to manipulate the color as well. I'm sure there are a few out there doing that, but most of the "color" discrepancy is all in the machine and conditions around the time the photo was taken.
And since we have done images for 28 years, scanner, then camera, then scanner, then camera again, one thing I can say is, we never get comments about color manipulation with our overhead camera shots. We got one every couple of months while we were using scanners. And we really did nothing to change their color.
Precancel are stamps that were cancelled in bulk before sale to commercial customers foor their bulk orders. This saves the post office time in processing. The business must, however, deliver the mail with the precancelled stamps to the post office and hand hand it to the clerk to place into the mail stream. Such mail cannot be placed in drop boxes.
US precancels you usually see have the markings printed after the stamps have been produced. Other countries, notably France, print the cancel onto the stamp during the production of the stamp.
Comments
Now there is one feature that I had wanted "the Bay" to add (and also why we stopped selling $1 stamps, back around 2013), and that IS the "Add On". In other words, like Amazon introduced, you can only get some very cheap items with free shipping if they are ADD ONs to a minimum order of $25.
This takes a lot of complex programming actually, so I wouldn't bother even suggesting it here. The way we dealt with it instead is to make groups for various "like" (or not) items. It took us a while to figure this "formula" out, but once we did it transformed our selling, especially of the "cheap stuff". Now we spend very little time with it, and make the same we would if we sold everything in one-offs, and faster, which has the merit of clearing old albums off the shelf to make way for new ones as we buy new collections with better value.
Depending on the material, we deal with each differently. I'm suggesting, we've been very profitable this way, just as happy with those good feelings of knowing we're filling holes, and our effectiveness is personally very satisfying. (It has the added advantage that in many of our "small collections" we don't need to take the time to identify and list every single item in the group, it's sold just as it is, and if you spot what you want in it, then there you go... now the secret here is we create the "someone else's problem effect" with all those things we could list at 1c or 5c and 10 years later they'd still be chokings up the inventory. Depending on how some people browse, that could make it very difficult to find the "good stuff" in our store. And small collections for buyers are low risk, and they still get to do the "treasure hunting" that many collectors (self included) love.
Maybe we're giving away our secret sauce here, but online dealing since 1994 has taught us a thing or two. (And full disclosure for about 4 years before I was a stamp dealer, and before there was even eBay, I was selling Magic the Gathering cards over "Usenet News Groups" for those of you tutored enough to have experienced that.). 90% of what I learned about being a stamp dealer I learned first from being a Magic the Gathering dealer when we still connected to the "internet" by 9600 baud modem.
So much of change remains the same...
You are correct. I got caught up in the fees being included in my $1.10 shipping cost when I was calculating cost for a 25 cent stamp. After deducting the actual fee cost on this transaction and bumping the "store cost" factor to 30 cents for this order which reflected my actual costs over the past year, I was left with a net of $27.16 or $10.86 per hour, not the $3 Bill had originally suggested.
This is what you said in one of your earlier posts.
"No matter what business you are in, there are 2 ways to make money: High margins on small quantities or small margins on huge quantities."
While it is correct that you did mention the top heavy stores in lower value items, you did leave out the fact that a store that has a blended inventory that has a better mix of price points can also work and one can make money at.
The reason I am trying to point this out is on Weds I got an order for 54 pieces. The order total came to $171 with shipping. On those 54 pieces 35 of them were under $2. The total on those 35 pieces came to $44.72 extra if I had set a lower limit of $2 per item that I was listing. As add ons that type of material can add a bit to the orders.
John,
I've been checking in on your store every so often and I see you have been adding new items pretty regularly which is a good thing. Your material looks to be of good quality and pricing is fair. You've added some store policies which is good too and you will probably discover as issues arise that you will have to add to and/or enhance your policies. Most folks do. Store policies are a kind of living thing I've found and I edit my own as situations warrant. I tried to write them from the perspective of what a customer would like to see. I.e. "What would this dealer do if I bought a stamp from him and (something happens)" That kind of thing.
The other thing just as important I would suggest is to go ahead and bite the bullet and get a good flatbed scanner. It is probably the one best equipment investments I have made beyond a current set of quality catalogs. I use an Epson V550 Perfection myself but the V600 at about half the price would serve you just as well. Amazon has the V600 at around $250 I think. https://smile.amazon.com/Epson-Perfection-Negative-Document-Scanner/dp/B002OEBMRU/ref=sr_1_3?crid=29FLEKK0U8D2N&keywords=epson+v600&qid=1652542917&sprefix=epson+v600,aps,328&sr=8-3&th=1
Others will recommend other scanners and even high end photography equipment (Scott Payton). In any case, the point is to produce and present the very best image of the item your are selling to the potential customers. My process is to scan at a minimum of 600dpi with no color or image enhancements at all save maybe a dust filter. I will scan items on black Vario stock pages or black "102" cards with the very rare exception of black or very dark colored stamps. Those will go against a white or maybe yellow background. This is the exception however as 99.9+% are scanned against a black background. I use Windows Paint to crop the images with a regular border and my images are ready then for listing. Pretty much any good image editing software will do though but resist the temptation to enhance or "clean" the image. You want the customer to receive exactly what they saw in your store, not some cleaned up stamp that looks nothing like what they receive. The biggest reason I bring this up is that, again, looking at our stores from a customer's point of view, I want to present the very best image that I can for the customer. Unlike a brick and mortar store, the customer cannot pick up the stamp and inspect it personally so the image is the only thing beyond our accurate descriptions that will tempt him or her to buy the item. It's kind of like the old saying about making a good first impression.
Anyway, I thought I would throw those two things at you for your consideration. Have a great day!
Greg
You said in the initial post that it took 21/2 hours to FILL the order and that is what I used as a basis so I also added the time to sort, scan, fix and list an item.
Scott,
I am also going to only start listing items at a minimum of $10.00 because of the time involved and put all of the cheaper items in lots. Time IS money.
Perhaps you missed it, but I didn't say "FILL", I said .. "I estimate that it took me about 2 1/2 hours to process these stamps including selecting, listing and packaging." To me, the first two cover what you added and the last was the FILL.
Again everyone should only list what they want. If you want a $10 minimum, that is OK with me.
I just think that if you and I both had a similar $10 stamp listed and I also have many "common ones" listed that buyers also need, my $10 stamp would be included in their purchase. That's my marketing strategy. Who knows which will result in higher total annual sales and profit.
I do think these images are an improvement in that they are cropped better (all that black space distracts from the item), they are "flatter" (but as a result of the image manipulation, they are not geometrically correct), and there is quite a bit of color variation from the camera flash though. Granted, modern cellphone cameras typically produce high quality and high resolution images for most applications. Taking pics of the kids playing in the yard, pics of scenery, that sort of thing. But close up photography is not their strong suit in my opinion. Probably 99% of the images in my store were done with the V550 and the rest were done with the flat bed scanner on my cheap little HP Envy 4500 printer. I guarantee that if one to look for those, one could pick them out easily. Both were done with default settings, 600dpi resolution, and no image enhancement but the cheap little Envy produces sub-par images. Washed out color and crappy images. Point here is that a high quality scanner will produce high quality images. If you closely at your images, you will see quite a bit of color variation, especially on the top two stamps. One of the big issues with phone cameras is that it is difficult to hold the camera even close to parallel to the stamp. This will result in at least two things. One, it will exaggerate the flash effect as can be seen in your top two stamps. These are brighter/whiter areas on the stamp compared to the true color seen elsewhere on the image. The second thing is that it results in a geometric issue that needs to be corrected by manipulating the geometry (or squareness if you will) of the image. This can easily be seen in all three of your images. They are not rectilinear as most stamps really are. As far as speed of acquiring the image, yes, I suppose that simply taking a picture with the phone camera can be done very quickly, but as you said, you then have to import the image, then fiddle with it a bit to get to where you are now. My process actually takes very little time. I scan the front of the item first, flip the stamp over and while scanning the back I am cropping the front. RInse..repeat..etc. It takes me more time to write the item description than to process the images.
So, while a bit long-winded, a high quality scanner will produce high quality images and the time savings (in my opinion) is really not any savings at all. Here is a great example of what a high quality scanner can produce from a potentially difficult stamp to image. This is a 150 year old Mexican Hidalgo stamp with a Moire on the back and it is pin perforated. The image is clear, the color is very representative of the real thing, the Moire is easy to see along with the pin perfs. I think this would be a very difficult stamp to image well with a cellphone camera. https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/mexico-scott-100-uhr-1872-12c-hidalgo-profile-scv-300/46109105
Anyway, my 2.5c cents. Keep on doing your thing though and looking for ways to improve. You've come a long way already in a short time.
All our best,
Greg (and Bentley)
https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/greece-scott-c1-c4-unused-hmog-1926-italy-greece-turkey-rhodes-set-scv-2750/46113288
If you go to the major auction houses like Siegel and Kelleher, you will find they don't use scanners for their images. There's just not enough lighting control.
There is competition out there no doubt so why would "good enough" really be good enough? I will share some images here of the same Canadian Beaver, all offered by several dealers on HipStamp. Don't focus on the stamp itself or its various qualities. Concentrate on the image presentations. With all characteristics of the stamps in the images being equal, i.e. perfs, centering, price, etc., which would be more attractive to a potential customer? So here they are for everyone's dissection.
After reading again what I thought I was trying to get across was not very clear. First and foremost John is just starting his store and trying to figure out where his price points are going to be. I do believe it's incorrect to make the blanket statement that there are only 2 ways of making money in this business. (By doing so you can discourage someone from looking at a middle ground between the 2 extremes.) And that's by dealing with the material that falls in the moderate range. This is the point I was trying to make.
Also unless you define what you mean by low value and high value, those terms are far too ambiguous because those terms have different meanings to different people. And you need to remember that when you are talking to a newbie you need to let them know what you mean by those terms, because how are they going to know unless you define those terms?
John -
I sell because I want to collect and have accidental excess, so I thought I would sell it to feed my philately monkey. To this day I only sell intermittently. I started (a long time ago on ebay) with my cell phone camera. I took me a couple months to decide that I didn't like the quality of the images. I bought a scanner and haven't looked back. Over the years, I have replaced/upgraded my scanner. Mostly because I wear out the printer portion of it. Recently I bought one of the cameras that Scott recommends. An Ipevo V4K and its use is hit and miss. While the scanner takes longer, the camera is very fussy and is proving difficult to master. It takes awesome images, when I get it right. My advice in all of this is to find what works for you. I sell expensive, I sell cheap. I sold overseas, I stopped selling overseas. I agree with all the points made in this tread. Some of the stuff I learn here I take to heart, some of it gets filed for future consideration. This past weekend after reading all of the stuff on here about price points, I adopted a minimum listing of $2 because of the hassle of doing listings for me. Stamps lower in value than that are going to become bonus give away material for purchases. I spent all day Sunday doing listings and at the end of the day I only added 35 to my store. That is what is going to work for me, at least right now.
Here is an example of the same Scott number from a 2006 Siegel auction. Nowhere close to the white stamp in the second image.
We had been using those scanners for about a year, when this started to happen. In addition, daytime light shining through a curtain (with a color other than white) would also influence the image. We made no alterations ourselves, but as noted by Einstein "The act of observation changes the outcome", where the 'observer' in this case is the electronic eye of the scanner. Same result.
So something else to be aware of. Scanners have all kinds of difference in their calibration for brightness, contrast, and color, and many are not user adjustable. So part of the point of the "assessment" of the 2nd image, may just be scanner settings and environment and nothing to do with user manipulation.
In fact, I don't believe image 2 was taken with a scanner, I believe it was shot with a camera, as that "white" being referred to affects the upper left, but not the lower right. this is the result of a bright(er) lighting source near that area of the stamp (could even be reflected light from a monitor, as I have found my monitors can easily effect the appearance of lighting on my stamps if I don't have a counter brightness from the opposite direction). So many things can influence the appearance of an image without it being "altered" at all.
You are correct of course regarding image #2 and I kind of thought that myself but in any case, this is clearly not representative of anywhere close to the real color of the item. That's really kind of my point. As I said before, modern cellphone cameras can indeed acquire quality images if used properly, but so many don't. Just snap a pic and post it is what many do without a thought about it.
And since we have done images for 28 years, scanner, then camera, then scanner, then camera again, one thing I can say is, we never get comments about color manipulation with our overhead camera shots. We got one every couple of months while we were using scanners. And we really did nothing to change their color.
US precancels you usually see have the markings printed after the stamps have been produced. Other countries, notably France, print the cancel onto the stamp during the production of the stamp.