Postage Stamp Chat Board & Stamp Bulletin Board Forum
 

I have a lot of surplus that I would like to sell off to fund other things. I'm trying to get the best deal and in other words avoid all the eBay fees.

So these two seem interesting as they have free listings. I don't expect my stuff to sell like hot cakes and I am not expecting to move the Bahamas with whatever I make. I fully expect my stuff to take some time to sell and if I went on eBay then I would be killed by relisting fees.

I had a quick look at Delcampe and it looks like they are better in catering for stamps, would that be the case ? eBid, whilst cheap seems less geared to them, but a lot of stamps are on sale there.

So really I just wanted some opinions. Does stuff on eBid actually sell ? I see a lot of reports that there are not enough buyers there, but to be fair I couldn't find much up to date information.

Any thoughts ?

Thanks

What's eBid?

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

It's like eBay but cheaper : http://uk.ebid.net/

Google is behind it too, but it never seems to come up in the search results I find.

I've never heard of eBid, or seen anyone here on Stampboards mention it. Even TradeMe, an online auction site only in New Zealand, gets relatively frequent mention here.

Obviously there name is a ripoff from eBay, and they're probably banking on that name association to gain market share.

Delcampe is good in that its focused on stamps, postcards, collectable paper. They don't try to "do it all" like eBay or others, where you can get DVDs, mobile phones, 14k gold jewellery--basically everything that rightly earned eBay the admonition of being "a giant online fleamarket".

However, I don't know if Delcampe is such a good place for selling mixed lots? The categories are well-structured to handle single-stamp listings, ie. separate categories for each decade. That, plus the free-listing policy, of course attracts floods of listings at 5 or 20 cents each. Makes for a lot to wade through.

Your items on Delcampe get global exposure and are treated equal no matter which country site you list on. eBay has this fiddly thing where if you search eBay USA, wayyyy down at the end of a search list is "other items from international sellers", ie. things listed on eBay UK. In an eBay USA listing template, they even have a box to tick "pay a fee for UK site visibility". They've mastered the art of nickel-and-diming you, the only thing they seem able to do right.


Yes, earthquake-making machines are probably expensive to rent.

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Collecting Mongolia; Thailand; Indo-China; Mourning Covers; OHMS.
My online 'store': http://stampsfromaethelwulf.blogspot.com/

Looks like it's been around since 1998, but I've never heard of it.

If I search google for something to buy I generally get ebay and alibaba listings ... I have never seen anything from ebid.

The cheap listing and final value fees look attractive, as does the pay a one off life membership and list for free.

Also like the list till sold feature.

Question is, does it get the same exposure as ebay? No-one seems to have heard of it, and a search in my collecting areas brings up far fewer listings than either ebay or Delcampe.

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

Delcampe is excellent for selling European material as its customer base is within Europe.

If you are selling Commonwealth / Rest of the World material, I don't know if it is quite as good.

Hi Rog,

Bit of a reality check here... I've experimented over the last couple of years with how best to sell on-line and though it seriously pains me to say this, there's no alternative to eBay if you want your material to actually sell.

I do have an eBid shop and I do very infrequently sell stamps via this source but overall eBid is useless.

Delcampe is way too complicated for most mortals and stuff doesn't sell very well either... if you're selling Belgian railway stamps, it might be okay but otherwise I would not use it for selling - buying is fine though.

Let's look at the facts, everyone hates the fees eBay and PayPal charge (myself included) but overall it'll still leave you with £87 for every £100 you take... some auction house are now charging 20% and you're not getting the same degree of exposure.

Conclusion:- if you want to sell your surplus collection within your lifetime, it's going to have to be eBay!

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Looking for revenues and unusual stamps?
Weekly auctions on eBay with over 300 curious new lots every week ... Website: http://www.ibredguy.co.uk/main.php

http://uk.ebid.net/for-sale/used-registered-envelope-new-south-wales-49009389.htm

Someone should buy this - worth easily double the asking figure.

Would you like me to buy it for you Glen?

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Looking for revenues and unusual stamps?
Weekly auctions on eBay with over 300 curious new lots every week ... Website: http://www.ibredguy.co.uk/main.php

Thanks for the responses everyone and your comments.

Mostly I have a lot of Commonwealth/Empire stamps to sell, plus some GB.

I can understand some of you have never heard of eBid as I never knew about it until last week. What I don't get is the link with Google isn't being exploited. I never see eBid come up in search results, but as you can see there's a lot of people trying to sell there.



Damn my missing words

But yes, no where near the exposure of eBay, which is a shame. I don't think that will change until people vote with their feet.

Thanks for the reality check Not Bruce. I have sold spares on eBay successfully, often I just relist on the free insertion days, but it's not always convenient.

I guess I could trial Delcampe and eBid as it won't cost much. If it's a big fail I can go back to eBay. It doesn't bother me that they might take a long time to sell, but maybe a life time is too long to wait

Hmmm.

eBid?

Delcampe I have used.

Thanks for offer, ... no can't be bothered right now, but it is worth double that at least if not philatelic. The odd 5½d rate has me not quite certain. David Benson collects this area. . I'll pass it onto him!

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Click HERE to see superb, RARE and unusual stamps, at FIXED low nett prices, high rez photos, and NO buyer fees etc!

How did that go ?

I haven't sold on either, but I buy a lot from Delcampe. I've found them very easy to use and most sellers take PayPal which is the only way for me to pay them without a lot of hassle.

I did have one seller who never sent me my purchase, but other than that I've been quite happy with Delcampe. Give them a try and see what happens.

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Jim M.

ebid boasts of being the BEST seller friendly site but that just stops with their NO fees... What good is it to a seller if he has no buyers????

I buy from delcampe mainly because I can catch hold of those missing SINGLES rather than buy a set of 20 just to get one that is missing..

If that is how you plan to sell, singles, small lots or low priced items I would say Delcampe is better as it gives you a wider reach than ebid..

But some lots take ages to sell because you should get lucky for your buyer to wade through to reach it... That is where ebay has won.. Pay the price... Sell quickly!!!!

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Started to collect post-Independence India, help me complete the voids
http://www.stampboards.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=29439

Collecting Canada (just started) and CHESS on stamps.!!!!!!

The "no fees" on eBid isn't strictly true - even if you sign-up for life "no fees" membership.

It only covers very basic listing (without pics) and there's still a final value fee too (albeit a small one).

In four months, I've sold four stamps... it's not been great.

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Looking for revenues and unusual stamps?
Weekly auctions on eBay with over 300 curious new lots every week ... Website: http://www.ibredguy.co.uk/main.php

I too had never heard of Ebid but I have just browsed 5 pages of South Africa

With the exception of maybe 3 items ( and even these are bog standard basic stuff ) I wouldn't even dignify the rest with the compliment of calling them complete and utter rubbish

NOBODY is going to wade through pages of this dross to find a even half decent item , which most collectors will already have anyhow

Thus sellers with anything remotely interesting would appear to be wasting their time by listing here

For all the problems associated with selling on Ebay it is still by a considerable distance the best on-line venue for both buyers and sellers - for most categories of items as well as stamps

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When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him

My perspective is mainly as a buyer (although I have sold stamps through Ebay). My take is this: in Ebay I can find plenty I am interested in, very quickly and easily, whereas in Delcampe I struggle to find anything that interests me (that may be my problem of course!).

Outcome: I spend quite a bit on Ebay, and almost nothing on Delcampe (7 lots in about 4 years to be precise!).

You will pay more fees, but I believe you will sell your lots more easily, and probably receive more for them (unless you plan to list at fixed prices). When I have sold on Ebay I've done well by listing at 99p, as it attracts bidders. OK, so the odd item goes for 99p that I had hoped to get a few pounds for, but if it's worth five pounds you normally get five pounds (or more) - certainly in my experience it balances out. This is for fairly popular stuff of course - if you have items of minority interest, you may need to take a different approach.

Good luck!

@ivqii,

Yep I know what you mean, I was wondering if dealers were using it to off load their second grade stuff and things that don't sell so well; but costs them next to nothing to get it on the market..

@Paul,

Yes I agree, eBay is more user friendly than any of the competition. It's where I buy a lot of my stamps too. I think I will just have to give Delcampe a go and see how it goes with what I have I guess. At least if I don't sell anything it won't be costing me anything, so not much to lose really.

I have sold stuff almost at full cat on eBay before, so I think you are probably right about it balancing out. Thanks for your thoughts.

Hi

I'd go for Delcampe anytime. As a matter f fact I have been selling on Delcampe for 4 or 5 years with success. Many Stampboards members have bought from me. Most of my items on Delcampe are «Fixed Price», their version of «Buy It Now» as I found the competitive eagerness you used to have on eBay is generally missing from Delcampe, often leading to poor outcome on auction sales.

Delcampe categories are very highly structured for their more popular countries. I counted 110 sub-categories for Great-Britain stamps only, France must have double that. It makes finding what you want easy, and makes listing items correctly just a little more involved than listing in the catch-all categories of eBay. If you want to browse, you can do so by going to the higher category level.

Delcampe also has a passable search engine. It's great advantage is that it will return hits for what you have asked for, not what it thinks you should buy as in the misnomer «Best Match». Delcampe has 11 national sites, but they are all integrated into the Delcampe.net international site and your listings are available to all members without restriction.

I have looked at eBid. The goods are appalling, the selling rate extremely low. Out of 99 closed auctions for France mint stamps, NONE had sold. Out of 320 auctions for Canada mint stamps, exactly ONE had sold. Success was much better with 65 sold out of 430 Canada used stamps. Do a search for closed items in the categories you intend to sell and look at selling rates. Maybe those categories will have better rates than the ones I looked up. To me, listing there looks like a major loss of time.

Regards

Memphre, here and on Delcampe

Never sold anything on either site ( well, a few on Delcampe at my opening bids ). The only place you're going to get top money is Ebay. Yes, I know the fees are higher but, you get what you pay for.

I agree with most of the above comments.

I spent too much time last night looking into eBid, and various forums that discuss it.

General consensus seems to be:

Because the fees are low, eBid has no advertising/promotion budget, therefore few people know about it.

In spite of over 10 years on line, it doesn't have the pulling power of eBay, even though it rates second to eBay on many comparison charts. Many business sellers report selling 20 of their products a day on eBay, but only 2 a month on eBid for the exact same listing.

At any given time I can easily find 50 items I would like to buy on eBay or Delcampe. I spent half an hour going through eBid listings last night and couldn't find a single item that I would want.

Lower exposure means lower prices realised because of fewer competing bidders. Some traders report buying items on eBid and reselling on eBay for 3 times the price. Like the item Glen noticed above.

In summary, eBid is therefore good for buyers, if you have the time to search the listings, but inferior for sellers in spite of the lower fees.

I did notice that some of the sellers had high feedback numbers and thought they must be selling OK ... but then I found it is possible to import feedback scores and numbers from eBay ... a seller may have 2,000 feedbacks on eBid, but they may all have been for eBay sales.

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

Glen,

thanks for the head up on the NSW cover, I am interested but have no idea what the asking price is,

David B.

Just noticed it sold at 20 Pounds as a Buy it Now.

If that was on Ebay there would have been at least 10 active bidders and would have realised at least 10 times that price,

David B.

David it seems a new bidder to ebid beat you to it, for 20 quid BIN.

This Sydney dealler user name we both know VERY well.

If 5½d was a valid postage rate, it was worth many times that I am guessing with that addressee and French markings to boot?

Yes with French Paquebot handstamp, and UK transit marks, and that 'Chief Postmaster' address, it looked rather nice.

I must be getting lazy. It looked like a $100 item to me. But at 3am there are better things to do - like sleep!

Why 5½d (reg'd) to a Commonwealth country? That was my only question.

Wasn't it 1d Empire post still?

And Regd was 3d or 4d fixed fee.

Give it time and it will be on Ebay 1915canza is a well know Sydney seller on Ebay

http://shop.ebay.com.au/1915cazna/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=200&_trksid=p3984

Regards

C . P .

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Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.

No kidding.

He is very well known to everyone in the stamp business, and used to run our largest stamp auction operaton.

Very ethical, and a member here of course.

Glen,

There are many collectors of NSW destination mail and as far as I know that is now the only known example from any of the Australian States to NCP. I presume for that aspect it would be worth about 50 Pounds.

As a NCP collector it is of much more value as inwards covers are extremely scarce and expensive and I am sure it would have realised at least 200 Pounds.

The French maritime mark is not of much consequence.

I presume the cover was an order for stamps sent by a dealer or collector. I am not sure why it was rated at 5 1/2d. but will try to find out and let you know,

David B.

David yes I assumed mail from here to Niger Coast Protectorate in 1894 was pretty unusual!

Seller appeared clueless about this region, and had nothing from here of any account so thought he'd guessed wrong on value.

The 4 neatly placed stamps just looked a little too cutesy to me, paying a rate that just did not look correct, but agree at £20 our buyer can't go wrong.

@memphre

Thanks for the details, it's good to hear you have had some success. I found things on Delcampe pretty easily myself and I liked that they break everything down into sections.

I will try fixed prices then, thanks for the tip.

@muruk,

Many thanks for reporting the results of your detective work. I think that rules out eBid then. And yes, I was fooled by the eBay ranking imports until I discovered it could be done. So all is not what it seems.

So cheers everyone, I now have a plan - try listing on Delcampe for a few months and if that doesn't work out return to eBay and accept the fees. Maybe once in a while look on eBid for the odd bargain, like Glen spotted.

BTW, is Glen also 'Global Administrator' ?

I'm afraid NotBruce is right -- right now there doesn't seem to be any realistic alternative to eBay, if you really want your stamps to sell. That customer base is huge and truly worldwide.

Listing with Delcampe is just too complicated for a fuzzy old head like mine. Maybe I'll work it out some day and give it a try.

Hilaritas!

jno

Haha, well I spend most of my day programming so I guess I am used to finding my way around. I do think Delcampe could improve the navigation though, I would have designed it differently but kept the listing structure.

I'll give them a go and if I have any luck (or not) I will report back.

Unlike eBay, it would appear that Delcampe is amenable to user suggestions, so it might be worth sharing your observations with them.

I haven't encountered navigation problems as I just use the search facility.

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A man might as well marry ... if he finds a good wife he will be happy ... if not, he will become a philosopher.
Collecting Greater New Guinea & Macropods (Kangaroos & Wallabies).

eBid looks like a waste of time to me.

Delcampe I am now getting good sales with on fixed price items. My experience suggests that you need to get past a tipping point with the amount of stuff you have listed, so that sellers will feel that they have good amount of items to look through in order to get decent value from your shipping charge.

Edward

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29,000 stamped postcards & covers:http://www.delcampe.net/stores/edwardx
Collecting old passports:http://www.passportland.com/

I've been with Delcampe for 2 months now, sales are mainly out of Europe, and steadily growing as I increase my number of items, all at fixed price. Payments are 50/50 between Paypal and Moneybookers.

I'm very happy with Delcampe, especially the freedom to add html code to my shop to spruce up appearance.

I have the freedom of designing my own free shop, no fees until an item sells, a very personable Seb, a support team that answers my queries, and a community of collectors.

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Only philatelists dare visit KoalaStamps, the new kid on the stamp block: http://www.koalastamps.com

Sounds good, thanks for the feedback. I'll probably start doing a clear out in the New Year.

Based on this discussion, I just tried EBID for the first time - and I bought something. A clueless seller has a group of US bureau precancelled Kans/Nebr stamps up for sale. Since there are no bureau precanceled K/N's - the NEBR overprints have to be fake. And fake K/N's are much more fascinating than real ones. Thanks Stampboards!

Selling on Delcampe gets better and better as your inventory there grows. I sell both stamps and postcards. For stamps, sets and singles seems to be the way to go, rather than mixed lots. And fixed price buy-it-now, not auctions.

When I met Sebastian Delcampe in London earlier this year, he mentioned that he is a stamp collector himself. That has to help.

And they are committed to free listings. That does of course let people with too much time on their hands list very common stamps for a few pennies each. With experience and more sophisticated search strategies you can avoid a lot of that dross.

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29,000 stamped postcards & covers:http://www.delcampe.net/stores/edwardx
Collecting old passports:http://www.passportland.com/

Hello all,


It is good to read all these kind messages about our site. That proves us that we are still on a right way

If I can be of any help, please ask, I come here sometime


Thank you, Seb Delcampe

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Visit Delcampe's Online Stamps Auctions, no listing fee

Great to see very busy site owners like Seb Delcampe keeeping an eye on comments here.

Such a nice change from ebay!

Glen

There is a very kind atmosphere here, so a please to come

Thanks for welcoming us.

Seb

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Visit Delcampe's Online Stamps Auctions, no listing fee

My opinion for what it is worth is that the Delcampe/Moneybookers (or is that now Shrill) is far superior to Ebay/Paypal.

Sure Ebay may have more listings but when you add Ebay/Paypal fees and the frequent complaints against ebay as outlined in posts to this chatroom; and compare against Delcampe/Moneybookers I think you are 'quids' in front.

As an added comment, and although I am a rare buyer (only 12 purchases in the last few years) I think Delcampe performance regarding descriptions are far superior to Ebay

The bottom line is 'risk analysis'

What is your risk of being scammed or ripped off?

On this chatroom I have seen a torrent of criticism of some ignorant/arrogant/fraudulent/ ebay sellers, and unfortunately that spills over to the detriment of the honest and responsible sellers.

I have not as yet seen that type of criticism against Delcampe. That must say something for the auction house

Also, let me add that if I am told that I can only give a positive feedback and I was appalled at the performance of the seller. I would not leave a feedback

So if Ebay, and for that matter Delcampe and ebid, Allegro etc are serious about providing a 'feedback' performance, I would like to see them say something along the lines of 452 sales, 425 positive feedbacks. That way the buyer is aware that 27 previous buyers are either too lazy to provide a feedback or are not prepared to give a positive feedback; that is , they were unhappy at the transaction

With all of the upcoming (not to mention the past!) challenges for sellers on feeBay, I would be interested to hear comments from Delcampe sellers about how their sales compare with eBay, especially for US stamps and postcards, and especially for fixed-price.

I also note with interest that most Delcampe sellers have a shipping charge & I'm not sure why that seems to work better on Delcampe than on ebay.

I've sold on eBay for many years, almost exclusively buy-it-now with free shippping to USA and a buck anywhere else.

Thanks in advance!!

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Stamps on eBay: USA & worldwide. Lots of Dr. Who, Star Trek & Star Wars comics, too. Do Advanced search for Seller ddaannv and Keyword the country you collect (or leave Keyword blank).

Hi Dan,

We will be more than happy to join us (contact me in private and I give you some directions)

Note that you can check the sold items in the listings (see filters on the left), so you can check yourself the possible success for your sales

Seb Delcampe

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Visit Delcampe's Online Stamps Auctions, no listing fee

I have used eBay for quite a few years, mostly as a buyer, selling a few items there as well.

Also, I have used eBid.net as a buyer and seller for the past two years.

But, I haven't used Delcampe at all, so this morning I had a quick browse about the website. My initial impressions are good so plan to register and look about some more for any postcards that suit my genealogy research.

I was on Ebay for quite a time, but slowly, perhaps too slowly, I realised that their charges were much too high, and transferred all my material to Delcampe.
The first thing I did after I had done that was send emails to all people who had bought from me on Ebay, telling them of the transfer to Delcampe and explained to them why (High charges).
I got quite a few emails back telling me that I had taken the right decision.
Now I sell mainly on Delcampe, although I do have part of my sales on Bidstart. All my international customers know I am on Delcampe, and I have not had a single ex-buyer who has told me he will not buy from me any more because I am not on Ebay.

I've been trying to learn about Delcampe. So far I've purchased 3 postcards and have a bid on another. There are some aspects that I haven't taken the time to read about, so guess I'll reserve judgement for the time being.

I find it hard to understand why I would need to have a certain number of feedbacks before I can even post on the forum. And the community there does not appear to be very active. I'm not sure whether that is a good thing or a not so good thing. lol

Hi Marlyns

Each site has its own peculiarities, it is a good thing to browse about and get a good feel for the site specifics. I could say the same thing about Stampboards or any other site.

You mention the Delcampe forum and it's apparent lack of activity. First, Delcampe is a trading site and only accidentally a discussion site. Sebatien Delcampe, the owner, is known for reacting to user's suggestions, why not drop him an email about this issue.

As to the relative calm about the Delcampe forum, you must note that there are 6 fori, one for each of the languages supported on the site. By far, the French language forum is the largest and most active. This is both because French and Dutch were the original languages of the site and French language population and membership far outnumber the Dutch-speaking population and membership.

While the English-speaking membership has been fast increasing, these members have not been as active as the French language members on their respective fori. In the meanwhile, I encourage you to read the French-language fori, as far as possible. You will get there a sense of the strong Delcampe community

With the large amount of materials on offer on Delcampe, I do not doubt that you will find many items to complement your collection. I can only hope some of these will come from my store.

Memphre