How to Make £100 a Day, Every Day

How toMake £100 a Day, Every Day,

Selling Collectors’ Stamps on eBay

Before we start, let me ask you to put preconceived notions to one side and forget what you’ve heard about stamp dealers having to know about tiny

differences between two identical looking stamps that make one item worthless and its partner worth millions of pounds. Forget about perforations and watermarks, gutter pairs and Stanley Gibbons.

Those things are very important, but only if you

have thousands of pounds to risk attempting to make many more thousands or even millions of pounds every

year from collectable stamps-and sometimes failing abysmally. But those things matter little or nothing to someone wanting to make a guaranteed one

hundred pounds per day selling to tens of millions of stamp collectors all over the world.

The only few words that matter for this money-making opportunity are ‘album page’, ‘stamps’ and the country or subject of whatever stamps you are listing. That’s

because we are going to buy stamps in bulk and we will be putting very

little effort into our titles and descriptions. Our images, on the other hand, will be second to none.You do not require experience or previous knowledge of any kind and you’re

unlikely ever to sell a stamp or stamps for a couple of pounds only to find one or more of those stamps was priceless. All you have to do is buy albums and such containing thousands of stamps, then remove the pages and trim the edges, separate pages into one country or same theme subject stamps, then scan or photograph and upload them to eBay with titles like these

‘EGYPT: Stamps on Album Page’‘DOG Stamps on Album Page’‘QUEEN VICTORIA GB Stamps on Album Page’

Once the title and images are uploaded our descriptions will comprise just a handful of words, words that stay the same from listing to listing.

Stamps on Album Page. Lightly Hinged

That word ‘hinged’ means the stamps are fixed lightly to the page using a see-through strip of gummed paper.

Most early albums use this hinging mechanism

including albums we want to buy from the middle 1800s to around the early 1920s. This date line works best for me and should work well for you, too. Avoid albums using thick hinges or where stamps are stuck permanently to

the page where almost all stamps will be too heavily damaged to interest collectors.When hinging is light the stamp can be lifted to sit at right angles to the page. If

the stamp doesn’t lift this way, because it’s partly or completely glued to the page you should say so in your de

scriptions or don’t buy those stamps at all

When you’re finished there won’t be a sniff of Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue numbers in your eBay listings

no mention of watermarks, not even one word about rarity, condition and unusual printings.

That is for several reasons:

i) You and I may never have a working knowledge of millions of different stamps issued since the middle 1800s. And, guess what, using today’s idea, we

may not ever need that knowledge!

ii) Most experienced stamp collectors will recognise their collecting interests from quality gallery and additional close up images of various parts of the stamp.

iii) Any really valuable items lurking there will attract lots of viewers and sometimes several questions and should always fetch their true market value. If you can’t answer questions, you can offer more images of different areas of the stamp or stamps

iv) Even expert stamp

sellers tend nowadays to give generic descriptions and

good quality images, leaving potential buyers to check quality, variety and rarity for themselves. This helps sellers list more items in the same time and

reduces the chance of ‘not as described’ com

plaints -because you’re not providing a text description anyway, only quality images -and we all know the

camera does not lie!

To prove that last point, let me tell you one of eBay’s top sellers of collectable

stamps is someone I have known for more than forty years, since the time I had a weekly flea market stall selling vintage postcards and he had a stall beside me

selling rare stamps. He is a true expert and his descriptions are as bland as ours will be.

Now let us look at the kind of listings we’re aiming for from these highest priced stamps on album pages sold recently

on eBay:-Queen Victoria Album Page with 1840 1d Black, 1840 2d Blues, Embossed, etc.made £144.07 Look at that title and you’ll see just the vaguest and most basic descriptions for Penny Black and Two Penny Blue stamps which come in hundreds of variations. You don’t need to know what those variations are and you don’t really need to mention colours or denominations but, if appropriate, it is a good idea to include ‘Queen Victoria’ in your titles.

That’s because Victorian stamps tend to be one of the most popular and profitable collecting subjects on eBay.-

RUSSIA: 1860s-90s early classic issues fine lot on old album page sold for £128.00.

Dates as shown in that title are largely unnecessary because most potential buyers can judge age for themselves. However, sometimes you’ll find dates on the stamps themselves, as postmarks ,or on the album page, in which case you might include them in your title. But don’t work too hard finding those dates because today’s idea is based on listing as many album pages as you can while doing as little prior research as possible-GB Hong Kong 1874/1920-Lot of 49 Stamps & Revenue Hinged on Album Page went for £113.64

Again, dates are unnecessary but helpful all the same. Just don’t work too hard at finding them.-France ‘Instruction’ Stamps Sticked (sic) on Album Page went

for £105.90 Just four stamps on an album page and a very basic description. -India: Mixed Selection of Examples -On Album Page sold for £46.00 Can you imagine a more basic title?-Thailand: Mixed Collection on Part Album Page fetched £41.00

Tip

The fact is, the vast majority of people selling stamps on eBay lack specialist knowledge about stamps, so they

either:-Provide clear images to allow potential buyers to identify, date and assess value for themselves. -Use information provided by original collectors, usually on album pages. A lot of collectors describe stamps in writing beside the stamp and sometimes by listing Stanley Gibbons stamp number and current average price.

Stanley Gibbons price catalogue is the industry standard used by all major stamp dealers. If that information is provided for you, you should check a few entriesto make sure the details are correct, and then use that information in your listing titles. But that is by no means essential

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As you see, you don’t need specialist knowledge as long as you create clear images and / or use information provided by the original collector. Most such information will be accurate on a well laid out collection and on approvals booklets used to sell

stamps by post where buyers receive a selection of stamps usually hinged inside a small booklet from which they pick and pay for stamps they remove and return the remainder still in the booklet.