I have been in ebay since february of 2001 ( over 20 years ) and have never ever purchased a UPS ticket through ebay...This is for a couple of reasons...Firstly what is used is a pre printed sticker and l sell stamps. Most of the time i add USPS tracking as i believe ebay insists on it. Secondly the stickers are not philatelic or collectable like stamps are... I had used a lot of my huge stamp collection which i started in 1965 and as kids dont want it. They said to me " what do we want that S**T for dad???.. That told me everything. iI you take it to a dealer, they pay 50% ( if not less ) of face value of the general items and then a portion of catalogue value of the better items ( if you are lucky ) . The reason is because the younger generation shows no interest other than in mobile phones, texting and computer games so there is no point leaving the collections to the kids. I then decided to sell off the better items at 60% of retail mainly on ebay ( years ago ) and undercut the other sellers. That worked very well. Ebay got their fees , i got rid of the items at a bigger price and finally the buyers got a bargain (s). Buyers got onto me like bees on a honey pot and with the rest, i used them all on my packages what i sent out when i sold stuff on ebay. I loved to smother the packages ( no matter how big or small to get rid of as much as i can ) . I now buy all the defective hinged ( MLH ) , perfs missing , corners missing that i can find and those i use on the non philatelic items like coins, medallions, cards , banknotes , militaria etc. After all they belong to me and i can do what i like with them. I am going to add a few pictures of a couple of packages i had sent to brazil and you will see i got rid of a lot on it. This package was all from ebay years ago. With me doing this with the package, i know he would appreciate stamps on his package and not just a dumb adhesive label . He is a stamp collector. Inside his package were sheets of unused cinderella stamps. That adress is crossed out for the buyers protection...This not only got me full face value but it saved me paying more shipping costs at the post office as in years gone by as l already paid for the stamps over the post office counter. I also got an extra 50% of the face value rather than sell to a dealer.... Over the years i have used up about 70% of my stamps i have but there are a number of very high values ( over the $10 mark ) i am yet to use on packages as i dont do priority mail very much now because the buyers dont want to pay that high price. The only difference is about 4 days from normal mail to priority so i decide to save the buyers some money. Eventually i will get to use those big ones up somehow.... I cannot tell you what to do or not do but i really hope i dont have to come back and say " I TOLD YOU SO...lol " Again all i can say is have some sort of tracking . What i do is when i go to a stamp show, and i see someone is not doing much business, that is the person i go over to and ask them for a deal on unused postage stamps they dont need.
Usually they will like to get rid of values 20c and under.... What is the difference between using 20 x 5c stamps or 2 x 50c stamps?? Usually the price is 50% of face value but it also depends on how much l or anyone else wants to spend. I say the more one spends, the better the discount. Then that will counter act the ebay fees you have to pay out. Ebay will still get all their fees but it wont come out of your pocket or profits from the items old. Personally i would love to be paying ebay $1000.00 in fees every month. Can you imagine how much would be sold as their commission is close to 10%??? I guess that will never happen nowadays...lol...However you will do as you want....OIO
