Hi goodcatch2 - There is a way to combat the way ebay charges fees on postage or shipping...Just search ebay for bulk lots of mint stamps ( no matter the face values ) and as long as you can buy them between 80 to 85% of face value. That is what i do . Then the expense of you being charged fees on the price of the postage or shipping will be covered....I started doing this with stamps with an investment of $100.00 in the year 1974 when i left school. I was only 17 years old then and am almost 61 now. My dad lent me the money. I told him he would be paid back in 12 months with an earn of 10% ( totalling $110.00 ) I actually paid him back before the 12 months was up. I then compounded it all and the profit i made bought more stamps and so on. Sort of like getting compound intrest in the bank but a different format. That was when i was in australia... That was going on for 35 years and I then moved to ohio in 2011 and before my move to the states, i then went to stamp shows in Sydney and Melbourne and traded my aussie stamps for USA stamps at 90% their way for any mint USA stamps.... That means $1,000.00 of australian stamps i received back $900.00 USA stamps. We did not worry about conversion rates. The dealers had to make a profit and i was willing to take the lossof 10% as i saw the bigger picture..What was the use keeping the australian stamps when they were not useful for me overseas in USA and the usa stamps were not useful for them in Australia so it was a win win situation. After all was finnished , i sent over to a family member in AZ $17,000 ( face value ) of USA stamps and picked it up on the way through to OHIO.
If you can picture, the package was a bit bigger than a medium priority mail box. On top of that, the rest of the money i eart from the stamps paid for my shippig container from AU to USA. That was close to $10,000 itself.
I saw the large scale of things as you can see...The package was there when we arrived in the states in August of 2011. Those stamps now are what i use to send packages back home to family in Australia and all my ebay packages i ship of today... I even pay for tracking ( as that is what ebay insists ) with the stamps. I make sure to scan the packages before i send to the buyer and send them a message through ebay so they know what to expect in the mail and that ebay has it on record. I can show a package in here but cannot show you the side with the adress due to buyers privacy. ... The first thing you have to do is to decide what amount of money you want to spend as your initial investment into the stamps and what values you want to buy. The lower the face value, i can promise you the bigger discount you will get as most dealers are lazy and simply dont want o play around with the smaller values. That is where i gain from it all. You may even be able to buy them at 60% depending on what mood the stamp dealer is in. There was one time on the back of a medium priority mail box, i placed a full sheet of 4c stamps. That in itself was only $2 face value but higher denominations ( grand total of 11.65 ) were placed on the edges and top to make up the price to ship...... The biggest amounts of stamp values i purchased were 3c 4c 5c 8c and 13c stamps. There were absolutely hundreds of sheets of stamps that i bought from 1 seller in ebay. They were mostly 3c stamps. At the back of a small priority mail box, one can fit 25 x 3c stamps and then the balance is on the other sides. Most people these days are lazy and dont want to do the work. That is their loss i guess.
Me personally all i see is approx a 15-20% for sticking stamps on a package.. AND THAT IS AT NO RISK!!!! So let ebay charge fees on the shipping as personally i dont care.... I have worked a way to combat that loss of fees on the postage or shipping. No one can win with ebay and that is that. We simply have to look after ourselves in one form or another and try to make up for the fees we have to fork out to ebay.
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Just remember ebay is a company and needs fees to pay their staff. If they cant pay their staff then the staff go elsewhere to look for a job...Then it is all downhill and ebay will be vaporized so to speak...So you either pay the fees and make up for it in another format or simply dont bother... BTW, i am not on ebays side so dont get that into your heads.... I simply have found a method so my fees paid to ebay from paypal are taken care of and dont come out of the price i sell my items for in the ebay auctions. I had to spend my money to make the money....Just like what Kevin O'Leary says on shark tank.
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I cannot tell you what to do but i have proven to myself that stamps do not devalue and are always usable
as long as they are mint with the glue on the back.
You can ignore me or take note but i did not retire before the age of 55 and purchased my first home at 27 ( with no mortgage ) because it was wrong and did not earn money for me.
Regards oz_in_ohio
