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 | Strategies for Selling High-End Stamps
| Provide your customers the confidence they need to invest in your high-dollar philatelic items. Position your stamps business for the high end using the following strategies.
- Independent Verification: Verify the authenticity of your stamps with the help of a certified grading service or professional appraiser. Include a scan of your certificate of authenticity or appraisal report in your listing.Example: William Lang's Stampstore.
- Visual Proof: Include a gallery of images in your listing to show the stamp's overall condition, centering, color, and more. If an Error, provide a close-up of the mistake.
- Provenance: Provide a history of ownership for the item, which can increase its value. Also, consider including reference texts in your description, particularly those that feature the item or focus on its category. Help bidders conduct their own research.
- Guarantee: Stand behind your sales. Offer a money-back guarantee, minus shipping and third-party fees.Suggest an escrow service for the safe transfer of funds and property.
- Marketing: Invest in promotion, particularly eBay listing upgrades. They work -- learn more. Establish your credibility. List degrees, professional affiliations, and honors on your About Me page. Then, link to the page from your listings. Example: NobleSpirit.
- Pre-Qualify: Use eBay's Pre-approved Bidder service and Private Auctions format to hold private sales with pre-qualified participants.
- Feedback: Maintain a high positive feedback rating. Offer PayPal and ship the day payment clears for increased feedback.
Develop trust and credibility with your high-end stamp buyers from the start.
Have a suggestion for a future Stamps article -- let us know!
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Stamps Liquidation Tip
When is the best time to liquidate? This is a question business owners deal with frequently. If you are sitting on inventory that has been taking up important storage space, consider liquidating these slow movers to make room for new merchandise.
Consider the benefits:
- Reclaim Space: Make room in your warehouse or store for summer and fall inventory.
- Increase Capital: Boost cash flow for investment in holiday product.
- Generate Customers: Broaden your customer base with value-oriented shoppers.
Use these eBay strategies to liquidate inventory quickly and economically:
- Open Low, No Reserve: Increase bids, turnover. Open at $1 without a reserve price.
- Buy It Now: Reduce overstock fast; get paid sooner. Let customers buy immediately.
- Fixed Price: Lower sale costs. Offer multiples of an item in a single listing at one price.
- Good 'Til Cancelled: Avoid relisting. List overstock in your Store as GTC items.
- Store Merchandising: Create a "Sale" category in your Store.
- Sale Titles: Build interest. Include "Special," "Blowout," in listing titles.
- Liquidation Listing: Protect new product. Create an off-price listing template. Compare the original value to your rebated price.
You bought it, but you're not stuck with it. Liquidate to move the old and make room for the new!
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Grading and Certifying Stamps
Don't leave your stamp sales to chance. Have them professionally graded and certified by a reputable grading service.
Why is grading critical for your stamp sales:
- Stamp grading is complicated and time consuming for novices and experts.
- Novices and investors bid more confidently and frequently on certified stamps.
Professional grading services rate the overall condition and appearance of your stamps. Here are the factors they consider when grading:
- Overall Stamp Preservation (PSE scale up to 100)
- Used (note creases, other distractions/damage, cancellation issues)
- Unused (judge overall preservation of stamp)
- Centering
- Alpha grading scale (poor to gem/perfect)
- Numeric grading scale (PSE scale up to 100)
- Gum Condition (only a consideration for unused stamps)
- Hinged or Unhinged
- Original Gum amount remaining (from "no gum remaining" to "full original Gum remaining")
- Regummed (not original)
- Color/Eye Appeal
For more information on stamp grading and certification, visit:
http://www.psestamp.com/components.chtml
http://www.mcphilatelics.com/education/stampterms/stampterms.html
http://www.atoyholic.com/features/feat62.htm
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 | hadleigh (4316), Hadleigh Stamps
Acquiring and Maintaining Customers
| When PowerSeller John McDonnell formed Hadleigh Stamps a few years ago, eBay was part of his business plan. Today, eBay is crucial to his customer acquisition efforts.
"We now have 7,000 customers from all around the world," reports McDonnell. "Pretty much all of those—99 percent, I'd say—we have acquired through eBay."
With a staff of five and a specialization in British Commonwealth stamps, Hadleigh Stamps counts itself among the largest sellers of philatelic items on eBay, routinely averaging 3,000 listings. Recent updates to eBay's Seller's Assistant Pro have made overseeing such a high volume of inventory even easier, according to McDonnell.
Moreover, eBay's global reach has allowed McDonnell to cater to stamp enthusiasts everywhere. In fact, approximately half of the company's clients reside outside the United States. "This truly is a worldwide marketplace," notes McDonnell, who leverages the eBay listing upgrades Bold and Highlight to increase his products' visibility with domestic and international buyers.
Given the company's international focus and the nature of its merchandise, it's no wonder that high-quality images are extremely important to McDonnell. To ensure that his stamps are accurately presented, with proper detail and coloring, and that his overseas buyers have a high level of comfort when purchasing them, he employs a professional graphic artist to shoot and prepare his images.
Another key strategy: quick turnaround for the customer. "We ship everything the same day," explains McDonnell. "Very few dealers do that. For instance, we had 140 sales this morning. Every single one of those will go out in the afternoon."
That might not be possible if Hadleigh hadn't invested time in developing a well-articulated shipping policy and graphical price chart, which assesses manageable flat rates to both domestic and international purchases of multiple stamps.
This kind of service, and a steady, diverse supply of product, results in repeat patronage, says McDonnell, particularly at his eBay Store. Just consider the company's feedback rating. More than half of its feedback is from return buyers.
"Once we get new customers we tend to keep them," McDonnell says.
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Must use Buy It Now and PayPal.
