There is no question these mass sellers on e-bay are selling for a profit ,its a business .Did these buyers think they were smarter than the seller or did they think they were buying from a stupid seller who doesn't know the material...........give me a break .

The point I was making is the buying appetite is huge and its helping push prices higher .When you look at these large sellers on e-bay they have affected the market place .

The reason I purchase my stamps at a public auction is the ability to sit down and view the material for a few days before I bid on it ,it helps stop the crap on e-bay like this that I got last month and had to settle for something less . E-BAY PURCHASE .......paul

They purchase from national known stamp auction firms and compete in a open market place .

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There are only five and maybe six firms that sell unpicked over and non-maufactored bulk lots or collections.Then there are two dozen other auction houses who buy from these firms ,they breakdown the lots further and sell individual stamps at a lower catalog .So what we have is something like a three tier level of auction houses.Then a lower fourth level of dealers and e-bay sellers .

A few times on this board I mentioned to DJS that we should meet at one of these top tier firms and he can see and experience where the stamps come from that he is buying from the dealers at the shows ,these are the guys I meet in

The better auction housing will always have bulk lots and estate type collections with the mix of dealer inventories .Over the E-BAY years less and less of the consignment type bulk lots are being given to auction houses ,over the past thirty years of looking at and purchaseing that material more owner are listing and selling that cheaper material on e-bay .There were years before e-bay and after the collapse of the speculative stamp market collapsed that one could buy volumes and volumes of country collections full of cheap material {cheap material being less than $10.00 per item wether it was a complete set or a older stamp}.Remembering years when I could fill the back of a truck with boxes of albums ,collections and dealer cards of sets . This was also the time when the Scott catalog only listed face different stamps so a Gibbons or a Michel put the collector into a different world than other bidders at stamp auctions .It was a fun time when other dealers and collectors were pricing stamps at 1/10 of catalog and not willing to buy duplicates .It was a time when older material was coming on the market and other buyers wanted MNH or complete sets ,the older studies were being thrown into bulk lots .The attitude was if its not listed in Scotts its bulk material.

This all changed with e-bay ,then came the worldwide market place .

So I will agree with you the market place changes and the stamp market place is shifting again ,we will not see the vast collection and huge inventories going as often to the auction houses ,now collectors and dealers will sell off there stock on e-bay to get money to buy more better material ,which all comes down to prices increasing across the board ......paul

If these auction houses keep announcing strong sales and the buy ads are increasing in the philatelic press with bigger and bolder ads .The sellers who have over the years sold huge amounts of material on e-bay have to be getting to the point were demand is going to reach a new level and the inventories are running thin .We could see a spike in prices across the board.......paul

The sad news is that im unemployed and have zero funds in my stamp budget .So maybe we could have Mitch do a charity auction .