Buying stamps on ebay???

aris

Ok, so how do Costco sell 100 first class stamps for the equivalent 28.1p?

V1NNY

I first started buying first class stamps on ebay 2 years ago. Always the gummed or peel & stick ones & saving anything between £2 - £6 per hundred.

For the last year I have just been buying the peel & stick ones directly of one person for £22 per hundred (saving myself £8 per hundred in the process). It was never one whole sheet containing 100 stamps, but many smaller pieces with anything from 2 to 6 stamps on each (much like you get when you buy a book of stamps), but totalling 100 altogether.

The owner at my sub post office branch asked me where I was getting the stamps from, as I was always taking in parcels, which already had the correct postage stamps on them. I told him on the Internet as I was saving myself 25% +. He did however say he could offer me a 5% discount (which I declined.....I mean who wouldn't?), so that tells me that shops/sub post offices must be getting stamps in at anything between 7.5/15% below face value.

As mentioned in a previous post above, I have noticed that on ebay 100 x 1st class stamps have ended up selling for their face value or in sum cases, more than their face value. This is probably due to convenience, rather than get £30 & pop down to your local post office to buy them, some people would rather do it online & pay with paypal & have them delivered to their door.

Incidentally I won't be getting any more stamps, as the person I was buying them from emailed me recently saying that he is having a career change & will not be getting any more stamps......

Looks like I'll have to go back to the onwer of the sub post office & say I'll take the 5% discount on offer

aris

So where did this guy get all the stamps and was able to sell them at 25% discount?

V1NNY

aris wrote:

So where did this guy get all the stamps and was able to sell them at 25% discount?

That I never asked. He was selling them on ebay at £26 per hundrerd for a while & when I needed some more I emailed to find out if he had any more or when he was likely to be listing some up on ebay. He said I can purchase them directly from him for £22 per hundred.

HOLsale

aris wrote:

So where did this guy get all the stamps and was able to sell them at 25% discount?

i'd bet money he was a mystery shopper! i haven't worked for the company in question for nearly a year now and i STILL have postage, and i sell a lot on ebay!

tatts_2

you can exchange unused stamps at the post office for the face value ( at least you used to be able to!)

Perhaps some people pay the full price on ebay because their housebound and cant get to their post office? (maybe paying by card method) easier to get someone to post a letter/parcel for you on there way out, rather than asking them to queue up in the office for you, taking their time up and maybe a trust issue with handing someone money to do it for you (just a thought)

And from working in an office, we had plenty of staff that helped themselves to fistfuls of stamps (aswell as anything else not locked away!!!) perhaps thats another source for some sellers! dread to think just how many were nicked before every stamp had to be booked out! lol

Amba_Gambla

I used to work on saturday mornings in the local corner shop, and she used to send me to the post office to buy books of stamps at face value.

It was a convenience shop, and she hoped that people would come in and buy other stuff when they bought their stamps, so she wasn't too bothered about no profit...

nightswimmer

HOLsale wrote:

i'd bet money he was a mystery shopper!

What's a mystery shopper?

phatbear

I remember when I had to do the paying in for a shop I worked for that at the bottom of the paying slip it would say postal orders and stamps, thus meaning you could pay them into a bank, and if my memory serves when I was doing accountancy at college my lecturer said that stamps were actually legal tender.

Therefore if the above is still correct ie they can be paid into a bank or cashed in at the PO if you went to Costco and bought a shed load of stamps for less than face value you could make an instant profit by cashing em in, of course you'd have to go some to make much out of it but hell a profit is a profit!!!!

nads

nightswimmer wrote:

What's a mystery shopper?

Someone who visits shops, hotels and so on and reports back to head office on the service that was offered to them at the store. More info is in the Job seeking forum.

I do think buying dodgy stamps on ebay scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as moneysaving goes