Getting organized for trading (or even selling)

I have only done a little so far-  for trading, it's a matter of deciding if I want to get it all gone (in which case recipient deals with dupes), or if there is a want list and  i try to fill as many spots as I am able.  For selling I will go with smaller lots by year, or a series. Sometimes if I have left-overs from a "study lot", when I'm done I sell  it as another "study" lot.

As I don't have  a tremendous amount of high value stamps i typically start with a low opening bid and let it go as it will, or at whatever I can recall the opening bid being when I acquired it (or what similar lots are starting at)


and I typically don't have too many things going at any one time-  right now I'm slowly working on another forum members want list and have the one small giveaway.... which for now is just the right amount!

This isn't specific to trading, but it's how I handle temporary holdings. My new acquisitions go into Vario sheets for scanning. I hole punch a piece of paper and insert it between Vario sheets, and then as I add new stamps, I write any i.d. info on the facing page in the corresponding position. (I typically put something under the paper I'm writing on, or if I'm adding a large number of stamps, I'll just pull it out of the binder.)

I don't get the benefit of having the i.d. on the little piece of paper right in the scan with the stamp, but it takes up less room on the Vario page, and I don't like those little pieces of paper floating around. If you're scanning a Vario page, it only takes another second to scan the i.d. page, and when you sort your image files by date, they'll be in consecutive order. Pretty simple.

Hi Al - angore - I promised I'd get back to you with some trading tips. Well - here's my two cents (and change! LOL). 

There are many ways to trade but a great deal depends on what you have available to trade. If you have many higher catalog value items, you wouldn't want to trade one for one for lower value items, right? So in that case, trading by catalog value would be your best bet. Sometimes you won't use the same catalogs so one person will have to do the valuing. I'm perfectly happy to delegate that job!

If you have nicer stamps that don't have a high catalog value - recent material is a good example - you'd do better to use something like Colnect for trading where you can each pick the stamps that you want to give and get.

If you have a bunch of very common stamps, it's fun to find someone who has the same situation, but with different countries. This would work perfectly for one for one trades. You can either do a pick and choose deal or you can send 100 for 100 or something like that and accept all that your receive. 

If you have large numbers of common stamps and don't want to trade for more mixes of common stamps you can try a strategy that I've recently adopted to great success. Pick a fairly common area that you really enjoy and wish to flyspeck or study in detail for plate varieties, watermarks, cancels etc. I picked Ireland. I offer trading lots at extremely generous trading terms. For example, I have lots of 100+ different USA that I will trade for a mix of only 25 Ireland small and large and I accept duplication. Doing this, I have traded piles of very common stamps and I've acquired a mountain of Ireland to study. Yes, I'm getting FEWER, but the only other options for moving those stamps out of my stockbooks was to donate them or do a giveaway, sell them for a few pennies (not worth the time and hassle to me) or toss them in a trash bin. While I have donated thousands to the Holocaust project, some stamps are too darn nice to cut up or glue into artwork.

If your collection is very advanced or if you only collect a very narrow range of countries, eras or themes it will be much tougher for your trading friends to find something that you need. Again, using a trading site like Colnect would be very advantageous to you. Wish lists become a necessity at this point.

If you are a generalist - a world wide collector who collects everything - then trading will be just fantastic for you! You might want to look into joining clubs like the Worldwide stamps collectors group - I'm not a member, but they are called the ISWSC here is the link: ISWSC link 

I can also highly recommend placing an ad on "Trade Only Stamps". Trade only stamps link  It is free. I placed a trading ad for my Japan trade/giveaway on TOS plus FOUR different forums. I received more responses from TOS than all the four forums combined. If you end up using it extensively, it is nice to send a donation of stamps or money to the fellow in the Netherlands who does all the work.

I strongly suggest not sending large trades in either value or quantity until a measure of trust is established with a new trading friend. Try to not make your trade too attractive to thieves by not using extremely good stamps on the cover or have a bunch of stickers or other silliness. I need to heed that advice myself - I tend to decorate my envelopes like a dummy. I've had three missing trades in the last six months - one to Argentina, one to Sweden and lastly one lost to Croatia. A recent trade to Canada took six weeks to arrive and appeared to have been opened. But all the contents seem to have arrived.

In the past it was considered good manners to soak stamps before trading. Nowadays with all the self adhesives, you will often get stamps on paper. You can set your terms if you don't want anything like that. For example, I make it very clear that I do NOT collect Irish self adhesives. You can specify postally used and no CTOs - whatever is important to you. But make it very clear up front so that people aren't shipping stamps all around the globe that you don't want.

You do NOT have to accept whatever someone sends you. If a trader ignores your requests and sends something you can't use, send it back. If a trading partner is a problem drop them. Don't waste your time on people who are excessively greedy or who only send garbage.

Never send damaged stamps unless they are a gift or the person knows and agrees to the spacefiller. If they send damaged to you send them back!

Lastly - have fun! You will end up making some wonderful friendships through trading.

Ask a woman to talk about one of her favorite topics and you’ll probably get a heck of a lot of jibber jabber! Don’t contact the PC police about that comment - I’m a gal so I can make fun of us girls, righty right? 

BTW, My sisters like to joke that our jaw muscles are the most well developed muscle group in our bodies - Olympic level even!  haha!