I recently received a fair number of old stamps jumbled into emvelopes from a relative who cleaning house prior to downsizing. Is there a good way to get Vario pages in larger lots with a lower per-sheet cost or are they only offered in packages of five?
Mit_63 sells 25 sheet packs for $15.45 plus $6.45 shipping. From what I can tell, shipping per pack so no discount for multiple different items. (Yeah, I have been looking too)
They seem to be sold in packages of 5. This site https://www.globalstamps.com/Safe-TBlackStockPages.htm
has them 5 for $5.95 or 50 for $50.00
Subway seems only to sell 5 @ $4.60 or 10 @ $4.37 presumably per 5. But may offer discounts for larger purchases, maybe email them.
This site sells them at the equivalent US of $3.25 but shipping costs may make it too expensive. https://www.greatbritainstamps.net/
Seems like a normal case of retail price maintenance or dealer costs being very similar.
You might try fvhstamps.com. Current price is $5.59 CDN, with further discounts if you buy 10 or 25 pkgs. You can also get half the postage cost refunded if you return the stamps he uses.
Musicman, went to the link but found none with free shipping and Mit_63 does not ship to Canada in any case. In fact it seems he only wants to ship to USA.
As my first post said, I see some varios with free shipping but all are clear pages. If there is a link to a specific 4 or 5 pocket vario in black with free shipping please post link for that item. If they would combine shipping for multiple items I would be happy and plan to ask.
These show as "Fast & Free" shipping for me. (I'm in California.) If it's not showing for you, perhaps you need to be logged in to eBay in order to see the shipping. If you are already logged in to eBay, perhaps the most recent location cookie it has for you is not "US". (I know I sometimes change my location to an overseas country to make sure my listings have the correct international charge. Sometimes I forget to switch it back, and then I have sticker-shock over shipping on something here in the US that ought to be about $3 but shows as $20+!)
I hope that's helpful!
-- Dave
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
PS: If you're not sure what the eBay "location beacon" is showing for you, then within any eBay listing, scroll down and click on the "Shipping and payments" tab, which is right next to the "Description" tab.
The listing will show you where eBay thinks you're most recently located, and you can change it to the correct location. (And in the US, a field to add the zipcode too.)
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
The link worked and a learning lesson on ebay search. If I do a search and even sort by lowest price I do not see them anywhere near the top of the list. I need to refine my search criteria or just search on seller. I wonder if someone can pay to be near the top.
From what I'm reading in a few eCommerce sellers groups, something has really gone awry in search recently, within the last month or so. Sellers who have consistently had monthly sales in the $5-10-20k/month range are all of a sudden having weeks with sales of under $100, or no sales at all. (And these are not sellers who are being disciplined in some way.)
It's happening to a wide range of sellers in a lot of different product areas, enough so that it's looking like an alteration in eBay's search algorithm has really gone awry. However, some sellers do not seem to be affected by it. So, who knows?
eBay's search algorithm is proprietary, the way Google's is, in order that businesses don't figure out ways to game the search, but it's making it quite a bit more difficult for some, if not many, sellers, and for some buyers who can no longer consistently find what they're looking for.
(This is just my opinion, but I think if eBay doesn't figure out how to fix this, or even to address that there is a problem, or if they determine that there is no problem, that you'll start seeing more news about this in the business press in the coming weeks. And I do personally know of large sellers who are now preparing to sell on alternative venues, because they can't get found on eBay all of a sudden.)
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
Yes. eBay now has a program for sellers with eBay stores called "promoted listings". It's like buying Google ad words. eBay is now "pay to play."
eBay also favors the search results of sellers with the quickest handling times (1 day or same day), whose listings offer free shipping, free returns (i.e., seller pays for the returns if a buyer wants to return it for any reason), guaranteed delivery (that's the big new program for the holidays, and some experienced people think that's what has caused a programming bug), etc.
Plus, the higher the sell-through rate for a seller, the more likely they are to be higher up the listings. That means that sellers with narrow, specialized offerings (like Swiss pro-Juventute booklets, or Japanese prefectural booklet panes, just speaking personally) get pushed way down in the returned search results, because these are not popular items. (The exception being if someone specifically looks for that particular item. It has to be nearly an exact match between the words in the search request and the listing title. In those cases, those obscure items pop to the top.)
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"You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone. (Hoots the Owl -- Sesame Street)"
Thanks for the hints. I'll certainly check out eBay and the recommended sellers. Given that Lighthouse sheets only sells Vario sheets five at a time, I do wonder where the larger bundles come from. Are they used? Or are they clones? I'm actually curious now.
I just received an order of 50 Vario pages (2 packs of 25) from mit_63 for $30.90 with free shipping. Interestingly, the price has gone up to $20.45 now!
I have already put some of them to use organizing my Singapore stamps. I have given up on hagner pages. They just do not work well especially later vintage - stamps and ID tags fall out too easily. The primary disadvantage is if you use a 5 pocket there is a little extra handling needed to insert stamp.