Auction Catalogs

Twenty years ago stamp auction companies were defined by their auction catalogs. We competed with each other to produce the biggest and the best, assuming that this was what our customers wanted. The reality is that this was what we wanted and we did this largely for ourselves and to facilitate our sense of grandure vis a vis our competitors. Did our customers care about catalog production values? Probably, but not as much as we did. This is proven by the fact that today virtually every bid we receive comes from our on line auction catalog listings at Stampauctionnetwork.com from people who never see our hard copy catalogs. Other auctioneers produce catalogs, often ornate book length affairs but mostly this is for advertising purposes-trying to convince future sellers that the auction house can do an effective job marketing their material. In terms of selling stamps today, everyone’s catalog looks the same on Stampauctionnetwork and everyone lists their auctions there. Hard copy catalogs have the disadvantage of long production and mailing delays and worries over whether buyers have received them or not. Hard copy catalogs are prohibitively expensive to send to small and moderate buyers ( collectors who spend under $5000 per year) or overseas buyers (I just received an auction catalog from a dinosaur German stamp auction company with over 23 Euros postage on the envelope, not to mention the catalog printing cost which was enormous). Eliminating hard copy catalogs allows a stamp auction company to concentrate the savings on customer service-offering more and smaller lots to attract different buyers, having a satisfaction guaranteed policy, guaranteeing every lot forever, and shipping all lots withing 48 hours of the sale. It’s simply a matter of time until stamp auction catalogs become even more unusual, reserved for special high value one owner sales and no longer part of main stream philatelic auction buying.