World Currency And Ebay...

By way of background, I've been collecting, buying, and selling all sorts of collectibles for the last 30 or so years. In the pre-Internet days it was selling comic books on Usenet. In the 2000s I was heavily into raw and slabbed U.S. and world coins, especially non-U.S. rainbow toners. For the last 8-10 years, my collecting and trafficking focus has been on Civil War-era U.S. revenue stamps and documents.

I've used ebay since 1998 and have had an ebay store for 10+ years now.

That's a longwinded way of saying that I'm no newb and am familiar with ebay dynamics when it comes to collectibles and the price ranges that one can usually expect for raw and graded types of collectibles... or so I thought.

I haven't done anything with U.S. or world currency for a LONG time. However, recently a collection of world currency came through the local watering hole and I and several other people have been picking through it. I've been buying pieces with an eye towards higher-grade pieces (XF or better) and using the 3 Krause catalogs as my pricing guide.

I tend to be a very conservative buyer and grader (IMO of course) when it comes to collectibles. I figured this would be an experiment and/or learning experience, given that I have not been active in the currency field for so long.

With coins and ESPECIALLY stamps, I'm used to items selling for considerably below "book value". Before I list something I usually look for similar examples (1) currently available on ebay, and more importantly (2) that have sold and what they realized.

I have been shocked at just how much currency material sells for at or above full price guide values. I've listed several items at prices that I thought were fairly aggressive (high) only to have very fair offers come through in short order, or sell outright. In one case I had 3 offers come in within 6 hours and before I could respond to any of them, the item sold at my asking price.

Another interesting aspect is that interest appears to be all over the map with respect to both country and era. In other words, areas where I would expect interest to be dead based upon what I know of stamps, e.g., Central and South American countries, appear to have a ton of activity. Modern or semi-modern material appears to have buyers, not just classic material.

I've been getting PMs on ebay from people both domestic and overseas asking "What else do you have from country X?"

My appologies if this is old hat to most, but I'm very suprised at how active the world currency market appears to be. It seems to be somewhat of a seller's market (assuming the seller is at least somewhat reasonable).

Are buyers starved for fresh material?