'Hip Value' doesn't work on covers!!!!!
I've been listing a handful of used Postal Stationary and each has had an un-wanted 'Hip Value' added to its listing. The 'Hip Value' only values used postal stationary and doesn't take into account postal history such as cachets, auxiliary markings, up-ratings, fancy cancels, and the like. With the much lower 'Hip Values' erroneously assigned, Hip is making it look like I'm trying to pull a fast one, when in fact the prices asked are already generally lower than can be found elsewhere. For example, a US Scott U352 I listed, Hip values at $3.75. Meanwhile the cover's verso has all-over advertising. $3.75????? In yer dreams! I call BULLSCHIDT!
Comments
I have a concern. This situation occurred a couple times in my listings.
As an example, I listed a stamp set like Scott # 's 400-404. There is a hipvalue banner for 400 only attached to it. If you hover on the hipvalue it says, as example, 10 of #400 sold for $1.00. I have a price of $3.00 for the set of 5. My concern is lazy human shoppers that won't take the time to hover and will bypass the listing because of the lower hipvalue price being displayed.
I'd say pile on. If you haven't, send these comments to support. Thats seems to be the only way to get things fixed. They could show us their values without attaching them to our listings. It is almost as if they are trying to set the value for the shopper rather than letting us set our own price.
"Almost" nothing they could do would result in a mass exodus quicker. It is quite unnerving.
Even if this is accurate, its clear that many sellers on HipStamp are also buyers, so the optics still stink. Further, its hard enough to get shoppers to read the detailed descriptions as it is, so adding something that doesn't fly and putting it in one's face will only lessen the likelihood of further investigation. To be clear, my gripe is with postal history...there isn't an algorithm on the planet that can evaluate all the nuances that come with a cover, so I'm left with some valuation that says a $20 cover is only worth a buck-and-a-half. Utter nonsense!
Which begs the question, why waste valuable title space(as good citizens we are supposed to have descriptive titles) requiring the word Mint as well as NH? A title use of F-VF, for example, feeds into the magic categories as F-VF. But NH can't "magically" be Mint(NH)... Programming quirk or just lazy? Who knows. I have contacted support but I doubt they will do anything about it. If anyone else has noticed this then feel free to bug support about it.
In terms of the HIP value, I do ignore it having sold 20K+ US plate blocks here... I think I know the market. What I have noticed is that if you look at the HIP value, it appears to be an arithmetic average of the sales for that Scott number in that condition(either NH, unused or used) including auctions and fixed price sales. This gives a distorted view especially if there are outliers(like totally substandard examples or auctions that end at 1 cent because nobody showed up). I have suggested, again to support, that they use the median value which at least might get you closer to a true "average" value for the normal collectible example. Of course further complicating matters is that the HIP value is distorted because it does not account for "true" centering(one man's Superb is another's F-VF), other condition issues(perf or selvedge issues for example) or a buyers true cost when factoring in shipping.
Dismounting from soapbox.
Bob
I have no dog in this fight. As far as for what I am doing the Hipvalues are USELESS. 2 reasons why, first I try to adjust my prices according to the most recent Scott's that I have which is no older than 2 years. Scott's in their wisdom has been known to adjust some of their prices downwards at times as much as 35-75 % of their cat value. (They did that a few cat on Brazil) You have a number of sellers that are using cat values from 2016 and older. Hipstamp does not show which cat the seller is using, does not show when that listing was first posted, and does not show when it was sold, if those items were sold 2 years ago and priced according to a Scott's 2016 how accurate are those prices really going to be?
My grandfather once taught me a very important lesson when I was a kid. Don't piss into the wind. Taking HipValues seriously is like pissing into the wind. Do it once then you'll decide to turn around next time....maybe.
“It would be nice if the HipStamp programmers took it on themselves to fix things instead of finding some way to make things worse”
I used to code and did it for years starting with FORTRAN.
In later years when we were able to get away from punch cards and write the code we would test out a program in the sandbox before we even went to beta. In recent years that has been completely thrown out the window and what happens is coders now try to patch a code into and existing program without doing the complete testing on it to make sure it completely works in all situations that might come up. They do this to save money or out of complete laziness.
It is a shame because it causes problems for the people trying to use the site.
There is no doubt that coding has changed dramatically lately. And not for the better. It has a lot to do with my decision to retire from the field.