Some statistics about my stamp exchange
As some know, I was visiting Helsinki, capital of Finland earlier this week. Though I had planned on writing some notes from the road, I didn’t manage to write a single line. Such is life, LOL. Anyway…While updating the summaries for my “open for all” stamp exchange page last night, I came up with an idea to share some more detailed statistics and opinions about it.
Shortly put, the stamp exchange page was launched Jan. 1st 2010, and in about 5+ months time my proposal has resulted to 48 stamp exchanges with fellow collectors locating in 19 different countries on all corners of the world. On average each exchanger has sent / received 1,6 covers… I must confess that the total number of exchanges has already exceeded my early expectations, but I’m not complaining 
Some of the covers I'll be mailing next monday.
The exchange covers have contained 4,812 stamps; of which 2,089 stamps have been exchanged. This means that on average 43% of sent stamps have been new / useful to me.
There are somewhat large differences between single exchanges and exchangers. On “worst” exchange only 12% of stamps was exchanged, on best case 90% of stamps changed ownership. I think that one of the major players on part of this is the quality of stamps sent for exchange: the rate of faulty stamps can vary from non-existing up to 50-60% (leading to very low exchange rate).
1998 Nigeria - France98 / Football World Cup. One of the stamps I have received this week. As many know, this years FIFA World Cup Football Championship 2010 games are held in South Africa... Personally I'm not a great fan of football, but my wife is. LOL.
To share some other random notes:
1965 Soviet Union - Automation. Another addition from this weeks exchanges... One of my projects for this summer will be learning to read Cyrillic alphabets properly.
One of my main concerns (way back in January) was that the cost per exchanged stamp would get very high. Luckily I was wrong. So far I have put 62,50€ worth of stamps to postage fees; meaning that the cost per exchanged stamp is approx. 2,99 (euro)cents…Compared to my private exchanges the costs per stamp is extremely high, but compared to commercial alternatives/stamp approvals it’s still very cheap and affordable way to increase my collection.
But that’s all for now… If you are new to my stamp exchange, please do check it out. And of course all comments and questions on the subject are welcomed.
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Congratulations Keijo! 43% keep rate sounds great! Seems you are getting great quality lots on average.
Are you also involved with chain letter exchanges like those organized on stampboards? It would be interesting to compare results.
Hi David,
Yes, I’m also involved to Stampboards chain exchanges. I’d say the percentages are somewhat similar. Sometimes there is plenty of useful stuff, sometimes not so much.
PS. Thanks for the fault notice. The code had a bug that caused the IQ test (and comments) to fail on Internet Explorer. Now things should be working fine once more.
I am happy for you in that this systems works so well for you. For my part, being a collector of classic period British Empire, U.S. and Canada stamps, and having collected stamps for more than 50 years, it would be no suprise to learn that such a method would not work for me. In the first place, I have had just about all of the more common stamps in my collection for many years, and missing items tend to be high in value and quite scarce. On the other side I have to offer higher value stamps to attract
items that I seek. As an example, one stamp I am offering is New South Wales #1. This is a four margin mint never hinged imperf with the clear impression and bright colour you would expect of a first stone impression. I am sure a major auction house, if I were to put it to auction, would start it at around £3,500.
Happy stampin’ you’all.
stamperschoice
Hi Allan,
and thanks… I think that better / valuable stamps are (and will always be) a bit tricky when it comes to stamp exchanging. Finding out a trading partner that has something of equal scarcity / value to offer can be somewhat hard with better items. And when you add very specific wants, it gets even damn more harder….Which is why my open for all stamp exchange disregards the catalog value or specific wants totally. It’s simply supposed to be a bit of fun for anyone interested in worldwide collecting.