Buyer Commissions Require Immediate Review

You must be kidding. Postcards is what makes Delcampe great, stamps (which are mostly junk IMHO anyway) is what clutters the site. Delcampe hardly ever acknowledges the postcard side of their business (in the magazines etc.), but they are what makes the site different from other platforms.

I was refering to non philatelic listings...not covers or post cards

A platform that doesn't try to get as many offers as possible, but actually wants to reduce the variety of offers, is something new. If you think about it, it would be best if there were no offers at all. No offers = no costs for the platform.

I collect postcards from a certain place privately. If I enter "Ansichtskarte xxx" picture postcard, (xxx=name of the town) into Google, I find Delcampe in about 80th place. All the other platforms and several dozen shops are ahead of it. It would make more sense to do something here. Reducing the offer has the opposite effect (the fewer offers, the more irrelevant for Google). Delcampe would probably end up in 100th place.

With SEO etc., the number of sales could also increase again. That would be more important than handing out T-shirts at flea markets. Or do sales also generate too many costs, so that the number of them also has to be reduced?

Hard drives (e.g. 32 TB) are now very cheap, by the way.

As I have said before under a similar post, the issue is about buyer perception.
If I sell an item at £1.99 which is keenly priced, the buyer sees that I am actually only getting £1.56.
That tells the buyer that they are paying £0.43 more than I am prepared to accept.
Under the original system, the buyer saw and paid £1.99. It was not known or any concern of theirs how much I paid to sell that item on Delcampe.
Therefore, they were happy to pay the price.
Picking up on the issue of low value items being grouped together, I have been trying this and it simply has not worked.
New collectors may be happy to buy 10 single issue sets for £2 but long time collectors have probably got 6 or 7 of these issues already.
They won’t pay for items they do not need.
Revert to sellers fees and allow low priced items for a limited period of time or a maximum amount per seller.

I notice you are in Canada. Are you suggesting 2 Canadian Dollar or 2 US Dollar. Delcampe is based in Eurozone, so would minimum be in Euros? Would it be same equivalent in each currency, and what would happen when exchange rates change on live listings?

I have been amalgamating, and even though I only sell covers not single stamps, it has been difficult. matching things up to sell. There are many niche items I'd prefer to list individually at £1 each, but with the new minimum per item buyer fee it's just not worth while doing so.
If its Delcampe's aim to get sellers to reduce the amount they list on Delcampe, then its working. I used to have about 10k listings, now I'm down to less than 5k, and I'm removing items daily. I aim to get down below 1k, I may start listing those £1 items elsewhere.

A big hello to everyone from France, natively Dutch.
I am very happy to learn that others then only French speaking community will be allowed to participate in the Q & A midst November. As private seller of stamp, postcards and minerals collection, my sales have roughly cut 50 % since the new rules. I've done all possible; reduced 10 % and more, made lots, made new pics and reloaded items, etc...
For stamps, it are scary moments each time someone buys only 'one' ... Will he/she/it pay with Mango or will it be PP...?
In occasions I've even made a loss when someone uses PP.
I can't not accept PP as I wish to offer customers a choice ; it 's already bad enough we can't accept their checks or bank transfers no more.
Many stamps have netto prices around 20 to 50 cents... with Delcampe fee included they now publish at 50 - 80 cents...
1. 30 cents per item + 10 % is way too much for items below 1 euro... This looks absolutely monstrous on a stamp of 30 cents...
2. Also from a psychological point of view it is not appealing for small priced items to present its price inclusive these fees of almost 50 % of the value as this brings on a complete aversion to buy.
I'd much rather prefer prices were presented dividedly. My price + separately Delcampe fees and then a total price. In this way the customer knows ahead how large these Delcampe's fees actually are and will probably better understand why many seller's of small priced items prefer Mango Pay instead of PP.
3. Delcampe indeed also has to work on promoting their website into Google. As Sammlerkalle already stated, they are almost non visible now... which is a shame for such a prominent site as Delcampe to find itself way behind.
4. Must be noted from a technological point of view and much to my surprise, the website works perfectly since the new changes ; the display of the items, the lay out of the different forms, etc... many platforms may take an example of this !
Hope November will bring some adjustments and relief in benefit of the small collector and seller...
And a good sale to everyone !

I've found amalgamating single values into a (part) set can work. For cheap stamps, if the buyer needs more than 2-3 from the set the amount saved in fees often more than offsets buying the additional unwanted stamps (especially as they are more likely to need the most expensive ones in a selection).

One of the problems with amalgamating multiple sets is that delcampe's search engine works against you. It does not by default search the full desciptions unless the buyer sets the parameters accordingly (which few probably know about, or how to do, you click the levers on the right of the search box to set, see screenshot). The title length prevents more than 1 on 2 sets to be included within the default search.

This means buyers are unable to find your lot titled '20 single value Canada Commemorative Sets (see description)' with each item typed out in the description in full. When a customer searches for '1958 National Health' or 'Canada SG 506' it won't return your lot with '1958 National Health. 5c Used. SG 506 ' within the description, only the sellers listing the set individually (and mentioning within the item title) will be returned and you lose the sale.

It doesn't matter. The base price would be set at a minimum of lets say 2 euros.

Is that really what you want? As you've probably noticed, the number of sales has fallen by more than 50 percent this year. I've just looked at the last 300 sales on this platform. 156 of them were under 2 euros. If your suggestion were implemented, the number of sales would be halved again.

Collectors often look for both. If they can only find cheap items elsewhere in the future, they will also buy the more expensive ones there, especially since they can then save the purchase fee for them (around 10 euros fee for a 100 euro item).

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Agree with some of your points. English is a minority language here (and there are other catelogues than SG) but for my speciality, the British Commonwealth, SG/English is the most used (just as Scott is for the USA and YT for France etc).

Could my example title be improved, probably. In my example, from 120 charecters, you have 6 charecters per set so you can't write a meaningful string to capure everything (and thats without your summary title, that takes it down to 5 charecters). You could add a few related words on the end but you end up with something that looks more like a SEO string or Instagram post with too many hashtags. Highlighting the rarest 1 or 2 items is probably best ('inc. 1958 National Health. SG 506'), but you still miss any searches on the remaining 18/19 sets.

You are probably better off listing individually so your lots remain visible when searched for as that is 18/19 more ways for a buyer to find your store. If someone is looking for an individual stamp they are more likely to pay a premium (including delcampe fees) to fill the gap.

Delcampe used to excel at filling these gaps (and cheaply due to competition) but now gaps are starting to appear more frequently (for my example set I could find this GBP0.10 catelogue used stamp 4 times, 0.33, 0.38, 0,40, 0.60) . Once people can't fill these gaps, or only at 6X catelogue the buyers who remain will go elsewhere.

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"we advise regrouping lower value items into lots and focusing on promoting higher value items"

Two problems with this:-

1) stamp collectors searching for odd values do not wish to buy "dog's dinner" lots containing additional unwanted items which further inflate the price for the sought item.

2) there are only a limited number of higher value items in circulation and a site such as this cannot rely solely on the revenue received from those sales as the main bulk of transactions has always been for those of a lower value. Despite Mr Delcampe's aspirations to emulate Mr Roumet by charging buyers' commissions and trying to focus on higher value items, this site will never be in that league.

If you are seriously worried about storage space, then I suggest you automatically delete unsold lots a year after the date of the original listing. This should clear a lot of junk that nobody wants.

I disagree with all the posters who said that cheap items offers than 1 year only clutter the place, and nobody wants them. I usually have hundreds of (cheap) postcards in my watching list that will be nice to have, and will only buy those together with one that I really want much more (often at a higher price). It is very convenient to get those other cards at a cheap price without having to pay extra for international postage. Hence, it may take several years until I really buy them. Deleting the older offers will only make sellers put them in again as a new items, thus really cluttering the site when browsing and searching for new stuff, and at the same time destroying all those watch lists. If they complain about storage space, this is just ridiculous, the cost must be nearly zero for individual items.

I don't support this idea. About 75 percent of the cards I sell here have been online for more than a year. Why would I want to do without them? Most collectors who are looking for something they're missing have probably chosen the "newest first" setting. It doesn't bother them that there is something on page thirty-four. If you were to do that at a flea market, most of the boxes would probably be empty. And as you can see, there are enough people there who look in the boxes and buy something.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. It’s been fantastic to see such active participation, and it really helps us all gain a broader understanding of the experiences and situations that other members are facing under the new commission system.

I won’t go into every single reply, but I’d like to share a few thoughts on the recent messages.

If Delcampe were to set a minimum price, it would likely be the first collectible marketplace to do so. We actively sell on two other platforms where no minimum price is enforced. Sellers can list items like trading cards and stamps for just a few cents, and these marketplaces support this without complaint. Additionally, of the three platforms we work with, Delcampe is the only one that charges the buyer directly rather than the seller.

Delcampe’s roots are in stamps and postcards, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. However, one major drawback of the site is its lack of effective SEO, which significantly impacts visibility and reach.

In many other ways, though, Delcampe has been the most professional platform we’ve worked on, with years of strong reputation and solid functionality. Delcampe also used to offer special pricing for professional sellers, which was much appreciated—but now, this special pricing is gone.

As a long-term seller, I can say that some of our items have been listed for years, and it’s always great when one of those finally sells. While Delcampe maintains the image and listing data, we store the physical item in our warehouse, ensuring everything is well-organized and referenced. Maintaining this storage has a cost for us, of course, but that’s part of the business we accept.

As some have already mentioned, storage for 100,000 to 600,000 images is not as costly as it used to be. Even factoring in additional expenses, the current €0.30 fee per item seems hard to justify.

For mint stamps (and similar items, like mint coins), Delcampe could implement an image pool where multiple sellers use a shared image. This could be restricted to trusted sellers or established vendors, for instance. With many sellers listing identical items, it seems inefficient that Delcampe has to store numerous copies of the same image.

Finding specific stamps, coins, or banknotes is easiest by navigating categories and searching by year. Categories may vary by language, but the year (1958, 1980, 1994) is universal and simplifies the process.

To address the current issues, my suggested solution would be:

No buyer fees—let sellers absorb platform costs.
Fixed item sale fees by price range, plus a 10% fee, all paid by the seller.
Slightly increased shop subscription fees, to help offset costs without impacting per-item sales.
No API fees—as mentioned previously, Delcampe is the only platform we use that charges for API access.
Please let’s keep sharing our ideas, so those attending the mid-November meeting have as much input as possible.

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"For mint stamps (and similar items, like mint coins), Delcampe could implement an image pool where multiple sellers use a shared image."

Absolutely not, a terrible idea which incorrectly assumes one mint stamp is the same as another. This ignores "centering", "gum condition", "perforation integrity", "brightness/fading", as well as overall appearance or wear and tear. One person's "mint" is another person's "unused".

It is essential that images used are of the actual item for sale. There are no shortcuts.

@baltija
"Image pool systems for items like stamps, trading cards, and coins have been successfully implemented on other marketplaces for years. I won’t mention specific sites, but these systems streamline operations by allowing efficient use of shared images, benefiting both sellers and platforms.

I agree that Delcampe would likely need agreements with Philatelic Bureaus to address copyright concerns, especially for stamps. Such an arrangement could help simplify listings and reduce storage needs while respecting copyright protections."

@4margins
"This is nothing new, but I understand your concerns. When it comes to centering, perforations, or minor flaws, I agree—there’s no substitute for an actual image of the item.

As for gum condition, sellers typically use a common chart, and I assume you wouldn’t expect every stamp to have a Mint Never Hinged back photo included.

And, of course, feedback plays a key role in building buyer confidence!"

"Most collectors who are looking for something they're missing have probably chosen the "newest first" setting. It doesn't bother them that there is something on page thirty-four."

Correct me if I am wrong on this, but I get the impression that every time an older unsold item is renewed, it then shows up on the first browsing page using the "newest first" setting. It doesn't stay on page thirty-four, but is repromoted as a new listing, meaning that regular browsers are seeing the same set of tired old listings every time a bulk seller has all his/her listings renewed, such that the browser is having to wade through all of these again in an attempt to find genuinely new listings.

In principal I have no objection to older items remaining on the site, but I don't want them repeatedly repromoted as "new" listings when they are not.

With the varying exchange rates that would mean the minimum value would be different depending on the currency listed in.