Stanley Gibbons Interims - bad as expected but...heck I've bought the shares

Comments

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   wildrides

   22 November 2015, 09:09

   Oh my god ( said in best made in Essex accent ) . Tom you really dont get it do you ? The NAV is stamps ……….. only Stanley Gibbons in the entire world thinks stamps are worth anything at all . Thus their stock is priced unrealistically high. The market is flooded by collections of high quality assembled by old folk who are dying . They get passed to relatives who attempt to sell them forth with . Anyone who likes collecting stamps is over 80 years old now . The market is shrinking . Snail mail means nothing to the young and never will . Its dead or dying . Hurrah for sanity . The end is nigh for stamp collecting ……… the worlds dullest hobby . I heard that a power station was interested in burning stamps instead of coal .
   Now if only I could work out a way of monitising train spotting ?

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   JASPERTHERDOG

   22 November 2015, 10:30

   Much of what you say may be true and I wish the board well in their endeavours. But on the matter of stock valuation I would tread very cautiously. What SGI deal in is ephemera, items without any intrinsic value. The value attributed to the stock, the cost, is what SGI was prepared to pay for it some months and years ago. There is positive evidence that the market is not that keen on what they are peddling, otherwise the sales would be there to show for it. Furthermore, the stamp and antiques world is small and very gossipy. With one of the global players so obviously in trouble and struggling for sales, I would suggest there will be the smell of blood in the water with the circling sharks not far away. It’s not as though SGI’s stocks can be liquidated either at short notice or with the manufacturer’s factory gate price as a backstop. Substantial quantities of well known artifacts hitting the auction market all at once will undoubtedly harm the prices.
   I wish you well, but be prepared for the long haul! I’ll sit this one out, in the mean time.

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   J P Spaghetti

   22 November 2015, 12:32

   “the worlds dullest hobby”

   Of course, at one time it was anything but – it offered glimpses of the exotic and colourful insights into far off lands that seemed the stuff of legend. I still remember a set I had aged 9 or 10 or so from Mongolia that were – if memory serves – triangular. TRIANGULAR! I’m sure I had some from elsewhere that were octagonal.

   That was in the days before the ‘net, however…

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   David Russell

   23 November 2015, 04:40

   Never looked at this company but sometimes you have to go with your gut feelings right or wrong. My mate collects stamps but also collect anything he can sell at profit.He calls it his pension pot.

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   PJBCHELSEA

   23 November 2015, 04:52

   Well….. I work in this industry and the market for selling stamps as collectibles is very strong, But SG are selling stamps as an investment which they are not except for anyone working in the industry (i.e. buy at one price and sell at a higher one). SG has pissed away £millions on their internet / web based offerings with no tangible result, it is interesting to look at their past 3/4 years results and you will see how the messages extolling the benefits of their investment in their web offering was going to transform the company…. They certainly had the name to do just that, they could and should be the ‘Ebay’ for stamps in the UK if not worldwide but they have manifestly failed with that because they have a boardroom full of bankers, accountants and solicitors but not one philatelist. Just check how much cash has been spent on their internet foray, which is now conspicuous by the absence of any mention in their announcements, whereas it was the holy grail just a short while ago, possibly the biggest admission of failure on that score you will get.

   SG should stick to what they do best, publishing their catalogue range and sell stamps to collectors NOT investors (which is really a ponzi scheme, since they sell the stamps and also set the catalogue prices against which their SG index of stamps is measured – it does not take a genius to realise that the constituent stamps of the index will not be marked down in price.

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   rob

   23 November 2015, 06:44

   I agree with Wildrides, I sold my stamp collection individually and in lots on ebay last year, some of the ones I thought would be worth loads when I bought them in the 70’s I couldnt get rid of for 10p and sold as a job lot for anything that remained, the decent ones were easy to get shot of to the anoraks who thought they were gold dust !
   All in all I sold for around £200, if I’d taken them to a professional I’d have been lucky to get a tenner !