Recently there was a very unusual amount of bidding on group of Korean Empire stamps on eBay that had around nine different bidders with the winning bid at $1200. This set of stamps was brought to the attention of the Korea Stamp Society (KSS) by a reader of the website with three days left in the bidding, when the highest bid at that time was $700. The reader asked “why was the price so high?”
That was a very good question as various members of the KSS looked at the stamps and it appeared very quickly that to them a number of the stamps were obvious fakes, almost all of the Korea second issues appeared to be fake with only two of 5 poon looking to be genuine, the 5 poon used with double circle cancellation and the unused 1st print unused 5 poon. All the Plum Blossom stamps appear to be genuine. But even these genuine stamps are very common. It was then thought that maybe the 3 ch orange had a special cancel that was causing the bidding.
This is Ebay. A stamp I had sold for 99 euro cents on Delcampe.net sold for usd 99.– on Ebay, while I was still selling that stamp for euro 2.90 of Delcampe. Somebody just wanted that stamp or those stamps at any cost at that particular time. Still, there might be another reason… Note that the other way around happens as well on Ebay on auctions, as day and timing of the end of the sale, and the time of the year are important as well.