Stamps selling at ebay-Singapore

In my previous post, I have stopped stamp collecting at about the millennium year (2000).

At about 2004, I came to know that ebay-Singapore has started operation.  There is no listing or insertion fees when seller lists in ebay-Singapore, meaning that listing items on www.ebay.com.sg is completely free.

However, we have to bear in mind that our items will not be available to the majority of people when they search under www.ebay.com or at other overseas ebay sites.   Potential buyers have to come specifically to www.ebay.com.sg before they can see your listing.  That means your listing is not internationally listed.

My thinking was that rather than leaving my stamps in cold storage, why not test the water and see how the selling process works in ebay-Singapore.

I have created an eBay-Singapore Seller Account and started listing some of my stamps for sale on eBay-Singapore.

To be a good seller, you need to be clear about what you’re selling.  Use a good and simple title that explains in a few words what you have and the conditions of the stamps.  Then you need to show people what you’re selling.  For this, you’ll need a decent photo of the product.  Then, choose the most appropriate category in eBay so people can easily find it

For overseas buyers, as Paypal is the recommended method of payment on ebay (transactions are instant and linked to the buyer/seller's bank accounts securely), I have also created a Paypal account.

As there is no listing fees, if there is no bid on your item, you could just re-list it as many times as you wish.  As I do not require urgent money from my stamp collection, I just repeat the process of listing and re-listing.

I made the first sales in 2004 and as my stamps in my ebay listing were sold off, I listed new stamps for sales.  I have also made a record for the sales that went through in ebay.

Recently, I was curious how much I have sold in ebay-Singapore and tallied up my record.

Since the first sales in 2004, I have made over 1200+ sales and about $32,500 in values, averaging about $2,700 a year.  I have no idea so much money was locked up in my stamp collection.

My stamp collection is about half-way gone and selling stamps as one way of passive incomes will dry up one day.  .

Stamp Collecting - A child's Play

You may wonder why stamp collecting has anything to do with passive income.  Let me explain.

After I started my "Save at School" Stamps/POSB Saving Account, I developed a liking for those beautiful stamps and began my journey as a stamp collector.

Both my parents are from China and we have quite a lot of relatives there.  In those days before the telephone/cellphone era, the only mode of communication between Singapore and China was writing letters.

When the letters arrived, I eagerly cut out the stamps from the envelops, soaked the stamps off the papers in water, dried and aired them, then sorted and placed them in a small album.  I was young and had little skills then; and some stamps were inevitably destroyed in the process.

Those days we did not have electronic/video/computer games and most of the kids had simple hobbies such as collecting stamps, match boxes, bus tickets (those were colourful unlike the plain ones nowadays), etc.

Our group of friends then exchanged the excess stamps in our possessions to some other stamps that we liked.  It was just one-to-one exchange as we did not have idea on the value of the stamps then.

My stamps collection mainly concentrated on China and Singapore stamps.  I received a scolding from my parents when I paid $8 for the China 8c monkey stamp issued in 1978.

After I started work, I continued adding on to my China stamp collection.  I stopped about year 2000.  Partly because my collection was almost complete (except a few of those rare gems), and I found it not worthwhile to continue because the number of new stamp issues are too huge, practically making the new issues worthless.

To be continued......

My First Saving Account - POSB

I opened my first bank account at Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) when I was in primary school. In those days, we could buy postage stamps from our form teacher and paste them onto a card. That was the "Save at School" card with empty boxes where you could paste the stamps. After completing the stamp card, the teacher would collect it, hand it to the bank and deposit into our POSB account.

POSB was also a pioneer in a number of industry innovations, such as the GIRO electronic payment system, direct salary crediting and the automated teller machine (ATM), of which it had the largest network. POSB was truly the "people's bank" then.

After I started working, I continued to use POSB for all my banking transactions, including salary crediting, GIRO, current account with free cheque book, NETS, etc. POSB at those days was also the only bank with tax exemptions on interest paid to savers.

The "people's bank" came to an end in 1998 when POSB was brought over by DBS. Over the next few years, DBS came out with several measures that destroyed POSB's long held image of the "people's bank".

The introduction of monthly service fees for small accounts drew great unhappiness for many people, as depositors were incensed that DBS would sacrifice poor Singaporeans for its bottom line.

Then, DBS started charging monthly service for current accounts and we also have to pay for new cheque book issuance.

A government tax change also meant that POSB was no longer the only bank with tax exemptions on interest paid to savers.

Many Singaporeans spoke against the merger and against POSB's new parent, DBS.

I have closed my current account with POSB immediately and over the years, also transferred my salary crediting, GIRO payments, to other banks. I just maintain my POSB saving account with a small sum over the minimum sum, so that I can still use the POSB/DBS ATM network when necessary.

I have this irrational dislike for DBS that over the years, I do not have any account (other than the original POSB account), credit card, or any other products by DBS.

This really prevents me from buying into the toxic DBS high notes during the Lehman's saga.

My Stock Portfolio @ end February 2013

No.	STOCK NAME	% PORTFOLIO
1	Starhub	17.20%
2	SPH	17.16%
3	SGX	15.60%
4	CapitaLand	8.03%
5	CapitaMall Trust	6.62%
6	CDL HTrust	6.37%
7	Sing Tel	4.20%
8	SP Ausnet	4.09%
9	Suntec Reit	3.69%
10	Hyflux	3.61%
11	Starhill Global	3.59%
12	FE Orchard	2.25%
13	CapitaMalls Asia	2.14%
14	CitySpring	1.42%
15	SingPost	1.24%
16	FE HTrust	1.13%
17	HPH Trust	1.00%
18	Yeo Hiap Seng	0.66%

Movement in my portfolio in February:-
Sold:- SMRT, Global YellowPages.
Bought:- SPH.

Dividends collected in Feb: $401.72
2013 Avg Dividends/month: $290.57

My Stock Investment Journey

After the lesson of the CLOB shares, I did not stop from investing into the stock markets.  Because regular dividends payment from stocks are one of the passive income streams that I wish to set up.

However, I want to invest into stocks only on my extra cash, and on those blue chips in the Singapore stock market.  I want to make sure that even in the event that my whole stock portfolio is badly hit, there is no immediate impact on mine and my family's livelihood and commitments.

My holdings include companies that pay regular dividends, such as Starhub, SPH, SGX, Capitaland, CapitaMall Trust, SingTel, SP Ausnet, Suntec Reit and a few others.

That was just the case during the sub-prime crisis, I did not lose any sleep when my stock portfolio contracted by 50% and I was also holding a structured deposit (principal not protected) that was dangerously teetering on the brink of collapse.

I used some of my extra cash to invest into more stocks.  On hindsight, I regret that I was not aggressive enough then. 

On the other side, my structured deposit just managed to survive and I also collected the full payout of interest when it matured.

The CLOB shares saga

Although I am Singaporean, the first shares that I had were Malaysian shares.

In the old days, we could purchase Malaysian shares in Singapore through over-the-counter trade, the so-called Central Limit Order Book, or CLOB, as the market was known.

When I ventured out from the safe harbour of Fixed Deposit, I brought into CLOB shares, as they were very "hot", "affordable" and "have huge growth potential" at that time.  I brought into several counters and if I remember correctly, one of the counters was UEM.  I can't remember the other two counters now as the companies are probably no longer in existence.

Unluckily, a couple of months after I brought into CLOB shares, Malaysia unexpectedly introduced capital controls on Sept 1, 1998 (Asian Financial Crisis) and declared the trading of Malaysian shares on Singapore's Clob International to be illegal.  This caused the value of Malaysian shares traded on CLOB to freeze and we watched helplessly and in horror their values nose-dived steeply.

Or maybe luckily for me, I had just a short "incursion" into Malaysian shares and had just a small investment there.  Some of my friends and relatives are not so fortunate, they had their majority of fortune and stock portfolio in CLOB shares.

I lost 15K and this was a painful tuition fee for me.

My Poor Fixed Deposits

After I started working, I followed my parent's old path on savings.  Due to busy work schedules and occasional regional duties, I did not have much time to manage my finance actively.  I saved whatever I could and deposited the money into bank Fixed Deposit accounts.  At one point, I have 150K in FDs.

However, the FD interest rates kept dropping and FD was no longer the "cash cow" that it was in the old days.  Over the years, the interest rate finally dropped below the inflation rate and it became obvious that my money got eroded just by idling in the bank.

I tried to look around and there were several options:
1. Stock Investment to gain regular dividends.
2. Endowments and long term saving plans
3. Unit Trusts and Investment Linked Products.
4. Bonds
5. Property
6. Structured deposits offered by the banks (which they said "have high returns" and  are "perfectly safe" --- how could those giant US banks and the trusty old Lehman Brothers fail?  They tried to convince me into buying)
7. Multi-level Marketing.

I will blog on my experience with the above options in later posts.