Published: 30 May 2026 by Dan Williams
Series: Notes on eBay & Discovery
Observations from selling stamps on eBay.
The Statement Sounds Wrong
Taken literally, it really is wrong – a £1 stamp is not worth more than a £50 stamp.
If I sell one item for £50 and another for £1, the £50 item obviously produces more revenue.
But over the last couple of years I have been thinking about value slightly differently.
Not the item value of each item, but system value.
And in that context, some lower value items could contribute far more than their selling price would suggest.
The Traditional View
Most sellers naturally focus on:
- margin
- selling price
- turnover
and understandably so.
The goal of a listing is commonly assumed to be: generate a sale.
That remains true.
But more often I’m suspecting some listings also serve another purpose.
They act as entry points.
The Entry Point Theory
Consider two items.
The first could be a specialist item listed at £50.
The second is a more common item, maybe still an interesting item, listed at £1 for example.
The £50 item may eventually sell and generate a decent return.
The £1 item may attract:
- more views
- more clicks
- more casual interest
- more browsing
because the decision to engage is lower risk.
That buyer may then do any of the following in isolation or combination:
- browse further
- discover related items
- view the sellers’ storefront
- add other items to their basket
- return later
The £1 item becomes the beginning of a buyer journey rather than the end of one.
What I Started Noticing
While selling stamps on eBay I have been noticing an occasional pattern emerging.
Some lower value items sometimes generate activity far beyond what their price might justify.
Buyers sometimes:
- purchase several items together
- return later and make another purchase
- save the seller
- move through related inventory
In many cases the original item appeared less important than the downstream value, or halo effect, of what happened afterwards..
The sale itself was only one part of the story.
Recommendations Change The Equation
This idea became more interesting after reading some of eBay’s engineering articles online.
Modern marketplaces increasingly appear to think in terms of:
- recommendations
- similarity
- buyer behaviour
- successful sessions
rather than listings in isolation.
If that is true, then the first item a buyer interacts with may matter more than many sellers realise.
Not because of its price.
But because of what it leads to.
A Different Way To Think About Inventory
To me, this does not mean every seller should fill their shop with low-value items.
Neither does it mean expensive or premium items are less important.
Quite the opposite.
The point is that some inventory may play different roles.
Some items generate margin.
Some generate authority.
Some generate traffic.
Some generate discovery.
And occasionally a very inexpensive item may contribute to visibility and future sales in ways that are not immediately obvious from the transaction value alone.
Closing Thought
The longer I sell collectable items online, the less I find myself looking at every listing in isolation.
I find myself looking at relationships between listings more often.
Which items attract buyers?
Which items are in multi-baskets?
Therefore, which items could be generating further browsing?
Which items could be starting successful buyer sessions?
Those questions are becoming just as interesting as the price tag alone.
This is why to me, sometimes, a £1 stamp can be more valuable than a £50 stamp. And when multiple low-value entry points start working together, they might just trigger what’s been termed an eBay Green Wave, which I explore in the next article.
— Dan Williams
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This note forms part of Notes on eBay & Discovery: a collection of observations about visibility, recommendations and buyer behaviour on modern marketplaces.