Trends in One Part of Our Hobby

We humans are herd animals. We argue our personal independence, but combined independent actions can still form trends. Perceiving and measuring trends can be tricky. We often see or feel trends where there are none. Months and years might go by before researchers collect enough information to detect and confirm genuine trends. The smaller the sample group, the trickier the detection. The scripophily hobby is very small, so entrances, exits, and movements of only a few participants can readily alter perceptions of trends. 
Last year, I began perceiving a dissipation in the interest of collecting railroad certificates. I am receiving fewer reports from correspondents overall and fewer new correspondents in particular. I didn’t know whether I was perceiving a true or imaginary trend. There was no way to gain enough information. 

This year, I am seeing a different trend in my little corner of the hobby.
I counted all sales of certificates in the railroad specialty that sold for more than $50 and more than $100. Sales in both categories are up and if that trend holds through the rest of the year, they will be higher than any year since 2012. I warn that my observations depend entirely on auction results and reports from contributors. Professional dealers do not report sales to me.

But here is the rub; the greatest contributor to that growth came from sales on eBay. Two and a half times(!) more certificates have sold for over $100 on eBay in the first six months of 2024 than in all of 2023. 

Obviously several changes probably contributed. I suspect: 1) Several new, monied collectors have entered the hobby. 2) Many desirable and scarce certificates have been freed from long-held collections. 3) Professional and semi-professional dealers have quietly entered or increased their presence in the eBay market. 4) Prices are very low, compared to twenty years ago. 5) Collectors may have realized that many companies are simply uncollectible without acquiring specimens.

Even though I find this trend intriguing, I must warn that it is too early to tell whether a 4x level of growth in higher-priced certificates is a true trend or simply an aberration. I am able to see such trend in hindsight and only by recording prices every day.

Viewing thousands of eBay and formal auction offerings every year uncovers another trend. There is a thoroughly obvious drift away from using scanned images in favor of photographs. In that respect, the quality of imagery is going backward, not forward and I cannot imagine how that helps sales. 

The percentage of high-quality images created by scanners seems to have dropped as the quality of smartphone cameras has improved. I am seeing an increased percentage of non-horizontal and misshapen images with poor exposure, poor focus, shadows, hands, and non-realistic color. Even a few professional sellers have settled for photographs instead of scans.

Speaking of images, about two years ago, I had noticed a trend in the image formats being used on eBay. For some reason, part-time, amateur sellers had begun posting their images on eBay and elsewhere in the PNG format. That format requires substantially more storage space than the relatively compact JPG format. In other words, sellers were saving images in larger file sizes, often while diminishing the quality of their images. As an image professional, it did not make sense. I know that talking about image formats means nothing to casual users, but for eBay, that trend meant an increase in their file storage needs. Greater costs means greater commissions for eBay sellers.
During 2022 and 2023, I made file size comparisons every few months. I found that the average PNGs posted by eBay sellers were five to nine (!) times larger than comparable JPGs used there. Users with fast connections were pretty much immune to those increasingly larger image files. Although they may not have noticed a few extra seconds spent with every viewing, shoppers with slow connections were enduring longer wait times.

In May or June of this year, eBay countered by delivering images to viewers in the WEBP (“weppy”) format. Image files in that format are somewhat smaller than JPGs and radically smaller than PNGs. For a company that delivers a half billion images per day, the switch to WEBPs increased the speed at which images are delivered, while slowing the trend of ever-increasing image storage and web usage costs.

Before ending, I wanted to mention a concerning mini-trend prompted by contributions from two separate collectors within a week of each other. Both had recently purchased certificates sold as celebrity-signed and both certificates had been signed in the manner of “[celebrity name] & Co.” In my opinion, both certificates were actually signed by clerks and not by celebrities.

Comparisons with verified signatures suggests that the majority of stock certificates signed with the “and Co.” were created by company clerks, not by famous-name celebrities. Therefore, I strongly suggest anyone who owns certificates signed in the manner of “Celebrity Name & Co.” to be cautious. In fact, I strongly recommend sending expensive autographed certificates to an authentication service for verification. If sending to dealers for authentication, be sure to send to dealers different than the ones you purchased from. Service fees are normal.

If wanting to avoid added expense, collectors can compare signatures of their certificates with legitimate examples on the web. The trick to finding examples is to run a Google search like this:

“Jay Gould” “autograph” “signature”

Be sure to use quote marks. The quotes mean, “search for these exact words or phrases.” After results appear, click the word “Images” in the Google menu below the search box. Google now appears to be the only search engine that honors exact phrasing.