the trouble with cards that don't often come to market

[BobC]

Originally Posted by raulus

Going to go all BobC on BobC with a long(ish) post full of as many questions as answers.

I think part of the problem often is defining your search terms. As a buyer when questing for an item, if I use very specific search terms, then what are the odds that the seller will actually know what they have, and will use the right terms when they list the item?

On the other hand, if I cast a very wide net, then I end up getting emails every second of the day.

A couple of examples of this phenomenon come to mind. You will recall a little while back we had a bit of a kerfuffle over an auction being outed. Which one, you may ask? There was a Babe Ruth item, where the seller didn't know what they had - they just listed it as a Babe Ruth baseball card.

Here is the thread: https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...e+ruth+auction

Or you can also think of the seller who listed 4 Topps Dice Game cards on eBay for $4.99, not knowing what he had, and so not referring to them as Dice Game cards.

Here is the thread: https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ight=dice+game

The point being that saved eBay searches only really function well when the seller actually knows what they have, and correctly lists it. Barring that, your quest for a particular rare item requires that you wade through a tremendous mountain of eBay listings to find that needle in the haystack.

The other element that comes into play is that sometimes the one thing you really want is buried in a larger lot. Someone might just list "Big bag of old baseball cards", with a few pictures. And the one piece you've been questing to find for the last 20 years is buried in there. If you're lucky, they include some pictures, which might help you to find it, but only if you're willing to spend the time looking at a lot of listings and staring at a lot of pictures.

In terms of searches across auction sites, the closest you might get is some sort of a google search that pings you when new web pages come online that include your defined terms. It's been a while since I last attempted it, but if you're looking for something really specific, it seems like this might work for auction sites.

Here's a webpage that describes how to do it: https://support.google.com/websearch.../4815696?hl=en

Might not be perfect, but it might be the best we're going to get until someone a lot more tech savvy comes along and creates a tool to search across different auction sites.

Absolutely right. Never said the Ebay function worked perfectly, but it is certainly better than nothing. Not sure you could ever develop a really great such app or site that allows both buyers and sellers to know who wants exactly what, and then allows everyone to know exactly when and where it is coming up for sale. The biggest obstacle I think would be the need to have all selling sites, auction houses, independent dealer sites, and so on, agree and cooperate to allow whoever is setting up and operating such an app or site full and complete access to them and their sites and info. I can immediately see Ebay not wanting to potentially share information that could actually end up helping other sellers and sites. In fact, I could see a lot of dealers/sellers/auction houses not want to take part in such a venture as it could possibly steer customers away from them, just as easily as it may steer customers to them.