eBay Mess

[Jacklitsch]

If you want to find graded cards the following search parameters work great:

190* SGC This search will pull up all 1900-1909 SGC graded cards.

191* SGC This search will pull up all 1910-1919 SGC graded cards.

Substitute PSA for SGC and PSA only graded cards will appear.

[ibuysportsephemera]

Originally Posted by Jacklitsch

If you want to find graded cards the following search parameters work great:

190* SGC This search will pull up all 1900-1909 SGC graded cards.

191* SGC This search will pull up all 1910-1919 SGC graded cards.

Substitute PSA for SGC and PSA only graded cards will appear.

You beat me to it...I was going to post the same thing about the *. It is a great trick that someone taught me many years ago and has saved me a ton of time searching on eBay.

Jeff

[paul]

I don't know why ebay has any categories anymore at all. Why not just lump everything together in one big category? No one can possibly browse the "baseball card" category of 200,000 cards. So, card collectors have no choice but to do a word search. So why bother having categories at all?

By the way, some word searches will be very ineffective. Try searching for "Old Judge" and see how many 2008 and 2009 Topps cards pop up. If only there was some way to screen out post war cards from the search ...

[ibuysportsephemera]

Originally Posted by paul

By the way, some word searches will be very ineffective. Try searching for "Old Judge" and see how many 2008 and 2009 Topps cards pop up. If only there was some way to screen out post war cards from the search ...

You can...just use the minus sign (ie -topps -2008,, etc.) to narrow down your answer. You can do this in the advanced search feature and save that search for your future searches.

Jeff

[Leon]

Originally Posted by ibuysportsephemera

You can...just use the minus sign (ie -topps -2008,, etc.) to narrow down your answer. You can do this in the advanced search feature and save that search for your future searches.

Jeff

I just did a search of the 200,000+ baseball items....and I minused out Fleer, Topps, Donruss...and I think one more....and my search came up with about 70 total items.....none of them vintage cards

[chris]

I just spoke with my rep at eBay. She explained that this category consolidation is permanent "for the time being". Basically, unless we all come together and make our opinions know eBay will not be reverting back to have the previous categories within the baseball category. I asked her what could be done regarding this change and she explained that I should get as many buyers and sellers together to contact eBay and express their dislike for this change. She stated that each account rep and customer service rep has a function called Voice of the Customer. They use this to report opinions regarding eBay and changes to actual decision makers at eBay. She said that if I can get enough people to call regarding this and have customer service/account reps log this information into the Voice of the Customer log then we may be able to get this changed. She agreed that this was not a good decision for eBay once I cited this example - would you go buy books at a bookstore that had 200,000+ books all lumped together in no order, or would you buy from the store that had the inventory categorized! So I am asking everyone to please make the call - I know that it may take some time being on hold, but we all know that if we can get this changed we will all benefit! I will be posting this on many message boards today and hope that you will do the same - lets try to get this changed!!

Also, I found a link to a way that you and others can make suggestions
(in addition to the Voice of the Customer that we talked about).

http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/suggestions.html

[Mark]

The biggest problem comes when you decide to sell some cards that don't appear for auction very often. I know that there are people who don't search everyday for e126's or w573's or E102's but who would consider bidding on them if they saw them appear among the newly listed cards.

[nolemmings]

another way to search for Old Judge, or the searches I have bookmarked anyway, is to type n172 judge, or 188* judge, or 188* goodwin. That should hit the mark while leaving out the reprints and garbage.

[paul]

I'd still like to know what "extensive research" showed that people prefer to have their items buried with tens of thousands of unrelated items, rather than logically categorized only with other similar items. Who makes these decisions?

[David W]

Originally Posted by Mark

The biggest problem comes when you decide to sell some cards that don't appear for auction very often. I know that there are people who don't search everyday for e126's or w573's or E102's but who would consider bidding on them if they saw them appear among the newly listed cards.

Or you're a seller who knows nothing about the nomenclature who finds 5 strip cards in grandpa's desk, and used to just put them in as "Old cards" under the pre 1930 category since they look old, they will be less likely to be seen now because they aren't labeled properly.

I usually search by key word but often also search through a year or years looking for cards that interest me.

I guess I could type in 1963 card in the search, but then I'll get football, hockey, Christmas cards, etc... when it was simpler to just check the 1963 box and have a peek.

[uffda51]

I started buying on ebay in 1999. I generally restricted myself to dealers I knew from the real world. My transactions break down as follows:

1999-48
2000-68
2001-44
2002-63
2003-98
2004-119
2005-50
2006-51
2007-51
2008-24
2009-10, with nothing since May

Zero negative feedback. 622 positive.

2 neutral, both from guys who sold me altered cards.

If I were ebay, I would want me as a customer.

For reasons already well documented by others, I'm done, and also in large part because so many of the sellers I trust have left as well.

If ebay can't analyze their own data and figure out that their policy changes are counterproductive, someone else will come along and fill the void.

ebay cancelled one of my major searches as "category no longer available."
The search was:1880, 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1899) -mswsports, -AAA, -Reach, -Spalding, -Putnam, -bsva, -Whitman, -Conlin, -NASA

Also cancelled: T207, T-207

Thanks, ebay.

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by paul

I don't know why ebay has any categories anymore at all. Why not just lump everything together in one big category? No one can possibly browse the "baseball card" category of 200,000 cards. So, card collectors have no choice but to do a word search. So why bother having categories at all?

By the way, some word searches will be very ineffective. Try searching for "Old Judge" and see how many 2008 and 2009 Topps cards pop up. If only there was some way to screen out post war cards from the search ...

As Jeff just said, type in a minus sign, left parenthesis, the things you wish to exclude, and a right parenthesis. This format will eliminate certain things you don't want to see, BUT... you must be specific!

For example, I did a search of the Sports Memorabilia category for Old Judge. I hit on 134 items. I refined it to this:

old judge -(UD, Upper Deck, Topps, 1995, 1996, 2005, '95, reprint, RP)

This yielded 77 results, which I believe were all pre 1900 vintage cards. But notice, I had to list both 1995 and '95 as exclusions.

Once you refine it the way you want, hit "Save This Search". You then have the option to have Ebay send you a daily email showing anything new that gets listed in that area.

[nolemmings]

As a buyer, I'm concerned with any tactic that chases sellers away. Otherwise though, I am pretty much unaffected, as I very seldom search by subcategory anyway (and believe it or not, in addition to some specific sets and players, I'm also a type collector).

As noted, a search with wildcards (asterisks) works tremendously. In addition to the searches by decade (at least for graded cards), type in 193* Goudey and you'll get the whole panoply of sets by that company for the decade, and perhaps even a stray companion piece. And once in Sportscards, type e9* and you'll hit a bunch of the caramel sets. I have a mild interest in several sets from 1928--the ice cream sets, r315, w502, exhibits, etc. I type in 1928 and I get 200 or so hits, only about 15% of which are useful, but it really doesn't take that much time or effort to gaze past the irrelevant stuff, especially if you change your settings to view 100 items per page. Same if you type in Gehrig--there might be mostly listings for non-cards and things of no interest to you, but it doesn't take long to get used to quickly scanning the thumbnails and separating the wheat from the chaff.