eBay Search Debacle
PaulMaul
Posts: 4,875 ✭✭✭✭✭
It has now been almost a month since the eBay category and listing changes were implemented. I am still unable to execute an effective search for the items I want. As of this morning, when filtering by sport, there are still hundreds of cards meeting my search criteria with sport unspecified. So my choices when searching for 1972 baseball is to either miss those that are baseball, or include them and get tons of unwanted results.
With comics, when I filter by era, again there are thousands of listings with unspecified era, leading to the same unpalatable options.
Is this ever going to be resolved?
2
Comments
Yes it will Not be Resolved! When has E-Bay ever gone back on one of their Bonehead moves??? Never!!!
My Sales for the last Month have fallen off the Planet! I had one lot of 130 listings that were Auctions, not One got a Bid in 7 days. What does that tell me, Nobody Can See My Listings!!!!
Between PSA and now E-Bay making it difficult to conduct business, I'm about ready to just throw in the towel!
YeeHaH!
Neil
Sad! My Ebay sales have dropped way off too. Too hard to pinpoint what you are looking for.
i think ebays motto is “if it aint broke, then break it”.
So my choices when searching for 1972 baseball is to either miss those that are baseball, or include them and get tons of unwanted results.
Well it's either the buyer's aren't searching correctly or the sellers aren't listing correctly, (in the new scheme)
For you to see the 1972 baseball, you need to run two searches if you want to catch the ones not marked. First do a search with the Baseball sport filter. 2nd search uncheck the baseball filter, but select the unspecified filter. So that way you won't get the cards you just saw in the baseball search. The downside of course is that you will also see football, hockey, and basketball this way. You could also add a -hockey -basketball -football so at least the listings that put that word in the title won't show up.
Maybe no one wants to see your listings !! jk
If you added the sport, I don't see why this would happen. I've had normal bidder activity on my stuff the past month. Only the first transition week was a little wonky with a few items selling for a buck or getting no bids where they still should have sold for a buck (sold for more bucks in the relist)
Yes, that is exactly what I said. In the case of searching comic books by era, the vast majority of the books are still unspecified, so the extra books I am not interested in are overwhelming.
Possible!
(Actually I could point to probably two mitigating circumstances (Relistings and Obscure issues), but Generally my sell thru is about %40-%50 for Auctions. So this has E-Bay change Something to do with it!
I tried to Update several of my listings and no matter how much more info I ad, they still come up short and still say Need 3 Recommendations, ect.
Part of my particular problem is that recently, in the Last 3-6 months as well, E-Bay did some consolation of Categories in the Non Sport arena, specifically they eliminated the Vintage Non Sport Cards and several other search categories, and now lump all Listings for Non Sport together, so I get 1000's of listings for Modern and other Non Sport Crap I have no interest in!!
Thanks
YeeHah!
Neil
While most don't use it..... yet, there is a Vintage filter in non-sports.
I am not sure how to verbalize this, until 3-4 months ago their was an Actual Category that was Vintage Non Sport Trading Cards (Or Similar and not a Sub Category!) and that was where I did a lot of my searching and Selling. They did away with or did something with this category (And many others) as it isn't a drop down option when searching or listing anymore. Now I basically have only 3 Searches under Non Sport and they all include 99% modern Crap. Which I have no interest in and has cost E-Bay Sales from me because I just don't look anymore! Now of course I can redefine the search by adding Vintage, but that only applies to the Title?
I guess with the new Item specifics, if more Sellers check that vintage box, It would expand my search in Theory! In the past I was probably only seeing the listings if somebody put the word Vintage in the listing Title. Only makes sense.
Thanks
YeeHaw!
Neil
I assume people are being forced to properly describe their items with new listings. But it seems like there are still thousands of listings (maybe perpetual re-listings?) that still have no filters included.
Forget about trying to find complete sets or lots....the sport filter doesn't appear to even be available for those searches.
And now today it looks like they repositioned the "time remaining" on listings and I yet again have to retrain my eyes and brain for no apparent reason....
E-Bay says they will Remove all listings that do not update the Item Specifics, sometime before the end of June/July. Are they really going to remove 10's of, if not, hundreds of Thousands (Maybe Millions) of Listings/and Revenue Stream?
Not sure I totally buy that.....Also I heard that the Adult categories are being banned on E-Bay...How much revenue is that going to cost them??
Sheesh!
YeeHaw!
Neil
this is correct. new listings are the ones being forced. supposedly for a reason though. there are rumblings that they are using all of this, along w the psa database to help compile an automated digital recognition system for an eventual extremely easy listing process later on down the road. basically take a picture and it will upload all the specifics for you. year, date, player, team, set name, manuf. if its graded, all you will have to do is scan the cert and upload said pics. kinda makes sense that everything was forced into one category of “trading cards”.
so rest assured, sellers are actually working for ebay right now. pokemon is in post-beta right now.
does this alleviate all the frustrations for both buyers and sellers? of course not.
Hi PaulMaul. Here's a link that may assist with your 1972 Topps search. The eBay search is:
"1972" "topps" "psa" -erving -football -basketball -auto -sgc -bgs -dna -break -candy -hockey -maravich -wilt -nba -oscar -namath
1972, topps and psa are in quotes and, as such, all have to appear in the auction title exactly as that.
As for the others, if any of those words appear in the auction title, the search results do not include those listings.
This eliminates most, but not all of the non 1972 topps psa graded baseball cards. I hope this helps. Good luck.
Without going into too much detail, I have a fairly specific saved search that involves 1989 Upper Deck. A couple of days ago I got three "hits" for 1989 Hoops Michael Jordan Rookies. In the mishmash of descriptions they listed them as both 1989 and 1991 Upper Deck.
Easy enough to avoid when the search is targeted to yield 1-2 hits per month, but very annoying.