Question about listing autographed baseball w/multiple signatures on eBay (and if that CAN be done)
GilR
Posts: 147 ✭✭✭
I've got a PSA-authenticated baseball with four HOF signatures that I've been listing on eBay, but I find it impossible to do so and have their system associate the ball with more than one of those players. When selling a bunch of baseball cards, eBay has made it incredibly easy to add player after player to the info on the item(s) when creating the listing, but that seems impossible with a baseball with 2+ signatures. If I tell their system it's a Willie Mays ball then I can't tell them it's an Ernie Banks ball, etc. I've had lengthy chat and phone sessions with technical support, and the first person promised to have the programmers fix the problem, which never happened, while the second had me list the baseball as a trading card(!!!). That does indeed let me enter all four names, but the ball doesn't come up under normal searches for autographed balls, and is clearly harder to find. (I run my searches in incognito mode, which gives me results unaffected by being logged into my account.) I fear that if this ball does sell it will be for less than it should have, because, undoubtedly, fewer people are seeing it. Does anyone have a trick for doing this? I cannot possibly be the first person to have wanted to list 2+ players!
Comments
Just put the names in the title. "Baseball signed by Mays, Banks, Ruth and Gehrig."
I did that, and it doesn't work. Their system picks up on just a single name and includes that as if it's the sole signature, and then it's impossible to add another name without that first one being dropped.
Includes it where?
You can write any title and text for your auction. If ebay has other tags or specifications, who cares?
There may be ramifications I'm not thinking about, but so far I don't see them.
Thanks for your response (and @kenboyer, thanks for your previous response). I'm referring to the "Item specifics" area of the screen one uses to create (or revise) listings. Those do seem to make a difference with searches. But listing the ball as a "trading card" isn't much use, since the ball doesn't come up under normal searches. For example, in incognito mode -- so, not from my account -- I just did searches for "Ted Williams autographed baseball" and then just simply "Ted Williams baseball" and did an "Ending Soonest" sort, and even though the listing (https://www.ebay.com/itm/203839777069) expires tomorrow it didn't appear. I've been wanting to list it as an auction item, figuring that's the best way to get its value, but can't because if it doesn't show up for basic searches like that then not enough people are seeing it, so I've kept it as a promoted "Buy It Now." I can list it as a baseball rather than a card, but then only one player's name is truly searchable.
So no one else has ever had this problem, of listing, say, "Baseball autographed by A, B and C" and having eBay only recognize it as A's autograph?
I definitely would not list it as a card.
I just don't understand this comment, though:
How is it not searchable?
I have no idea how the "item specifics" affect the searches. Maybe that is my issue. When I do a search I assume it searches titles, or titles and descriptions if selected that way. Results seem to be based on that in my experience. I know you can refine searches further based on various things (perhaps item specifics).
This is a very specific scenario. You might have better luck with similar experiences if you ask the question over on the Sports Memorabilia Forum.
BTW, your link above does not work due to the second parenthesis.
This one works:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/203839777069
JBK, thanks for your response. Yeah, I agree that selling it as a card makes no sense, but that's what their tech person told me to do, after consulting her colleagues or superiors.
What I mean by my comment is this. When one begins a new listing one enters the title, and eBay scans that title for information and then immediately does two things: it recommends a category or categories and it figures out what info in the title will be used as searchable item specifics. (It also, of course, will use the title itself for searches.) If one enters "Baseball autographed by..." one of the category options is for autographed baseballs, but when I choose that it only reads one of the four HOFers' names, ignoring the other three, and therefore is only fully using that name in searches.
And those item specifics do matter. To give one example, if I list a Topps 1986 baseball card and in the item specifics as well as the title say it's 1986 Topps, and then I use "Sell similar" to create a listing for a 1985 Topps card but only change the 1985 in the title, leaving 1986 in the item specifics, people searching for 1986 Topps might also come across the 1985 card. I've had that sort of thing happen to me. So if one is listing an autographed baseball with multiple signatures it really does increase visibility if all the names are in the item specifics, and not just the title.
I'll add that back when I was listing it as a baseball rather than a card, and it had only one player in the item specifics, I would do searches and not have it come up even when it should have. For example, if it was designated via item specifics a Ted Williams baseball and I searched for "Willie Mays autographed baseball" it wouldn't come up, despite Mays being in the title. In fact, I had to enter the names of three HOFers from the title before it would come up, e.g. "Ted Williams Willie Mays Ernie Banks autographed baseball." Which REALLY isn't a good way of selling, and REALLY should not be happening.
Yes, I agree that this is a specific scenario. But with thousands and thousands of autographs sold on eBay each year, it can't be unique.
No, not a unique problem, but the Autographs Forum here gets limited traffic and much of the focus is on non-sports material.
The Sports Memorabilia Forum is more likely to know about this type of issue.
I didn't realize. Thanks!
One other option is to look at similar items and see if you can spot any listing differences that might help. When I searched “williams mays banks baseball”, one of the results was https://www.ebay.com/itm/HOF-Autographed-Baseball-7-Signatures-Williams-Mays-Banks-PSA-DNA-/393977242037?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l6249&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0. Similar names to yours, only 1 listed in the Item Specifics section, but searchable via multiple player names. They didn’t list first names in the title, so that might be something to consider. “Autographed” might also be a problem - some search on “auto” or “autograph” and eBay searches sometimes aren’t smart enough to equate terms like that. I’ve listed some items with both “autograph” and “auto” in the title when I have the room.
Good luck - those autos are beautiful on your ball.
Jim
@burghman,
Thanks for your response. I tried doing generic searches of "autograph baseball" and "autographed baseball" and got the same number of hits (120,000+), and the entries on the first screen were a were mixture of "autograph" and "autographed," so I suspect that eBay in this case does equate the terms.
I guess I'll just leave things be, then: it's clear that I've done the most I can, and there's no trick that I'm missing. Fortunately for me, I'll be holding on to my other baseballs with multiple signatures, each a collection of various HOFers and stars through the 80's (which made this one superfluous), so I won't have to worry about how to list names.