eBay Seller Beef

Vargha

Is it just me, or does anyone find it strange that people list multiple cards from the same set and graded condition, but then use no rhyme or reason to placing them in numerical order. Is there something I'm missing? Is that some kind of selling strategy that I'm not aware of or is listing cards in order that difficult? I know that I have missed bidding on cards in the past when I have accidentally skipped over ones that I needed when sellers listed this way. There is a seller that listed a bunch of 1975 Topps cards today and the first five numbers are 10, 531, 34, 319 and 96. I just don't get it.

Virtualizard

I can't explain that, but most sellers do list in numerical order. Just check out my '75 set if you don't believe me. I search for '75s very infrequently and, when I do, I end up sniping the first ones that come up in the search (i.e. lower card numbers). My set is very unbalanced because of this. I need a much higher % of the high number cards to complete my set. Luckily, this set is not a priority, and I plan to eventually complete the entire set in PSA 8 or better at less than the cost of grading each card.

JEB.

beefcake210

With some software services, if you load them and don't properly space them apart, the system loads them all at once, and sets them out randomly.

murcerfan

hah.
i just realized i've been doing it on my '74 deckles.
...and the set was in order not so long ago


How will I sleep knowing Vargie's gonna blow a gasket ?

Vargha

There aren't any good gaskets remaining. Sleep well.

Basilone

I use Vendio....and they only have 5 minute increments. I enter the cards in nummerical order but they post on eBay randomly. It frustrates me as well.

The53Kid

Vargha,

I've recently noticed that if you list items and pay the extra 10 cents to have them start at a particuar time, this occurs. I diligently input all my cards in numeric order, only to see them get listed in random order. Funny thing is, this only seems to have started recently.

Thanks,
The53Kid

liffeystynx

One explanation I've noticed is that Turbo Lister from eBay places the listings alphabetically rather than numerically so you get a sequence like 10, 134, 154, 20, 256, 33, 362, 4, etc. You could correct this by putting zeroes into the single and double digit numbers - 004, 010, 020, 033 - but then if people are searching by card #, the search engine wouldn't catch them.
So I guess you're stuck with an order that's not quite random ...

toppsgun

Who said, "Baseball card collectors are anal?"

qualitycards

The cards I collect, I always have a checklist, so if cards are listed out of order its no big deal to me. My problem lies with sellers who do not list the card # at all. Then I have to view the scan and see if its a number I need. We all know if we need the Mantle's & Mays cards, but its those damn Danny Caters & Dave Nicholson's that you forget...jay

Vargha

toppsgun -- It makes it a pain to find card needs sometimes and is a royal pain when tracking prices realized. It's not a big deal, but an annoyance that I could never figure out. The listing software issues certainly explain some of the circumstances.

Jay -- I keep lists as well, but when skipping back and forth on listings, I occasionally miss certain cards.

helionaut

If it's a bunch of listings created by some sort of automatic system, like ebay's timed start thing, then it probably isn't really random, it's based on some sort of order that's only really discernible on the machine level, which gives a very good imitation of randomness. I don't know why that is, it's a quirk of computers that has to be accounted for and built around. It's like when you load a web page and things are downloaded and images appear in an apparently random fashion. It's not random, it just looks that way.