eBay listing oversight
 

If someone listed some cards for auction on eBay running from one Sunday night to the next, and let's say they were pre-war cards from obscure sets, and that seller forgot to specify the era when he listed them, but then the cards received bids so the seller was no longer able to fix that, and let's say he didn't realize this until last night when he was doing his own search for pre-war card auctions in progress and didn't see any of his own cards, what percentage of the potential bidder attention and what percentage of closing price do you suppose that person would be missing out on?

"Asking for a friend" as the kids say. :(

I would tell your friend to end the auctions early and relist next week. No ethical quandary in doing so - there is quite literally an "error in listing" which is one of the reasons for ending early.

The guy selling would probably make more $ if they cancel and relist. Depends on if it is their free cancel or if they have to pay eBay fees to cancel it. The bidder(s) will be mad though, might bid on new listing(s) might not.

Life lessons are ususally not free or cheap but they are the ones we remember.:)

There are several larger sellers who do not specify which "era" their offerings are from, so when searching that era specifically, their listings are not found. I enjoy buying cards from these sellers because of the better prices due to fewer eyes on their offerings.

Outside of 12 hours remaining on the auction, there are no fees to cancel.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/end_...l#requirements

I would end and relist in proper era.

To answer the original question - it depends.

If the right two buyers see it the auction, no matter how listed it will wind up in the right place. In many case if even the top 5 or so buyers see it, you might see a small decline, but not a huge one.

But there's the rub. If only one of the top buyers sees it ... the "seller" could be out 50-75% I'd guess.

And with snipes, a seller really has no way to know if the right buyers have seen an auction or not.

Good luck!
Patrick

Serious question, but do buyers really even search by era? I know I don't. I search for key words.

clear accurate title and good pictures is all you need
 

if you have clear accurate title, good pictures
and a low starting price, this is all you need.
it could be listed in ladies cosmetics and you wont get hurt , the right bidders will find it because they are looking for specific relevant words in the title.
obviously you need to be listing some thing where there are not tons of the same thing , as very few bidders want to look through a 1000 best match records

I also search by key words, not by era. If your buddy does close the auctions, I would encourage him to contact every bidder on his items and to maintain a friendliness with the people who did bid so that they have an understanding why the auction was ended early. Doing this, could lead to those same bidders to bid on the items again once the item has been re-listed. No communication with them will make them even madder, and they won't bid next time. Think customer service skills. ^.^

Yes and no.

Yes.


As I am working on numerous sets, searching all baseball card auction items ending in a day is quicker than running independent specific searches for 50 Bowman, 52 Topps, 63 Topps, etc.

For auctions ending in a given day, I used to search by era. However, when searching by era, I missed out on many items that did not have the era assigned to the listing.


I prefer to buy lots or part sets to build sets versus buying singles.
I now search all of the baseball auctions ending soonest with one of two key words: "set" or "lot"(in additional to a min price). This means that my search might yield a 5000 ct lot of 84 Topps next to a 33 Goudey lot....but I am no longer missing a lot/near set of something I could use due to it not being listed under the era I was searching. On a normal day, it is only about 100 listings, however on some Sunday's there may be 300-400 listings to go through.

No.

If I have a specific card I am seeking to help finish out a set (one not likely to be in a part set/lot), my search is specific and the listing's era is unnecessary.

I think when they're collecting the types of cards I usually buy and sell they're probably screening by era. It's just a lot easier to look at every auction in the pre-1940 baseball card category than it is to do frequent searches for 100 or more different sets, many of which have less than 1 card per year showing up on eBay.

You could search for T214 and Clark's Bread and Holland Creameries and Old Put and Niagara Baking and Leader Theatre and Mino Cigarettes etc. etc. (none of which are the cards I'm talking about in this situation) or you can just scroll through everything in the one category and see if there's anything interesting this week.

Hopefully I'm wrong though, and enough of the interested people will find everything anyway. We'll see. The auctions are staying up. Thanks for the feedback. I'm optimistic that it will be only a moderately expensive lesson learned.

If for some reason you did decide to end them early and re-list, as others have said, contact all of the underbidders, and explain in the listing why they were ended early and relisted, and wait some time before relisting. Even then, you're taking a chance.

Seeing a unique item being sold twice by the same seller is one of those things that will set off the "spidey sense" of many collectors, no matter how plausible your explanation. Unless several months had passed to erase it from their memory, I would expect more lost revenue from the "this just doesn't feel right, I'll take a pass" crowd than from those that happened to miss the listing because they weren't browsing the right category.

Yes, I do. I don't collect sets. Rather, I collect type cards and certain pre-War players. I use pre-WWII era "followed searches" for each of the HOF and other better-known players I collect (e.g., WaJo, Sam Rice, Goose Goslin, Joe Judge, etc.) to eliminate having to scroll through so many post-War card issues that I have no interest in. Then, every once in a while, I will do a search for all cards of these players to see if I am missing any that interest me. Unfortunately, this approach occasionally results in my missing cards that I would have bid on/purchased because the auctions/BINs already ended.

Relist is fine. If it's a small money card I'd probably leave it alone. But a big money card, feel free to relist.