Worthpoint removes 30 million sports card listings

[Peter_Spaeth]

Cross posting this from Blowout.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1443853

The lead-in but won't duplicate the complete post here:

n Monday morning (February 1, 2021) it was identified that all eBay sports card sales were removed from being searched on Worthpoint.com. Although the archive of listings still exists, as previously existing links to Worthpoint listings can still be accessed successfully, there is no longer any way to search for sports cards sold via eBay on Worthpoint. The only exception is cards that were listed in an incorrect category on eBay or items that are so old (circa 2011 or earlier) that the listed category of the item on Worthpoint is "Unknown". All sports and trading card related categories were totally wiped on Monday. Archive.org indicates that there were circa 63,000,000 listings in the "Sports" category on Worthpoint as of January 26, 2021. Today that number is approximately 33,000,000. These 33 million listings are solely composed of autographs, jerseys, memorabilia, tickets, bobbleheads, etc. Multiple correspondences with Worthpoint, including the one pictured below, indicate that the purging of sports card listings is part of a "normal optimization process". The message also indicates that 180,000 sales results still remain, meaning that Worthpoint removed 99.4% of their sports cards listings.

[h2oya311]

Wow! What’s the rationale? Or what’s the running theory about why these were removed?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by h2oya311

Wow! What’s the rationale? Or what’s the running theory about why these were removed?

I don't know, but certainly there is speculation that it's to prevent BODA and anyone else like-minded from tracking down altered cards by comparing past images.

[Jeffrompa]

Every time I go there I have found something I have sold . What ripoff !

[Bigdaddy]

Originally Posted by h2oya311

Wow! What’s the rationale? Or what’s the running theory about why these were removed?

I don't know and won't speculate, but I can almost guarantee that it is not a "normal optimization process".

[Rich Klein]

Ebay does also license their data and if Worthpoint found some way around that license then EBay has the right to remove that data.

Rich

[aelefson]

I highly recommend others calling and/or emailing Worthpoint as I just did. I have always considered buying a subscription as a lot of my research ends at their paywall, but if they are willing to erase so many results, I have no use for it.

The odd things is, the trimming scandal barely affects me as I do not collect graded cards (never bought one, nor have I ever had a card graded). It does bother me a lot though, and if there is a chance what Worthpoint did is related to the BODA work it should be a major story.

Alan

[Johnny630]

Very Suspicious......

[Peter_Spaeth]

It would be great if someone could post this to CU. I would do it myself but I was banned lol.

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

I don't know and won't speculate, but I can almost guarantee that it is not a "normal optimization process".

Don't be so sure.

I can't find the story right now but I read on OANN.com that Donald Trump bought worthpoint and in his initial briefing to their board pointed out that if they had fewer items in their database to search it would have the effect of optimizing the search process.

Doug "insert smiley face here" Goodman