eBay Mess
 

Maybe I'm just suffering from not having morning coffee, but it seems eBay has done away with the categories in the sports card space and has vaporized the "pre-1930s" category. If anyone figures out a reasonable way to browse vintage card listings on eBay, please post it here.

I noticed the same thing this morning.... Hopefully it's a temporary problem, maybe just a "glitch" in their system...

Brad - thanks for the confirmation. I'm afraid it's not a glitch as there are dozens of complaints on eBay's forums regarding the same issues with other categories. It's unfathomable to me that eBay makes these decisions not knowing that it will make using their site more difficult, so I must assume that they are aware of the issues but because controlling your search experience this way will allow them to guide you to results they want you to see, my guess is that they felt the change was important enough to force on the system, assuming that since they are, by far, the biggest game in town, people will suck it up.

I was doing some early morning searching, and tried refresh after refresh...thinking that maybe after 100, ebay would have regained some common sense. Not to be...

this could be a good thing for us deal searchers :)

Maybe for a few days until sellers realize that buyers can't find their listings and stop posting.

Well that sucks...I just checked to see if it did the same thing when I ran that search and instead of searching "pre-1930s", it searches under "baseball" with 10,000+ baseball items. You should see some of the quality stuff listed under that search :rolleyes:. Jay Buhner autograph anyone? So much for a convenient filtering method to find the items you really seek.

My question is...why hasn't there been some kind of viable alternative developed to compete with e-bay? In almost all other aspects of commercial life there are multiple venues to choose from. Surely many sellers, fed up with e-bays idiotic changes would flock to a new site. So why do you think e-bay is still a "monopoly"? I know there have been some similar sites that have tried and failed, but with all the recent changes, don't you think now might be the time to try?

Mike

Yep, pre-1930's is gone. In fact almost all subdivisions are gone.

I just went into the "sell" mode and started browing categories. After I hit "cards", it took me to the subcategory "baseball" and that's it, I had now chosen a category for selling. I wasn't asked if I wanted major or minor league baseball, whether I wanted pre-1930's or 1950's, or whether the card was SGC or PSA graded. Why would they take away categories? Wouldn't that make searching more onerous?

I'll second that! I had planned on putting a bunch of cards on eBay starting today. With this category change.....it is not going to happen anytime soon. From a sellers perspective, today is not a great day to be running any auctions. Argh! What the frickin' frack!!!

If I'm understanding the changes right, we now only have one GIANT baseball category. That's a fantastic idea but a bit short-sighted. Why stop there. Lets have one giant category for all eBay sellers! That way, we can rekindle the feeling of the old fashion flea market. Imagine browsing through the eBay maze looking for your favorite pre war card (soft music playing in the background), when all of a sudden a Manny Ramirez beanie baby catches your eye..... Yep, eBay stock is going to go thru the roof!@#!

<img src="http://app4.sellersourcebook.com/users/113197/manny.jpg">

Lovely Day...

Best Match baby! Best Match!


Now Ebay can tell YOU, what's best for you. ;)

New category breakdown from Ebay:


Stuff

More Stuff

Types of Peanut Butter

Misc. Stuff


:eek:

Here's one work-around (not ideal, but what else is new):

Click:
Categories
Sports Memorabilia, Cards & Fan Shop
Baseball
Original
Year (A drop down menue appears listing individual years)
Choose More

Another menu pops up allowing you to select as many different years as you'd like to see. You can select every year from 1930 back.

Best I can see on short notice.

I have some items on there now and I am not very happy with this. I may just stop all my auctions.

Jim - I saw that as well, but as the majority of listings are in the "undefined" category for "year" you'd be missing a huge chunk of listings if you used that to browse.

What??? Sellers would need to list the year of the card in the description??? Damn them!


;)

Damn, eBay.

The PreWarAuctions.com homepage is "broken" now, with all sorts of modern stuff showing up (it was showing pre-1930s before). Maybe I'll get rid of it then...

The other categories still work fine though. There is also a link at the bottom of each results page that will take you to eBay to see all of the results since the output is limited to 200 results max.

Browse by Set, T206 for example:
http://www.prewarauctions.com/baseba...white-borders/

Good news. Help is just a phonecall away.,
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t...l_ebay_now.jpg

e bay mess #98
 

this one is sure to cripple all sellers, yesterday will be our last run of e bay material unless they address this absolute stupidity.

This is a serious issue and as a buyer & seller, it will be difficult to reach targeted customers, the search is absolutely impossible using best match, so the material on e bay will be diluted again, this affects everyone..Everyone needs to call e bay..here is the #
1-866-442-3229

Bombard them with calls, this affects EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
good guys, great guys, auction houses, moral guys, immoral guys, ladies and gentleman etc...this is the worst decision yet from e bay and this filters down to everyone as quality sellers on e bay significantly contribute to collectors in finding material and auction houses will be affected also.

I think you could refresh all day and find that eBay still has no common sense.

Larry....
 

Larry- while I am probably not going to take the time to call, since I doubt ebay will listen, I think this might be their worst decision yet.

This is obviously a mistake -- auctions seem to be gone as well.

According to one poster on the Ebay boards, Ebay is saying this is a "bug" in their system.

You guys don't understand. Ebay polled the community and this is what they asked for.

At least that's what it says in the e-mail I got from ebay titled "You asked for it!"

There is an ebay email that claims users did not want there to be a breakdown by date of listed baseball cards? What could possibly be the advantage of that? Can't be. If this is a permanent change no one will ever list a vintage card on ebay again.

Please show that email. Thanks.

I was joking. :D


Or I could have been prophesying...........we shall see. :eek:

...and tomorrow's the day that every eBay seller must have their auctions in tow
stating what their handling time is as well as if refunds are accepted or not.
If both aren't taken care of, eBay will eliminate them.
Nice way to add revenue...just kill a % of the Buy It Now's that are in place.
Many sellers have changed the auctions & Buy It Now's, though I'm sure a good % has not
and will probably not re-list them

Not a "bug", this a well thought-out business decision.... Apparently, a few power sellers complained (during the town hall meetings) that with sooooo many categories, sellers sometimes have to spend extra $$$ to have the same item appear in more than one category. Therefore, one can reasonably conclude that ebay sales are going down because they have "too many categories". Thus, you end-up with a great idea from a bunch of great guys! You make the sellers happy and at the same time, you make it easier on the buyer when searching (best match). Yep, somebody got a big promotion with this idea.

Here is a link to the categories that have been changed. Plus a link announcing the changes (albiet, it's for ebay.UK....but they were once Americans):

http://pages.ebay.com/CategoryChanges/

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200909211156112.html

Lovely Day...

Thanks iggy. Stupidity abounds on the west coast, I guess.

Gonna make browsing impossible. Great way to alienate sports cards sellers and buyers.

The B/S/T is gonna be working overtime. Leon, start charging for listings and take this thing public!!!!

On a bright note, etopps still has its own category. :D

Ebay search
 

Just got off of a phone call to them (866)643-3720. They said I was the 1st complaint they had heard about this! They said they would look into it and call me back. I told them to search my completed auctions and look at what category they are listed in...all of them say "listed category:_______(blank)...no categories for the completed auctions!!! And all my running auctions have defaulted to category: Baseball cards!!! I told them if this is a permanant change it is the worst thing they could have done for this sect. of Ebay users....I am sure nothing will be done but she did say to have anyone I know who is upset with this to call Ebay and let them know.

-Claude

Yeah I just noticed this! Hopefully this is just a temporary thing and fixed sometime soon!

eBay Mess
 

I am certainly disappointed in the change, but there are ways to create your own searches. Hopefully there will be enough complaints and they will change it back, if not I will just use some of the searches I have had setup for years and make adjustments.

Jimmy

I did my part, sending an email to eBay. let's everyone get off their butts and do the same.
I tried entering "t210" in the search box on the new baseball card page and one listing came up. I know this is wrong as I am bidding on several now but just one BIN came up. I know there are many BINs which didn't and no auctions came up. :mad:

well
 

Great suggestion Greg.
First of all I am adamantly opposed to charging anything for what we do on the board today. That being said I have spoken, in the last few years and currently, with 3 s/w developers about running an auction, similar to ebay, for the board. Most likely it would be free for some time....until it got to a critical mass, and then there would possibly be a small fee......

Our free rinky dink auction section would still be there. I don't want to change anything. I only want to (maybe, and it's still a big maybe) add another feature......I am hopeful on having more conversations about it today. I do think we have the right traffic for sportscards.......I definitely understand the value equation for buyers and sellers.....I have been on ebay for over 10 yrs and have some experience with other hobby venues too......we shall see. If there is enough support it might happen.

Bob,

I just did a search for T210 and came up with 18 listings. How a seller types their title will determine if your search is going to be successful and pick up what you are looking for. So now you will have to search T 210, T210 and Old Mill to see that you got them all.

Greg

on the phone with eBay
 

I just hung up with eBay reps (after 1 hour and 7 minutes)...

This is a planned change, not a bug. EBay did this to make browsing "more convenient" after doing "extensive research." This was "not done because of any input from our Powersellers."

There is a bug out there which has put many, many listings in NO CATEGORY whatsoever, including 3 of mine, and many others you can only find by manually searching for specific card type ("1952 Topps," "1989 Bowman," but not otherwise, since they do no show up in the sole remaining category of "Cards-Baseball."

There was absolutely no interest on either the line-person nor her supervisor (after a long line of bullsh*t about how they have to investigate what I'm saying, etc.) of how this screws me, my friends, my sellers, my buyers, no one. Period. None.

I am supposed to get an email (within 24 hours) that explains the reason for the changes, the benefits, etc. I'll post that drivel when it arrives.

I sent my email to eBay giving my two-cents !

Look at your current auctions
 

The listings I had for sale under the "pre 1930" category now don't have a category attached to them at all. The one's without bids I was able to revise, but the other one's can't be revised and now are sitting out there without a category.

I hate to end listings early that have bids, but might have to in this case.

-Alan

I will be very disappointed if nothing in this pending e-mail says "You asked for it, now here it is!"

;)

I sent an email to auctionbytes. We'll see if they talk to ebay and report on it on their site.

Just called EBAY, what a waste of tome. After explaining to them whats happened they tell me to file a written report of whats happening. I also have cards listed. If this is not fixed sometime today I will have to remove them, if I can figure out how. What a joke. Frank A

For my small stuff that I sell, Id rather sell to guys on here, who I know are into sports. Plus, there isnt the BS stuff ebay is doign these days.

Of course, I understand that a "wider range" of appeal is needed on big ticket items too, as not everyone who collects cards and memorabilia belongs to Net54, tho they should, as its the best.;) Also, the pile of non sports paper and oddball I have gets bigger and bigger if I dont go to ebay. ha.

I usually search "all categories" anyway.

Although just this morning, I wanted to search 1950 bowman football and wanted to exclude baseball, but couldn't figure out how to search in the "football" category.

Unsophisticated eBayer I guess.

By the way Claude, thanks for buying that Reggie Booklet from me!

ebay
 

Yea, thanksTony...thought I'd try and put that set together. Looks like it can get done without costing much...and SGC grades them if I want to go that route.

What they told me
 

Do they not realize the millions of "junk" sports cards from the 80s-90s are now going to waterdown every other search? I was told that my FVF would be returned, whoopee! I am going to demand that my current auctions should be be paid out at HBV since this change was implemented midstream and I wouldn't have listed the cards as such if I knew they were going to be lost in a cesspool of 1990 Fleer garbage, etc.

Also, good luck if you have a mixed lot of some valuable stuff as they will be damn near impossible to find.

Just sent my compaint to ebay... not too optimistic about them changing it back though.

This will just lead to the continuation of more BIN's and less auctions.

I saw this too and at first I thought my eye's were bugging on me - Mike Schmidt in the Pre-30's section? WTH??!

Alas, apparently this is how it's suppose to be? :mad:

My saved search of "T206" still yields correctly, but the other searches do not. I guess technically, NOW would be a good time to BUY (because who's going to go through 125K listings to find a particular card) but it's sure as heck NOT a good time to sell.:(

I'm sure they will find a way for you to give them more than 2 cents.

Reply from ebay
 

Here's the reply I received from Ebay:

Dear Alan,

Thanks for taking the time to write to us.

We are aware of an issue with being unable to narrow down the search
results within Baseball Cards. This is not a permanent change and we
are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.

There are many changes in progress as part of the announced final seller
release of the year.
(http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200907270812462.html). These changes will
be rolling out during this week and are not yet complete.

As part of this release, the categories within Sports Trading Cards are
changing to the simplified set of sports that you see here:
http://sports-cards.shop.ebay.com/Ca...i.html?_npmv=3

Previously, there was a duplication between the categories (eg
Baseball-MLB > Singles (Pre-1930) > Graded etc) and the Item Specifics
(Sport, Year, Graded, etc), which made it confusing on which to use to
narrow down the search results. Once you browsed to the Singles
(Pre-1930) category, you were still presented with the Year Item
Specifics. We are removing this duplication in favor of the more
versatile Item Specifics.

Prior announcements about these changes can be found at the following
links.

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/July2009U...ies/index.html
http://pages.ebay.com/sell/itemspecs.html
http://pages.ebay.com/categorychanges/sportscards.html

When categories are changed, there is a reindexing of the items that
must occur, and this can take up to several days to complete. Once
complete, your items should be showing in the category:
Sports Mem, Card & Fan Shop > Cards > Baseball (category 213). Until
then, your items should still be found in all relevant title searches.

In addition to the previously available search refinements of Product,
Sport, Year, Card Manufacturer, Card Attributes and Grading information,
we will be adding the ability to refine search results by both Team and
Player where applicable.

Once again our apologies for this issue and we ask for your patience as
we work to resolve it.

Sincerely,
Mahina
eBay Classification Team

That is not encouraging; looks like the change to one big Baseball Cards category is permanent.

I don't see US ever "fixing" eBay from the outside.


If anything is ever to be done, it would be because each of us buys some stock in eBay (instead of buying a few cards), the together see if we could elect one of us to their board of directors.

It looks to me like there are 13 directors. The stock doesn't pay dividends. I doubt that enough of us would get enough stock to make a difference... but that still seems to me the way to get something done.

Someone at eBay has a death wish for eBay .....
 

They are constantly going against all logic.

Their slogan, "We're working to make eBay easier to use." --- What a joke.

If it isn't broken, don't fix it!

Alan- I just got the identical email from "Mahina" at ebay......

#1 mess of the year by E Bay
 

We do a decent business w/ E bay-they are unresponsive and brain dead.

unfortunately, this is the line drawn in the sand......no more selling on e bay until the system is fixed........everyone should feel this way........
if you want to search thru tens of thousands of cards, you may get lucky but since e bay has no idea how bad they made this change for everyone in our industry, the only way to find items thru search is EXACT searches such as T206, T 206, piedmont, Cobb etc. and there will be every Ty Cobb card current or old when you search for Ty Cobb including your favorite reprints, magazine cutouts, Ty Cobb Toilet paper etc....

nothing that e bay has done last year is better than it was before they ruined it but this is a major blow to all of us that tried to run a good vintage card auction site w/ some quality items, what a shame.

EVERYONE needs to bombard e bay w/ calls, message etc. o/w this will never be changed back.

New Search Platform
 

Apparently, this may be start of eBay's switch to a new search platform and the manner in which select items are identified. It appears they are trying to appease the larger sellers. I hate to selectively quote from a source, but I have copied some of the key paragraphs from Barron's (a financial publication) regarding eBay's switch. Barrons' has had several articles on eBay recently, one of which dealt with the switch to a new "search" platform and another on the drive to focus on larger sellers and retailers.

Here is the link for thos so inclined to read the entire article:
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB...888930015.html

If you Google Barron's & eBay the results will bring up links to the other articles.

Here is a summary of the one regarding the new search platform:
============
The company already faces a variety of headwinds: Many sellers are irritated about recent changes eBay (ticker: EBAY) made in its fee structures. The softening consumer economy is not helping matters. And with well over half of its revenue coming from outside the U.S., its financial results will be hurt by the recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar......


....Blair and Hunter also say eBay is close to rolling out a new search platform that it has been testing for some time. They see risks if it isn't successful: "The ability to search and find an item with accuracy is a key factor in eBay's success and any changes that negatively impact the effectiveness of search would create a significant problem for the company." EBay shares are down approximately 30% this year, trading near their lowest level in five years.

When has anyone has trouble with accurate searches? It brings up the listings with the words you ask for?

ebay
 

I just sent an email to them explaining(hopefully) how this will lead to lost revenue. Hopefully every member on this board will do the same. There are quite a few big players on this board. Maybe this will wake them up.

What a mess eBay has created for everyone, we are scrambling to fix our feeds we get from them to add their listings to VCP.

To make life easier for everyone we are going to add a section that will make it so you can search for the eBay listings we are tracking. Hope to have it available to you very shortly. Of course we only cover graded cards.

eBay: the ultimate game of hide-and-seek.

Golly.

eBay Mess
 

Egbeachley,

I think they are referring to bringing up similar and related items. The focus seems to be getting more clicks and traffic to the large high volume sellers and retailers on eBay. One of the other articles in Barron's identified such a strategic shift in their business model.

Amazonbay
 

WOW! So much for me policing the category for fraud and doctored fakes!! I can't go through 400K items!! Scumbags, thieves, and bottom feeders, the road is now WIDE OPEN!!! After all of the clean up efforts we had the pre-1930 and 1930s categories fairly legit and free from fraud.

I just don't get it. Have to take my auctions down tonight or give stuff away.

Truly a shame.

Whats a real problem' is someone who wants to list a real oddball item. There is no way a person will ever find it unless he spends all day listing every type of card. Talk about someone at EBAY being really stupid!!!!!!!!!! This is going to cost them a lot of money in the long run.

Damn, the irony was lost on me the first time around.

They actually say "You didn't ask for it, but we did it anyways!"

LOL!!!


:(

Jeez, now my daily search of Donruss Rated Rookie cards is going to be diluted with hundreds of T206's, Ramly's and Boston Garter listings.

:mad:

Taking out of the equation the fact that this is a stupid decision by eBay, it's not unusual at all that the company didn't ask for customers' input.

The Big 3 never polled all of the owners of their cars before working on designs for the new model year. Microsoft doesn't send e-mails to all of the owners of its current version of Windows before working on the next one. Wendy's didn't call me before revamping its value menu.

Yes, bad decision by eBay. No, not unusual that a major company decided on its own to implement a change.

What a revolting development this is......

Everyone so negative; this is a good thing.
eBay has been making bad changes (forcing Paypal, requiring sellers eat insurance, etc.) for well over a year but no other site has been able to compete because eBay still had enough devotees. If this forces enough people off eBay to populate a viable alternative that is cheaper then eBay, we'll all win. Say all of our emails to eBay get answered and they revert the categories - we still have to live with all the other bad eBay decisions.

Wow, this is a real screwup. While listing my items on eBay tonight, the Blackthorne software could not find any of my categories. Instead it chose Baseball as the category.
I sent in my 2 cents to eBay via email and also included a link to this thread so that maybe someone over there would take the time out and read what some of us are saying.

I'll repeat my mantra that I've said for a year now
 

Ebay has totally forgotten what made them successful. And with all the people struggling in today's world (Unemployment truly around 15 percent counting people NOT counted by our gov't); if EBay would go back to what it was circa 1998; they would recieve more items to sell and have even more customers.

That includes having those ridiculous pay pal only rules. What is wrong with a check or money order (Esp a bank money order; which at my bank costs me NOTHING and would be cashable immediately.

Rich

This is soooo dum [sic]. I mean, having one category for boxing cards is fine (there were only two anyway) but not for sports with much greater followings. I agree that their prior searches were sloppy but that means clean them up not scrap the categories entirely.

What amazes me is how the changes will kill off browsing. Don't they realize how important it is not to have to search a category?

I think this is the end of vintage cards being listed on ebay. Nearly every day or so I'd browse through the pre-1930s section and inevitably I would pick up a card I just liked even if it weren't of one of the players I normally collect. That is now impossible. Why then would anyone list a valuable card on ebay knowing that a large part of your targeted audience will miss it?

What a piece of crap!

Anyone knows if this type of 'simplification measure' was taken on other collectibles categories?

I saw this today under the ebay system announcements board... Maybe golf cart owners are pissed off right now.

http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/7895/ebaykn.jpg

Again I say .....
 

There is some one at eBay that has a death wish for eBay.

Customer Service?
 

I just got off of the phone with an ebay customer rep. I complained about the search feature, and the fact that it will take more time to list items. The 400+ items that I have listed are pretty much worthless with the category search function taken away. I can't see how these changes will benefit anyone.

Rick

"We're working to make eBay easier to use."
 

Their slogan.

What a joke!

We have to remember that in the scheme of things, baseball cards is a very minimal category. Compared to electronics and music and books. AMAZONBAY!!!!

My example--
 

I have 2 listings up for Pawtucket Red Sox cards. Now they are just Cards-Baseball---No Minor Lg or anything!---just lumped into the mix!

What a crock!