Ebay drops sport specific subcategories for trading cards?!?!
 

Ebay changed its categories from the convenient specific sport subcategories to product oriented today without any advance notice. What a disasterous decision and implementation.

https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=30876

https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=30877

I can no longer sort by era, which now makes the T206 saved search useless.

I was rather enjoying the lack of 10,000 extra modern cards when I ran that search...

Seems the majority of filter criteria that was previously available is now gone as well.

Maybe if enough people contact eBay and ask them to bring back the era filter they'll do it? Without it, eBay is about 1000% less useful.

Edit: looking over it now, I'll take that back. It makes it simply unusable.

Wow, I thought I had accidentally did something. Now, you still get modern T206 mixed in with vintage, even when you pick the years. & there's no memory of what you selected.

Bad move by Ebay..

Another instance of eBay not "leaving well enough alone." :mad:

They *probably* figure this will lead to more sales. Average customer will see things they ordinarily wouldn't have and, as a result, make impulse purchases. I guess it makes sense on a basic level, though I doubt many Net54 members would spontaneously begin collecting Topps 206, for example. :D

They're messing with more categories than just sports cards. I have hundreds of 45 RPM records listed on eBay. Earlier today, I was prompted to enter item specifics that will soon be required. Luckily, I learned how to bulk edit, so I could update all the listings at once.

Absolutely horrible. All my searches are dominated by football cards now.

Like looking for your clothing size at a Ross Store...

I cannot remember ONE instance where eBay made a change that I liked over the years. Not ONE. Everything they do is for the worse. :mad:

They've also decided to, "...retire the PowerSeller program..."

Guess that made sense to someone at eBay.

I just spoke with eBay to complain. I did find the sports sub-categories on the left side and they seem to have individual years, but not the different eras.

Complete nonsensical mess. If this is the new ebay, I'm done with them.

Glad to have jumped on here and saw this thread. I too thought it was just me. Impossible to look at different sports.

It really is not usable any longer. I hope it's a programming error that can be repaired.

Also, the Filter for Lot versus Single etc. is gone. What's next? Eliminating the Auction versus BIN option?

If it ain't broke, fix it.

I agree slot of the recent changes haven't benefited the average eBay user.

Just tried using the available filters. Beyond a nightmare, wtf. If anyone figures out a workaround please post it, until then EBAY is worthless.

Got to be good for auction companies :)

that will be the end of my use of ebay for cards unless this is changed.

Good, Less competition! LOL Yeah they screwed it up again. They just can't leave well enough alone.

a raw card today...

https://luckeycards.com/e92bender.jpg

Sorting is even worse today. They dropped the choice of which Year you could choose from. Searching for T206, now all you see are pages of Reprints from Burbank Sports Cards. A new Deans Cards nightmare!

The latest in decisions by Tech companies where good is bad & bad is good.

This was the notice I got. Which was followed later in the day by the notification of removal of the Power Seller Program.

Now you can list sports cards by product type
Sports cards will be changing from sports categories into product type categories. Select from singles, packs, boxes, and more.
You’ll be required to choose a Sport under item specifics when listing.
If you don’t update your listings to the appropriate category, they will automatically be categorized as Sports Trading Card Singles.
Item specifics are required for all trading cards

After July, you’ll be required to fill out these item specifics to keep your listing live:
“Sports” under Sports Trading Cards.
“Game” under Collectible Card Games.
“Franchise” under Non-Sports Trading Cards.

New options for graded and ungraded cards
You’ll also be required to select if your card is graded or not in item specifics for single card categories.
Graded cards have additional item specifics, like Grade, Professional Grader, and Certification Number.

I just called them & spoke to someone from a land far, far away. She couldn't help me other than to say use the "Advanced Search" to find what you want.
I told her what a disaster the change was and the decision was unpopular at best.

Another straw up on the camels back...

Not surprised here. Ebay has been riding on the stupid train for years. Someone nailed it with "If it ain't broke don't fix it."

This is going to be a giant PITA for sellers while adding nothing to the process for buyers. When are these dumbf**ks at eBay going to get it through their heads that collectors are specialists who don't need all the nonsensical steering data, not morons looking for a bargain on underwear?

WOW. That is really going to kill sales of more obscure items. Just went to look up Babe Ruth cards. Over 8000 cards listed. Probably all but a couple hundred are new. What a disaster.

They have never comprehended how to leave well enough alone. Can't recall one change they've made in the last decade that is for the better (and they've made many changes).

Would love to sit in on one of eBay's corporate meetings, and see how idiotic ideas like this are pitched (and embraced by management). Someone will probably get promoted for "thinking outside the box". :rolleyes:

Ebay must have a hotline somewhere for people to call all the things in that ain't broke, so they can get their software engineers right on it.

I also got an E-mail from Ebay asking me to be a member of an "Ebay Council". I'm sure that won't be a complete waste of time. :rolleyes:

Synergy!

My favorite Ebay search engine change happened a couple/few years ago or so, probably unbeknownst to most.

Ebay seemed to have the only shopping search engine on the internet that didn't combine the term "boxing" (the sport), with all variations of the word "box", which you can imagine, is a huge PIA, for "boxing" collectors. :D

Well, lo and behold, it eventually happened.........because for some reason Ebay decided they hate searches for anything "specific".........even while they're shoving their concept of "item specifics", which adds untold amounts of time to the listing process, down sellers throats.

I wonder how many people are thinking of telling eBay what they can stick in their box.

It seems, as was mentioned earlier in the thread here, that they have now included an option in the filters for specific sports, so that's nice the option is there.

But as others are mentioning, the lack of being able to filter by era is still a bad decision. Being able to filter by "season" only is such a pain especially for sets like T206 that span multiple "seasons". And there are other card sets where PSA and SGC dont agree regarding the years or "seasons" that the set was issued through.

It's is ONLY available on the website, NOT on the apps.. iOS at least.

Try specifying the category as Trading Card Singles first. For Android, once I specified the Trading Card Singles category in the search filter, the Sport drop down option was available. For Android its right under the Country/Region of Manufacture filter option.

Ebay's new slogan should be - "Ebay: Where The Workaround Isn't The Exception, It's The Rule"

or:

"Ebay: If It Takes 3 Steps To Get Somewhere, Let Us Know And We'll Make It 6"

EBay is just a Dinosaur company now, where the head doesn’t know what the tail is doing. This boils down to over paid employees who have to act like their working to earn their checks. The fact that we are even talking about them is what they like. EBays strategy is If they are talking about you good or bad, that’s good. When they stop talking about you is when you need to worry. Their motto has always been “The only thing constant, is change”.

I went from power seller to part time buyer to now a lurker on eBay (Feebay). Unless something is pointed out to me, I rarely logon. Too bad there is not another rival “auction” site.

Telephone number?
 

Whats the secret to get a live person on the line to express my disgust with the changes?

This completely ruins ebay for me. My main search every day was to go to the Baseball Card category, click on Auctions Only and Pre-War Era, and look through everything. That option is gone now. Instead, I have to click on 50 or 60 different "Year" filters to replicate that process. That's just not worth the effort. I can't believe no one else has come along and started a competing auction site.

Seems like you should be able to do that once and then save the search and never have to go through the hassle again.

My only search solution to eliminate t206 reprints is to specify t206 psa or sgc or bvg since reprints are rarely graded. At least this way I can see graded cards in a somewhat reasonable way and I don't care about raw cards. Again any other solutions would be welcomed.

Please DO join the Ebay council so you can let them know just how bad they are making things for at least our hobby.

One thing that I do to filter out reprints is to include an exclusion by using the minus sign, such as “T206 Taylor -reprint -reprints.”

To be honest, I didn’t really use their canned filters a whole lot because it seemed like so few sellers actually used the provided categories, and of those that did, there usually were a lot of mistakes and errant listings that I missed by using the filters.


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I tried to shop by category this morning in the baseball card section and found no listings. Just a bunch of BS about collecting and links to advertisers. WTF???

More eBay "refinements" in place:

I received a prompt from eBay to add item specifics that will be "required soon." I open up the item; it's a non-sports card.

"Graded" - changed to "No"
Makes sense so far. No problem.

Then, eBay prompted me to enter a condition from their drop-down menu. The choices available:

Mint
Near Mint
Very Good
Good
Fair
Poor

I attempted to add a custom value (EX-MT) and the system wouldn't let me. So, I guess cards magically go from a 3 to a 7, with nothing in between. The new eBay Planck Length Raw Card Grading Scale.

What an absolute disaster. Frankly, the more worrying part of this change isn't the change itself: while the old system worked well, there's always room for improvement, and I had a few gripes with it. I'm fine with them tweaking categories/sorting/filters to try and improve the buying and selling experiences.

The real concern for me is how haphazardly the whole launch has been. It seems as though they didn't do any A/B testing, focus group polling, or even try running the new changes in a sandbox! The response from different members of the ebay team has been all over the place. I wonder if they'll try to patchwork solve this, go right back to the old format, or try an entirely new system in a few months.

I feel for all of the dealers who rely on ebay sales as a large part of their business. It must be difficult to have your cashflow severely impacted by an outside decision. :(

More sales are what they seem to be driving for from this change. The break down of vintage vs. modern is what needs fixing with the new system. At least we can still use search, if they ever get rid of that, searching for cards would take way too long.

Jimmy

I just saw this. Went to my saved search for pre-war cards, Kobe Bryant pops up. Totally useless!!!

Chris, thanks for what I thought was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Ebay lets me apply all the filters (one-by-one), but then it doesn't let me save my filters. I tried running a search after I selected my filters (a -reprint search), but ebay runs that search without any of my filters. So, either I'm an idiot, or I'm just screwed by ebay.

I called and filed a complaint with eBay. The customer service representative told me they were overwhelmed with complaints from baseball card collectors. Hopefully they will undo this mistake.

Not only do the buyers suffer from this change, the sellers do as well.

First of all, eBay never sent me an email regarding these changes. I only heard about it thru the Net54 Forum. I have been selling for over 18 years on eBay and thought it might be nice of them to inform me.

I have about 5,000 different templates thru my listing software that I use over and over. I just go in and update the pictures, headings and descriptions if needed. Each one has their own category, Trading Cards, Baseball or Trading Cards, Football, etc.

In order for my listings to work, I had to make sure that all the categories were changed to Trading Card Singles. Nothing separates the sports anymore. Luckily I was able to do some bulk edits.

I haven't received anything yet from eBay stating that my Item Specifics need to be updated. I am waiting for my listings to start getting kicked off because of that.

If eBay listens to the complaints and reverse everything (I doubt this will happen) then I will really run into an issue. I will not be able to do a bulk edit since all my listings now fall under Trading Card Singles. I will no longer be able to distinguish the different sports unless I manually update everything.

Bottom line. eBay sucks big time and once again they prove that it's run by a bunch of incompetent people who do not think outside of the box.

I wholeheartedly agree. I've spent the better part of three afternoons updating listings. They're mostly 45 RPM record listings. Most of the changes were just annoying. I actually contacted customer service once, though.

For all records, they now want the name of the album. I'm not comfortable putting the name of a product I'm not selling into my listings. It has the potential to confuse customers. I'm sure more than a few would file INAD refund requests and leave negative feedback. (but your listing said, "Meet The Beatles"...all I got was a little record with two songs!)

It only took 90 minutes and three separate CS reps to get this solved. Otherwise, I'd have had 650+ listings taken down.

Howard, it seems to me that the eBay incompetents don't do much thinking inside the box either!

It seems like they should consider adopting the motto "Be the Box".

Brian

It seems like they should consider adopting the motto "Be the Box".

Brian

It just proves to you that eBay have people who work there who have no idea what they are doing. They don't understand that not all 45's are associated with an album. So, if you have 45's from the 60's, you have to look each one up to get the name of the album.

I can't wait to get my rejection letter from eBay. Are they going to tell me to include the player's wife name?

The listings I had with the 'required soon' updates required information that added nothing of value to the listings.

I am just going to make up nonsense to fill in the blanks on listings where it doesn't matter. Like "name of book" is "Under The Grandstand", name of author "Seymour Butts" etc.

I tend to use "Note Specified" wherever that is an available option and the actual specific is irrelevant to the item, as that or some variation is typically one of the standard options.

Or if you have a lot of listings, it might be interesting to see if you could use your store name for the same fill-in-the-blank specific often enough that eBay populates it as one of the standard options? (It could just as easily get all those listings booted though, so if you try it, don't blame me if that happens).

I think all of this is an attempt to force sellers to input information that can be used for off-eBay searches (google shopping, for instance) and data analysis, the idea being that everything that can be purchased fits into a standard catalog if only that catalog is large enough. There is a big disconnect though between how collectors search for "collectibles" from how someone looking for a "product" might search. Baseball card collectors who have spent well over a century differentiating pieces of cardboard by the most minute details and arranging them into ever-finer categories and sub-categories, creating a Standard Catalog into which nearly all of these cards will fall neatly (if only the specific information is entered) will go onto a site like eBay and spend hours upon hours focused on looking for items to buy that are miscategorized or mislabeled, completely foregoing all of the item specifics that (theoretically) would have led to a quick and easy search for exactly what they were looking for.

This is kind of behavior is baffling to non-collectors.

Basically, they're continuing their Amazonification of the platform, while missing the point that people normally go to Ebay for completely different reasons then they go to Amazon for.

They aspire to be Amazon, without the infrastructure of Amazon...............so a completely inferior version of.

Wait until you see a single listing for "1986 Donruss Jose Canseco" with a stock image, and followed by the phrase "274 other sellers also have this product", buried in the bottom right hand corner of the page. Probably won't even see the non-anchor sellers on the mobile version.

:rolleyes:

I just listed some cards for auction. One of the items is "Card Name". There is no drop down box but when I clicked on the box my credit card information came up!!

Mike

ebay
 

It's been a LONG time since I was a fan of ebay, and decisions like this one reinforce my opinion of that venue. For what it's worth, they did the same thing to comics- lumped them all into one pot rather than by era. Awful. Trent King

They couldn't even be bothered to notice that their programming would trigger an autofill response.

Good God
 

I wonder if the genius that thought this through, and everyone who signed off on this disaster will have jobs by Friday. What a cluster f**k of a mess. This makes it not even worth trying to buy cards off there

To whom does one direct complaints?

We can complain all that we want to ebay's customer service. Do you really think they pass this on to upper management? If they do, do you really think they give a crap?
They probably don't.

When my account was hacked last month, eBay decided to delete all 300 of my items from my store. In addition, they deleted all sales from that week that were not paid for.

When I asked them why the f--k did they do that without telling me. They said they did not know. They also told me that they will pass this on to upper management and they will call back the next day. The next day came and they never called. I called again and was told the same thing. I called a third time and a fourth. I am still waiting for upper management to call back.

That's how I feel they are going to deal with this category fiasco. Nothing will happen. I hope that I am wrong this time.

. At least with records there is an alternative - Discogs.

IMO a good opportunity for someone like a COMC who already has the sports card userbase to introduce an ebay like platform.

the way ebay operates.... they will all get raises and a bonus.

There is now a "Set" filter for T206. I used it to search ungraded cards and am posting the screen shot here.

Yes, there will still be items listed in the wrong category. Some sellers do this accidentally, others on purpose.

Yes, there are still issues with eBay. I'm sure we can fill page after page with "I hate eBay because..." posts.

Yes, we can look at current listings (even sorted by newly listed) and find things that are wrong...especially with older listings.

Etc., etc., etc.

However, eBay seems to be taking a step in the right direction. A feature we were asking for yesterday is there today.

Ya to me this seems really stupid? Now they have some sets listed...no caramel sets or anything more obscure than t206...a ridiculous amount of different modern sets.

It would have been much more efficient to have eras...but i suppose it's a PLAY TO GAIN MORE INFO FOR PROFIT?