Misinterpretation of question on eBay
 

My message to seller:
Do any of the cards in this lot, or any cards you have for sale, have a rubber stamp on the back from previous (original) owner
Howe McCormick
500 W. Main St., Gainesville, Fla
Please let me know. Thanks.

His response:
Howe, no none of them have rubber stamps on the back. Thanks

Not the first time this has happened. So, am I just a lousy question asker?

Yes. A better way to phrase would be:

I believe a previous owner of the cards was XYZ. Do any of your cards have a stamp placed on them by XYZ?

Make it simple. "Do you have any cards with the name Howe McCormick stamped on the back?"

I wrote someone asking about old yearbooks from my hometown, lots of family grew up in the town and went to the school there, so here is the question/answer copied from our ebay conversation:

Me: Hi, could you tell me if there is anyone with the last name Dreker in any of your Kearny yearbooks
Seller: There is one Decker
Me: My last name is Dreker, so I was looking for any Dreker relatives that may be in the yearbook. Thanks
Seller: Her name is Alice Decker

Notice I put the last name twice in the second response, then ended the conversation quickly when I realized I was fighting a losing battle

You could put the name and address in quotes too.

Joe

Answering the "is it important to be able to spell and read" question from the other thread...

LOL...don't ya just love it when they don't pay attention to the main details of the question?

Hi there.
My name is Ed McCollum. I thank you in advance for a quick minute of your time. There was a man named "Howe McCormick" that actually used a rubber stamp to mark some of these cards. I was wondering if this lot, or any other cards you own have the following information stamped on the back of the card?

"Howe McCormick
500 W. Main St., Gainesville, Fla"

Best I could do :) And I am positive there will still be "those people" who are going to misunderstand anything you type :)

Dear Ed,
There's some stamped by a lady named Carolina Brights and some more by some Hindu fellow and then a whole bunch with a guy's last name "Drum" but, no, there are no McCormicks in the lot. Sorry I couldn't have been more help.
Yours truly,
Joe Seller

Dear John Q,

I have gotten that response quite often also. "Only stamp on the card is it says it's a Piedmont. Sorry" Or the better "It says 350 subjects. Is that what you need to know?" But I do like the example given above. Think I'll be using it from now on. Thanks to all.

One of the first rules of genealogy: Learn all the different ways to spell your name incorrectly!

Not that this seller wasn't clueless, but it goes a long way to show why old census records are rife with errors in spelling and dates.

With my last name, I get more misses than hits. It's a very rare last name, 19 people in the US have it, all related to me. Some others in Germany that are probably related somehow. Yet I see the name a lot in searches and it ends up being Decker, or Dreher or Dreyer because they find something close