Collector frustration
 

Like many old guard collectors, the modernization these days has me shaking my head at almost every turn. I thought I'd seen it all. Recently I won a nice PSA 9 slab on eBay for a fair price as an upgrade to my '64 Phil FB set. Won from GM Cards who is typically a solid seller. Never had a problem and I have consigned much with him in 2023. Anyway, the card was about $80. I paid little attention to the fine print details. Unbenounced to me, the listing said "eBay vault". (Since when did GM start listing eBay vault cards?). From the point I paid my 80 bucks the card took almost TWO weeks to arrive. Never mind I live 8 miles from Greg Morris' office. It seems the card went to PSA to be authenticated from eBay, I guess because it was an eBay vault item, as at $80 it is not near the normal eBay authenticate threshold. It was delivered to me via Fedex, so the card went to Memphis before being delivered to me back in Socal.

For $80 this card was such an overkill in the "modern" system of collecting and selling. It could have and should have traveled 8 miles to me in a day or so, instead of going 4000+ miles and taking a couple of weeks.

I wish it was 1980 again...

An $80 card, ?
 

. How does an $80 card deserve space in a vault ? Thanks,.

..

You are not alone. A corrupt or incompetent (pick one) 3rd party corporation getting veto power over a consensual deal between myself and a seller on a different company's platform is rather silly to me. I get that this program is helpful for people who do not know what they are buying and cannot authenticate cards or slabs themselves, but it's made me reduce my eBay buying by about a quarter because I am not a child that needs my hand held by corporate. I'm taking more and more deals off any platform I would have previously done on eBay because it's just easier and there's less crap to deal with. Seller shows item, I pay seller, seller ships me card, we are both happy. This doesn't need to get complicated. Vaults are the furthest thing from collecting I could possibly imagine.

I've lost two sales now to the authenticator. One, they claimed a slab was scratched -- it wasn't. Two, they claimed the card was "not a trading card," whatever that means. If they meant it wasn't authentic, it absolutely was -- and it was in a BGS slab.

I bought a 64 Topps stand up from ole Greg Morris cards on July 31st. Listed as VG-EX. Instead of it being shipped down the street to Irvine PSA for Authentication it was shipped to Sarasota, FL. 10 days later, I'm advised the card has 2 major McDivots you can't see in the original picture, a crease through and through and it's been recolored. If I thought GM was a crook, I might have taken closer look.

But it was Authentic, they said:) and asked me if I still wanted it. LOLOLOLOLOL.
I cancelled the sale and it's now being sent back to GM and I will have my refund in 5-7 days if I'm lucky. Only 3 weeks spinning in the wind. Only 350 and I'll get my money back eventually.

GM doesn't give a Sh** anymore. Maybe a G-VG (CREASED, Altered) on a good day!!!!!Used to love buying from them but won't bid again...and they have now been removed from the circle of trust, even being down the street. Too big for his britches to find a simple color job. The pictures the authentication company sent were clear as day. The photos they use don't show the entire story....

PSA only authenticates slabbed cards for eBay, while CGC (formerly CSG) authenticates raw cards. So it went to the proper place.

Had this same thing happened where they said slab had a scratch and would not pass authentication. They were high res images the buyer knew exactly what it looked like. SMH ebay authenticators have gone to crap

Has anyone tried using ebay's SEARCH FUNCTION lately?

What an unholy mess!

The more terms you add the more items it sends your way (should be the other way around). It is like searching on Amazon (don't even get me started)

They are killing what is left of their brand.

Yes that function is horrible! When you key in something specific like 1957 Brooks Robinson, you get everything with 1957 in it, everything with Brooks in it....including brooks and streams, and everything Robinson, including Robinson Caruso and whatever. What a freaking mess!

eBay is dogshit. In every respect, it’s a shell of what it once was.

I will agree. I decided to do the ebay vault on a Red Cobb T206 portrait. Didn’t pay taxes. Did sell it on ebay for 600 more BEFORE taxes. So ebay tells me no worries, they will ship from vault to buyer and in their words, I am good. Well weeks go by, they don’t ship, eat my profit in fees, I have to pay $50 for withdraw, wait three days because FedEx only comes by my place after his lunch break and I work, so can’t sign. Finally get it and have to ship it to authenticator.

Vault is good in some aspects, like saving sales tax. I did get a card off GM that went from his vault to mine, so literally I owned it right after paying. Again, you don’t pay taxes, but ebay is still a cluster you know what.

Just had authentication reject an $850 sale due to them deeming a freshly graded PSA card as being "not a trading card" as well. Ha! I was very confused as it is clearly a "trading card".

It was a 1996 Topps Michael Jordan Finest Reprints Refractor. These were inserts in 1996 Topps Stadium Club packs. PSA correctly labels it as a "Reprint - Refractor" on their label (as that is what the insert set is called), but according to eBay after I inquired why it failed, all "reprints" are not eligible for authentication and will fail the process.

I told the eBay rep that makes zero sense as the card is a pack-issued insert officially produced by Topps - and it was graded by PSA very recently. The rep could offer no other explanation and just said they would pass along my feedback. if eBay can find a way to be incompetent, they will...

Ebay seller
 

If ebay was a body part, it would be a sphincter. It used to be fun when
it was new, it's gone downhill since the mid 2000s ("the entropy effect").

Trent King

The saved search function, though, is pretty accurate in my experience. In other words, when I get notices, they're usually on point. Not sure what the difference is.

They just haven’t gotten around to effing it up yet. Don’t worry…it’s on the docket.

perfect!
 

tremendously accurate description...and eBay can kiss my sphincter and scrotum!

Yes, and why was a common '64 Phil FB card worth $80 in a vault to begin with?

I guess I'm a weirdo
 

But you probably already guessed that much.

While eBay has definitely declined in terms of the opportunities for buying stuff, I'm not experiencing the same platform challenges that others are mentioning here.

Part of the problem with the dearth of available auctions for quality stuff is probably the new $600 threshold for 1099s, and the other piece is probably the decline/migration of PWCC off of the platform. Both of which have conspired to leave basically only a lot of BINs at high retail/museum prices.

I'm a big fan of the authentication service. Especially as a seller. I've never had it trigger a problem, and I take some comfort in knowing that a rogue buyer can't just claim that he never got the piece that I shipped to him, or it wasn't in the package or something. Although I can see how it would suck to have a perfectly legitimate piece get bounced by the process, particularly for some nonsensical reason like claiming the piece isn't a trading card.

I have had a couple of times where raw pieces were authenticated, but they found flaws that were not disclosed in the listing. eBay contacted me and gave me the option of accepting the item with the (now known) flaws, or rejecting it. And that seemed like a relatively benign solution - let the buyer decide if they still want the piece if there are problems that weren't disclosed. For anyone who feels like the authentication process is hijacking their purchases, having this option gives you the ability to avoid having your deal cancelled.

For those having problems with Ebay search returns giving a bazillion results, put "quote" around one or more search terms.

For instance...

matt clement psa = 2,600+ results

matt clement "psa" = 9 results

Thanks for the info John, appreciate that.

LOL:D That about sums it up!!!

Almost rivals the circuitous journey of “Large Ass” Herzog.

CGC? Since when?

I wonder if this is more just sort of a recognition that CGC and CSG are related and were merged under a single umbrella last month.

https://www.cgccomics.com/news/artic...-cards-merger/

Most Likely. Single umbrella. All CGC and no longer CSG.

"The merger of CGC Trading Cards and CSG is the culmination of exhaustive market research, including customer and non-customer surveys, dozens of focus groups and thoughtful analysis of the card grading business. The new brand combines the best aspects of both CGC Trading Cards and CSG, including world-class expertise, advanced technology, the industry’s best holder and the strongest guarantees, while addressing many of the most-requested enhancements from the collecting community.

“The card market needs strong competition because competition makes us better, and that's good for collectors and dealers,” says Steven R. Eichenbaum, CEO of CCG. “CGC Cards will win by providing best-in-class grading services with fast turnaround times, affordable prices and strong prices realized.”


.

With regards to the eBay search function, this is probably common knowledge, but you can eliminate things easily by enclosing relevant keywords in parentheses preceded by a minus sign (and then saving the search).

To show how stupid things have gotten, here's an example of what I needed to add over time to one of my searches for a baseball card set (yes, a BASEBALL CARD set) just to eliminate the detritus and 'only' have cards I'm looking for appear:
-(dean, sheffield, calender, usaf, losers, pottery, nasa, china, buick, saucer, rosemary, rainbow, caron, granada, baby, relish, salt, billy jack, steel, license plate)

No joke. :eek: :eek:

Note: The "dean" is in all of my searches to avoid Mr. Extortion himself.

That is one lonely tenor.

You actually don't need parentheses or commas in between words just a single space. For example if I'm searching for 1958 Topps this works the same way and let's you add more without hitting the limit.

1958 Topps -2021 -2022 -2023 -bowman

I tried searching for 1957 Brooks Robinson and I didn't get anything returned that weren't sports cards. I don't think I did anything special so I'm not sure why your results included so many unrelated items but I generally haven't experienced the problems searching on eBay that you and others are describing in this thread.

Personally, having terrible issues with Ebay search the past few months. I've cleared my cache/history/etc...checked settings...

As mentioned above, I can do this search string for these 2 results...

matt clement psa = 2,600+ results
matt clement "psa" = 9 results

To add confusion, this search string does this...

michael barrett psa - 39 results
michael barrett "psa" - 39 results

I have no idea why this happens, but once it decides to return a zillion results it seems to continue to do it that way.

My results for your searches are similar.

Matt Clement psa vs "psa" - 2600+ vs 10
Michael Barrett psa vs "psa" - 32 for both