Posted By:
runscottI recently started selling stuff on ebay again (and buying), and was in a real quandry as to what category to list vintage baseball memorabilia. Originally I was going to put old baseball photos in the "photos" section, 1800's baseball publications in the "antique books" section, etc.
But there are two goals you have when choosing a category:
1) you want people to see it so you can sell it higher.
2) you want people to see it because they are looking for it and WANT to find it.
So I think it's completely appropriate for Scott to list his cig pack in pre-30 cards - after all, it's an item that will be of interest to OBAK card collectors who want to create a nice display, or who collect items related to OBAK's. This pack of Scott's is a good cheap way of getting a display piece without paying a fortune for a similar-looking pack that actually might have a card. If I were an OBAK card collector and was looking for OBAK-related items, I would be very glad that Scott made it easy for me to find this item. The argument against this is that "card purists" have to look at some non-card stuff. IMO, this might help expand their collecting horizons, or at least expose them to card peripheral items that they might eventually collect, in my case photographs and publications (we already have vintage categories for some equipment categories, like gloves).
I eventually decided to list my items in the categories that I thought the interested buyers were most likely to be looking, not necessarily in the CORRECT categories according to ebay rules. Who's going to pay me more for an 1870 baseball guide - an Old Judge card collector, or an antique book collector? ...and photos? same deal.
Personally, I would like to see two new categories: "pre-1930 baseball memorabilia" and "pre-1900 baseball memorabilia". And, of course, similar categories for "replicas" and "reprints".