What percentage of your searches find a similar item currently listed or recently sold on eBay?

What percentage of your searches find a similar item currently listed or recently sold on eBay?

And if the item you are looking for is not listed on eBay does that mean that;

A.) It's worthless: sellers didn't see enough profit to bother listing OR

B.) It's rare or at least scarce OR

C.) eBay is the world's largest marketplace for antiques and collectables but even the sellers there can't stock every type of antique.

Your thoughts?

 

Hmm, could be B (I always hope it is scarce and desirable to bring $$$)
or it could be C..

Most of my stuff is not antiques, more vintage.

 

D.) 1. There's something like it listed, but seller knew too little or took too little time to describe it in a way that searching can find it.
2. You're not using the right terms to find it.

 

This is so true.
Just this past week, I stumbled on a glass item that was not listed correctly at all and had no keywords that pertained to making it desirable. It was a generic title, like
glass canister. And I wanted to buy it to resell.

I was going to bid on it, but alas one other person found it too and I suppose they asked the seller to add a BIN for a very low price and snagged it.
The starting bid was $9.99 with no BIN
Then seller added the BIN.
The bin was $15.00

 

Probably about 98-99%. Yes to A and B.

 

Hi,
When eBay first started out I found so many things that were misspelled or unknown it was a gold mine. I bought stuff and sold the same day. I would just have the seller mail it to the person I sold it to. It was like a grab bag sale. Then eBay started to "correct" misspellings and that stopped. Then they started with the value added fees and stopped the feed back and other things. I gave up since I was selling a vase for 6 dollars and shipping went from 4 dollars to 12 dollars and up. The fees went so high as well as the shipping other fees. I stopped selling. I used to sell from 10 to 25 items a week. it was fun and I meet a lot of wonderful people. Then the NUTS and seriously disturbed people started buying and screaming and the fun went away. The final straw was a deranged woman started calling me and left threatening notes on my front door. It took the police about two months to track her down and warn her to stop contacting me about her china plate with three sager marks on the back.
greg

 

Oh..the the woman who sent me sunglasses......I demanded before bidding to know if they were scratch free.......& got them with scratches right in my sight line....she said she hadn't noticed them !!!!
Then she said to make up for the error she's send me another pair...with clean lenses..........never heard from her again !!!!

So, Joe...is that how sellers trust we'll treat them fairly ???????

Oh...& E. no matter how big the internet...there are millions of tons of items that will never be photoed and find their way on the web !

 

I am still green with envy over a case I know of where someone got the steal of a decade because the title was too specific; she told me she stumbled into it at the last minute. It's not realistically possible to search every listing with the word 'cameo' in the title, you have to add a qualifier & eliminate a number of other terms for it to be manageable. Because this is someone else's info, feel I cannot tell all the specifics, but cameo was listed as (name of obscure carver) cameo. No mention of material, not even the word 'antique'. She paid a little over $20 for it against little competition. Any museum with a cameo collection would be happy to have it.