What Is Hgfc?

A seller offered this:
US 179 5c Taylor Used w/ New Orleans Fancy Cancel (HGFC-227)

Chances are the HGFC reference identifies a part of the sellers inventory, but on the outside chance it refers to a catalog of some sort, does anyone recognize this? Seller has it on dozens of stamps.

Your gut is correct - that is the seller's item ID number. It's unfortunate that ebay does not have an easy method for a seller to tie-in such numbers because putting them in the description just causes buyer confusion like you had. Myself as well on many occasions. I REALLY hate this when it's tagged onto a fancy cancel! "OK... What book is that!? Maybe Cole? No wait... Not that one either. Screw it, I ain't bidding."

I really wish ebay would send invoices with our own stock numbers included. It would make it easier and quicker to pull items for packing and shipment. I hide my stock numbers in the photos of each listing description. It is a waste of a description to put the stock number in the title as you're just giving up valuable space that could help with keyword searches.

If you use TurboLister, Selling Manager Pro or a third party tool like the SixBit eCommerce application, the SKU (stock keeping unit) can be used to populate the ebay Custom label field. Some ebay categories also require some sort of standardize product ID like an ISBN number for a book or a UPC code. I notice that sellers who rely on the ebay Sell Your Item Form make more errors than sellers using more advanced tools.

One big advantage of using SixBit is that packing lists, out of the box include the SKU, a ProductID and a thumbnail image of the stamp. This allows me to compare the inventory number on the tag with the stamp with the packing list avoiding potential errors like sending the wrong stamp with the same Scott number. I continue to be surprised at the number of sellers who continue to rely solely on ebay web resources even when they don't scale very well.

I agree strongly that placing the SKU or stock number in the title is a waste of scarce title real estate. Also, I believe that the practice is a form of key word spamming causing false matches in the mindless ebay search engine.

Clark

Yes, you can put a stock number into TurboLister, but it doesn't replicate it into an invoice. It help to keep things organized within TL, but does nothing to help pull orders for shipment. I looked at SixBit, but because I don't have regular sales it wasn't worth the fee.

A free "starter" version of SixBit is available. It may do what you need.

Clark

SixBit is only free for 30 days. TL does everything I need for free.

I actually use a word processing program with auto generated templates to create listings and just copy them over to TL. It's pretty easy to do and a lot quicker than trying to create them in a database format or even a spreadsheet format.

HGFC means "Highly Gorgeous Fancy Cancel".


-IBFS

These inventory numbers in titles cause false matches with catalog numbers when you do a search.