Ebay Needs More Stamp Sub-Categories

Is anyone else frustrated with how hard it can be to browse for stamps on ebay? Maybe it's because I collect Germany, and they have one and only one category for it, namely "Germany and Area", which encompasses German States, Danzig, Memel, Saar, East Germany, Plebiscites, etc. As of a few minutes ago, there were 121,772 results in Germany & Area. That's too many for a bottom-level category. It's very difficult to impossible, for example, to just browse for Third Reich listings under $50, and listings for East Germany stamps clog up the search results when searching by topic or catalog number all the time. I could go on.

Is there a reason why ebay wouldn't create more sub-categories in order to better facilitate browsing? I assume there are other categories in Stamps that are as bad or worse.

I agree that the ebay categories are pretty simple. With some exceptions it's basically a catch all for each country - stamps, postal history, stationery and first day covers all in one category per country. France is like this too. This is where sites like Delcampe excel where everything is broken down in many categories for many countries.

Good point on the covers. I don't currently collect them, but I see them pop up all the time. It's just very frustrating weeding through 100 listings when there are maybe 5 that are even close what I'm looking for. I know that there are other categories that are subdivided into deeper layers than most stamp categories, so I can't see that ebay would have a technical reason for not doing so. They just don't understand stamps, or at least certain segments of the market.

Art,
I collect Germany too and share your frustration.
My work around is to do a search within Germany and Area (It can be a general or advanced search) and then save it. The current terminology is "following a search." You can then go to My ebay and it will show "followed searches." Your saved searches will appear with the current information.
I know I probably miss some listings because they aren't listed correctly but it's the best solution I can find.
Dan

Danstamps, I rely on followed searches to. The ebay "categories" list Croatia, but for Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia or Bosnia you must look under Yugoslavia or 'other".

I follow searches as well. Germany is particularly bad, because if you search for a Scott#, say #76. You might get Germany Scott 76, but you could also find Michel 76, Danzig 76, Saar 76, on or off cover or their Michel numbers, etc.

If I'm looking for a particular stamp or set, I can generally find it. Sometimes I don't know what I want or I'm just looking for a good deal on something that catches my eye. What I'd like is better ability to browse within a much smaller data set like a range of years or even Scott#s.

I would be happy if the had a separate category for French Colonies. Putting France and Colonies together doesn't work very well for me. Another is US 1901-Now Used. Why can't it be like the the unused which is a category of 1901-1940 and another 1941-Now. Oh well.

I just went on and tweaked some searches to make them more usable. For Allied occupation of Germany (as opposed to German occupation of_______), I searched for "occupation" minus just about every country in Europe plus a few philatelic terms, like cover and FDC. I ran out of space before I could exclude everything I didn't want in the search results, but at least it's something like 80-90% accurate now. But they could avoid all that just by creating a "postwar occupation zones" category. Of course this assumes knowledgeable sellers who would put it in the right category, but at least it would be a huge step in the right direction.

Sometimes adding the local spelling helps, for instance for Slovenia I put in the search:

(slovenija, slovenia) -revenue

I don't collect revenues, so I minus it. I will add +used since I collect used, but not everyone puts used in the description.

I am going to have to try the "following a search".

I might have to start looking on ebay Germany. There they have Germany as two high level categories (pre and post 1945) with 20 sub-categories in pre-1945 and 32 in post 1945, many of which are subdivided even further. I have Google Chrome set to auto-translate to English and it's definitely usable, the odd humorous mis-translation aside.

www.ebay.de

I have asked them for perforation gauges as a subcategory (stamps > publications & supplies > perforation gauges) since they have watermark detectors (stamps > publications & supplies > watermark detectors). Go to the following page to make an ebay subcategory suggestion: http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...Contact%20us

I am usually looking for postal history. If I am looking for German postal history I have a lot of stamps to look through, both modern and classic. They are all lumped together. U.S. Postal History at least gets it's own listing, but what some sellers view as postal history is very different from what I do. Do a search of US postal history starting with lowest first. You probably have a dozen pages of modern first day covers to go through to get to actual postal history. I have listed 19th century postal history starting at a penny with free shipping that showed up on page eight.

jogil, thanks, I just submitted a request. I'm sure the email gets sent to a pile of yak dung outside a yurt somewhere in Outer Mongolia, but at least I tried to let someone know who can do something about it rather than just whining about it here.

Jogil,

Thanks for the useful link!

Like Art, I just added to ebay's pile of yak dung.

Maybe you've started something! I didn't know that link existed.

Dan

Guess what? ebay's making changes to the categories!

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinforma...updates.html

Scroll down till you get to the stamps portion. It's probably not going to be everything you want, but I guess it's a start. We'll have to wait till next month to see what it's all about.

For anyone with an ebay store, make sure to pay attention when things get switched around.

Sidenote - ebay is modifying the DSR system as well. There will be something called a "defect rate". I'm sure it will be subject of a new upcoming thread.

Here's a better link for the new categories:

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinforma.../stamps.html