I Wonder Why Ebay Doesnt Have Stamp Catagories Items

we are missing catagories for precancels, parcel post Postage due and many other back of book items

While categories for US stamps are somewhat lacking on ebay.com, categories for foreign stamps are a real mess. The Germany and German Colonies category has over 900,000 listings all lumped together - absolutely impossible to browse. For this reason, I've switched to ebay.de, which has many, many categories. I imagine the same is true for all countries.

I think ebay hasn't bothered too much with additional categories as they have been pushing "item specifics" instead which is a pain for sellers to implement via their own software. Under postcards they actually did away with a number of categories under the U.S. states, UK and Canada and now they are item specifics. I like Delcampe category system which is rather extensive and all site rather than spread out across numerous international sites. However, Delcampe doesn't have the buyer/seller traffic that ebay has.

This is one of my pet peeves with ebay USA. I'll echo the comments about the Germany category as it can be very difficult to nearly impossible to find the actual items you are looking for. Searching by catalog number is only marginally useful in a lot of cases.

ebay Germany makes it a piece of cake to find the stamp or stamps I want, first time, every time. You just have to pick the right category, search by Michel#, and you're golden. The Google Chrome browser automatically translates the page, but of course the translation is far from perfect. It requires a little more diligence on my part to ensure I'm getting what I think I'm getting, but it's worth it. The stamps I get from German sellers are always top-notch and packaged perfectly.

As buyer and seller alike, I LOATHE item specifics being used instead of appropriate subcategories. Only a tiny cross section of sellers use item specifics in the collectibles categories, as (1) they frequently don't make sense, and (2) depending on how each seller spells them, they can be all over the board.

ebay doesn't comprehend that collectibles aren't shopped for the way you buy at Wal-Mart. Most people aren't looking for a "size 12 rectangular stamp in purple."

While that approach may work for consumer goods, it's a complete fustercluck for collectibles, antiques, and other one-off items.

I think that the real problem here is that NOBODY at e-Bay has the foggiest idea about stamp collecting or stamps.

Several years ago there was no category for plate number coils. Only after a long lobbying campaign by PNC3 did we get a separate listing for PNC's. The problem now is that a lot of other stuff is also listed under that heading!

Peter

Bottom line is that they really don't care about the stamps category in general. ebay doesn't release their sales figures by category, but I wouldn't be surprised if, say, iPads alone accounted for more total sales than the entire stamp category. Total stamp sales pale in comparison next to electronics and some of the other categories. That's where their attention lies, probably as it should, for sound business reasons.

Heirarchal schemes are not problem-free. Look at SCF, where a post might belong in three or more different places.

Perhaps ebay is more worried about the quality of their search results (the same item appears three or more times) than in their browse results.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Parcel post is just too small of a category for them to bother with. Not sure about precancels.

Here's a look at the United States categories on Delcampe. I wish ebay came up with a system like this:

http://www.delcampe.net/page/catego...-States.html