Item specifics in the stamps category use corrupted terminology borrowed from coins instead of sources like the Scott catalog of US Stamps and Covers. Listing non-collectible books is now so difficult that a dumpster for disposal is a less costly alternative.
Truly useful item specifics and item condition are missing in the Stamps Category. Catalog number (and catalog) and condition Used and Unused, that existed at one time, are the most needed, but missing, item specifics. Required item specifics like Certification (should be Certificate) apply to less than 5% of listings and should be recommended, not required. No one trusts seller self-graded stamps, so the only useful item specific for Grade would be numeric grades from recognized expertizing committees. Three out of the four US expertizing committees provide grading, one does not. Expertizing committee name and the certificate number should be mandatory if the stamp has ever been certified. If multiple certs exist, all should be listed. Quality, which primarily relates to gum condition and presence of a cancel could be required but standard terminology, without abbreviations, should be used. Color and Denomination are useless because filters are bounded. "Smart" filters are needed to convert abbreviations and synonyms to phrases is also needed. Grade "Fine to very fine" should be the value, not some abbreviation like "F-VF", the standard, or some variant like FVF. The abbreviation "F/VF? exists only on eBay and appears to exist because of a design flaw in the eBay search engine.
Stamp collectors dislike "best match" search and few collectors use it. After eBay informed me that the Color item specific for a red orange stamp should be changed to "orange" for "better visibility" I wondered if looking like an idiot would be worth the cost of "better visibility". I concluded that credibility is more important than visibility.
While I can see the benefit of using well designed item specifics to help eliminate some categories. For example, some United States stamps are split into used and unused categories. At one time eBay supported item condition values of "Used" and "Unused" but later removed them before they could be used instead of separate categories.
I do not understand why eBay believes that item specifics can be successfully applied to listings after the fact. When I first learned that eBay would be defining item specifics, I started incorporating properties and attributes from the Scott catalog into listings as item specifics that could be used to build descriptions. That project eliminated about 80% of the repetitive data entry after a catalog was built. Each Scott catalog number implies a set of properties like denomination, year of issue, subject or topic, design, color, and technical details, important to collectors, like perforations, watermarks, and printing method. Attributes related to production or usage map into item specifics like grade (centering), quality (gum condition), format (single or multiple), or cancels. Since most item specifics derive from the catalog, I started using it to build listings. It is unfortunate that eBay ignored the Scott catalog and attempted to invent new terminology borrowed from coins. I cannot change item specifics that define listings to match eBay's "required" values. It is relatively easy to populate the eBay required item specifics with existing values. Failure to match in search filters does not seem to matter, suggesting that some or most eBay item specifics are irrelevant. I continue to populate attribute or condition item specifics consistent with Scott catalog definitions without impact on sales. Buyers who attempt to use the eBay filters may get random results and then stop using them. There are enough sellers of poorly described stamps or stamps with undescribed faults to satisfy buyers who happen to find them using eBay's best match or filters. Properly described faulty stamps can be more easily found by searching by price from high to low.
