How long do you keep your photos of items you've listed for sale

[katirbe1]

I have loads of photos on my phone and was curious as to how long sellers keep these photos on their phones.

[simba6]

They are of no use in winning any cases.  Once the item is sold you can dump them.

[johnjefprks]

Once they are uploaded and I have checked the listing,  I delete them.

[gator08041971]

Personally, I have been complacent in not deleting them lately, but typically I would hold on to some for up to a year.  Best case scenario, 6 months is plenty of time. But as Simba above stated, often having the picture is more a for you thing, than anything useful for ebay in case of an issue.

I already send buyers a message with photos of the purchased item from during the packaging and the package as labeled and that gets sent through the ebay system now.  If that isn't enough proof, not sure what else would be.  Biggest thing is to track serial numbers and any identifiers as a just in case.

*shrug

[kensgiftshop]

I don't keep any of the photos on my phone.

I store them all on my PC along with the descriptions and I've got them from the time I started selling here.

[toysaver]

one minute

[tobaccocardyahoo]

My phone has no role in the listing process.

Storage is cheap and I have pictures which go back many years on external drives.

[ckimodog]

@katirbe1 

I keep mine on a USB thumb drive in the event I have a re order or a custom order.  My phone?  Forget about it.  The eBay app has been goofy lately.

Happy Selling.

[sin-n-dex]

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@katirbe1 wrote:

I have loads of photos on my phone and was curious as to how long sellers keep these photos on their phones.

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I unload my phone when it gets full, and move photos to a laptop. When they're listed, the photos are archived on an external hard drive by month (so if I can see I listed it in April 2023, I know where to look to find the photos).

Generally I have 4000-5000 photos when I unload my phone. Yesterday I took photos of postcards (to fix a bunch of listings that "lost" their photos), and I had 2100 photos from just that day taking pictures. So I'd say I need to unload my phone once or twice a month usually (since I don't photograph every day).

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@gator08041971 wrote:

Personally, I have been complacent in not deleting them lately, but typically I would hold on to some for up to a year.  Best case scenario, 6 months is plenty of time. But as Simba above stated, often having the picture is more a for you thing, than anything useful for ebay in case of an issue.

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Some weird phenomenon happened to my antique postcards in SixBit, and all the photos except the last one (of it showing the lot number packed up) were deleted. Then it synced with eBay at some point and deleted them all on eBay too.  I had to replace the photos of the front and back of the card (and postmark if it applies). Having kept photos for the past two years I was able to go and pull a bunch from archive to fix my listings. The photos from 2021 were already deleted because the external drive only has so much space, so I had to take those again. I spent 6 hours taking photos of 300 postcards so I can fix my listings. That part would have been done if I had archive going back far enough (but I don't generally think I need photos once it's listed, it's just in this case it was helpful).

C.

[reallynicestamps]

Photos?
why?

Don't you have a scanner?

 It takes perhaps two minutes to scan a postcard twice (600 dpi and 1200 dpi) and the same for the back (or a detail like a post mark or receiver) if that seems important .

Then they are all on my desktop ready to be used, filed, or trashed.

[2013grotz]

I kept all of mine for quite some time.  Mainly just for lack of having to keep them pared down to current items.  They are helpful occasionally to remind yourself of what the item looked like in case there's questions.  Like was said, ebay policy on returns makes it so what you say is irrelevant, so whatever the buyer says is right even if they're 100% wrong, so there's really no point in keeping them to try to prove yourself to ebay on a complaint.  I still have all my pictures for my (old) listings even now.  Maybe, if I make a comeback, they'll be useful, but I've since added a ton of other items to my "go" pile, so keeping them might be a moot issue.  Don't know yet.

[gloryglorygifts]

I have them all saved on my computer, which sometimes turns out to be a very good thing. Case in point, one of my distributors were taken over around 3 years ago. Fast forward to last year, they were actually merged with a larger one and the products are still available, so I didn't have to take all new photos of my items. If I'm still working with the distributor, I keep them. If not, I usually purge them. I've purged like 4 folders of them over the years. 

Anything taken with my phone, I delete. 

[sin-n-dex]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

Photos?
why?

Don't you have a scanner?

 It takes perhaps two minutes to scan a postcard twice (600 dpi and 1200 dpi) and the same for the back (or a detail like a post mark or receiver) if that seems important .

Then they are all on my desktop ready to be used, filed, or trashed.

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I get more SNADs when I scan stuff. Like the coin I sold where I got a complaint there were all sorts of marks on it. The scanner light was so nice and bright it washed out all the nicks and scratches and left me with a neg (which was eventually resolved with the buyer, but he actually believed I tricked him by scanning the coin).

Since then, I don't scan anything. You can see damage a lot more if it's photographed using eBay's zoom tool in the listing. I haven't had SNADs very often on anything I've actually taken photos of.

C.

[slippinjimmy]

I don't use a phone for eBay, I keep ALL my images.....FOREVER. Well sort of forever, I'm missing the pics I used in 1999 but everything from 2000 on is instantly available.

Unfortunately almost all the images from the early years are too small to be used today, a holdover from the early days when small images that loaded quickly were the norm as 25 years ago most people were still using dial-up internet.