Just to be clear. You can turn out of stock option off or on in your selling site preferences. If set to off - items are no longer in your inventory when quantity goes to 0. If set to on - items remain in inventory even if quantity is 0 (you can manually remove from inventory or change quantity if you have more items to sell).
The out of stock option is most beneficial to sellers that sell items that have a source to replenish sold items .
I have come to like the out-of-stock option for my store even though I mainly sell quantity (1) items and will not be replenishing stock items after it sells.
Disadvantage:
0 quantity items in inventory count against your "free" monthly eBay listings ( so remove when no longer wanted)
Advantages:
-What is eBay doing with vacation settings and how fast will they take affect? Who cares. Quickly change quantity for all items to 0. They are gone from eBay selling. Change back to 1 - they magically reappear. ( I only have a few multiple quantity items to keep track of - and I still do use eBays Vacation mode at times).
-Where is that item? Did it break? Set quantity to 0. Oh, there it is in fine condition. Set quantity back to 1.
-Customer not going to pay? Customer wants to cancel? Need to relist? Set quantity back to 1.
-Several other advantages to having out of stock setting on (my opinion for my store).
Back to your original issue. My sold items always appeared in searches before I started using the out-of-stock eBay option (primarily quantity 1 items changing to quantity 0). I haven't played to see if sold items start appearing after I completely remove them from inventory.
