HELP - How to Change Variation in a multiple Baseball cards listing

[maxmawi]

I listed several baseball cards multi-variation listings, (using "player as a Variation") but I have noticed that they have no views / no sales for almost a year.

Now, when I tried to revise them ebay says: "Player is not allowed as a variation specific."

I guess that this is the reason for my listings not to be published.

I tried to change the variation from: "player" to "card #" but looks like is not possible to do it in bulk and I have to start from scratch. This is unbelievable.

If they don't accept "player" or any other variation in a multiple listing, they not suppose to accept it from the beginning when. This is too much work when we have several hundreds of cards listed in "multiple"

All that time, description, pictures lost, it is crazy

[wastingtime101]

Hey @shipscript! Can you link to one of your posts that outlines how the seller can handle this with a file exchange upload? 😁

[shipscript]

Hi @maxmawi 

eBay has reserved Item Specifics keywords and will not allow them to be used as the name of variation groups. So, you must change the name from "Player" to "Card #", or to some combination of words and punctuation that is not an Item Specific heading.

Renaming is not an option. Instead, you must add the new names and delete that old ones. When deleting, you will lose your photos and must add them back to the new names.  This Variation Scanner can help you bulk edit your variation listings by preserving your photos and generating a spreadsheet that you can upload to eBay as a bulk revision.

https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/VariationScanner.htm 

I ran a scan and see that you have only one listing (275023663319 ) that still has "Player" as the name of the group. I set all the values that you will need when making the change in this link, which will open the tool and  preload those settings for you.

I had to choose a single condition for your cards, so I chose  the value 400011 (Excellent) to add as a new column to your spreadsheet. You can choose a different value within the tool and it will load into the revision spreadsheet.

• Near mint or better - (ID: 400010)
• Excellent - (ID: 400011)
• Very good - (ID: 400012)
• Poor - (ID: 400013)

To fix your listing with 50 variations:

1. Click this preloaded link to visit the non-eBay site.  The tool will fetch your listing and populate all of the parameters that I think you will need for your revision.
2. When it scrolls down to the report section, click the "Build Report" button, which will build a spreadsheet report that changes the variation name, adds photos, and appends the new condition info.
3. Then click the "Download Report" button that is immediately below the report. 
4. Save the report to your computer.
5.  Upload that report to Seller Hub > Reports > Uploads, using the button (3) "Upload Template":  https://www.ebay.com/sh/reports/uploads
6. If all goes well, there should be no errors, and you should see the new variation label within a couple of minutes. But if the listing fails to revise, check back and we can try to address any further issues.

[dev93]

Hi Shipscript,

Is there any tutorials for building a simple variation for sportscards? I just want a card # dropdown and add photos. For whatever reason everything I've found on the subject seems really complicated.

Thanks in advance.

Devin/Dev93

[shipscript]

@dev93 

This thread explains how to start, as some sellers aren't finding the variation option on the listing form. 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Seller-Tools/Baseball-card-variation-listings-OMG/m-p/34126000#M45082 

Attributes: When you open (edit) the "Variations" section of the listing form, you will create one variation "Attribute" (one droplist), and call it something like Card#.

Options: Then add up to 250 items or droplist Options to that attribute on the listing form.

Photos: When the list of card names is complete, you will be directed to add photos. The "default" photos are for the master record, but for Trading Card Singles, you don't want to use default photos for each card. Instead, from the droplist at the bottom of the photo section, select the name of your Attribute (such as Card#). That will open a new photo section for every single Option, where you can upload the front and back of each card photo.

Combination data: When photos are uploaded, scroll down and populate the grid with all of the Variation Combinations,  where you must add the price and quantity for each card and may add custom SKUs if you are using them.

[dev93]

You're my hero. This worked perfectly. I ran my first test and will try an dump the rest of the card of the year in soon.

I do have one more question. Is there an easy way to populate the card #s? Like in using import in reports with a spreadsheet? 

Either way, I really appreciate the help.

Best,

Devin/Dev93

[shipscript]

@dev93 

Once you have created a skeleton variation listing with at least one variation, it is fairly easy to add more options to your variation list by uploading a spreadsheet to Seller Hub > Reports > Uploads.

https://www.ebay.com/sh/reports/uploads

Photos can be tricky. A spreadsheet upload can only provide URLs of externally hosted images, and you can not mix manual uploads with externally hosted URLs. So, if you don't have your own server to host images, the best approach is to create and upload a spreadsheet of all of your variation data, and then manually add the photos using eBay's listing form. I will assume you will manually upload photos to eBay.

To revise a starter listing to add the bulk of the data using a CSV spreadsheet file, you will need to understand what already exists, and what needs to be added.  Your variation listing currently has 11 items. Two methods are available to retrieve this info:

1.)  Use Seller Hub > Reports > Uploads  to fetch a CSV template for Listings > Edit price and Quantity. Remove all but the listing that you want to revise. You will then see the data for the master record and for each variation. 

2.)  Or use this online tool to extract variation data and select only the listing that you want to modify.

https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/VariationScanner.htm 

In both cases, the master record MUST include a list of ALL of the variations that will be available.

To add more items (options) to a variation listing, you would need to add more spreadsheet rows that are similar to the variation rows you already have. Then, the master row would need a list of ALL of the variation options for that listing (using the downloaded file as guidance) so that all old and new options appear in the master row's RelationshipDetails.

While you do not need to repeat an existing variation option as a separate row, its option value MUST appear in the master record's RelationshipDetails  cell during a revision. Since that is hard to monitor, it is perfectly fine to simply repeat an existing variation option when adding new variation options.

Manually constructing the RelationshipDetails  for the master record can be quite tedious, if the list is long, and that is often where errors arise. There is a feature at the bottom of this online tool that can build the master record's RelationshipDetails list to avoid such errors:  https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/VariationBuilder.htm

While you already have photos for the first batch, you won't have photos for the additional options, so simply delete the PicURL column from the spreadsheet (deleting the column will not erase existing photos).  You will, later, manually edit your listing to add the additional variation photos. You can also delete any other columns that are not needed for the revision. The only columns that are required for a variation revision are:

• Action 
• Item number (or ItemID)  [please ensure that the item number is 12 digits and not scientific notation] 
• Relationship
• Relationship details (or RelationshipDetails) 
• Start price (or StartPrice) 
• Available quantity (or Quantity) 
• Custom label (SKU)  (or CustomLabel)  optional unless you rely on SKUs 

Note: eBay had a FileExchange upload that morphed into a SellerHub upload, so you may see two different headers in tools and examples above, and both will currently work in a CSV upload to Seller Hub.

Additional guidance may be found in this thread:  

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Seller-Tools/Use-File-Exchange-to-take-the-pain-out-of-creating-large/... 

[dev93]

Thanks shipscript!

I will need to dive into this. I'm not as tech-savvy as a used to be. I'm grateful for your help.

Best,

Devin