Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
Yes, random.
Instead of your system, why not utilize the Custom Label SKU for the information regarding storage area? Mine looks like this:
In the 1st instance, 15-Ø-040223 means the item is in Bin 15, I paid nothing for it, and I 1st listed it on 4-22-23. The Mickey Shakers are in Bin B3, again cost is zero ( I sell mostly my own items and while they were purchased by me at some point, I have no clue what it cost, but it's also something that would just get donated ).
The Chemistry book is stored on the LiBrary shelf with a piece of painter's tape on the spine with 15 written on it as it's the 15th book I've listed that's been stored on that shelf. I don't want heavy books in the bins anymore. I paid $2 for the book for my daughter, and she no longer needs it. For cost, I use letters to save space. If I paid $26 for something, I'd use a Z. Using letters instead of numbers also helps to keep me from going to the wrong bin.
You could totally reverse it, and Letter the bins, and the cost be an actual number. Or use numbers for both. Or letters.
Having the cost within the SKU could help you decide if you want to accept an offer, although I'm pretty open to all offers. I place the original date in the sku in case I end and relist or an auction ends and I want to relist it, I'd like to know how long I've been trying to sell it.
Also, if I'm starting a new bin, I can grab stuff from the basement, or around the house, fit it in a bin, take photos and list it and know the bin it's in. With your way, you've got to list it before you can place it in a bin. Now, I do that sometimes, like when I've gotta find space in a bin for something.
Sorry for the long response, but if you read this far, I hope it helps.
@lacemaker3 Wow, thank you so much for that! I don't have time right now to look at it in depth, but I will in the next few days & will PM you if I have questions/comments. It was 'morning' for me when I posted & I had a feeling there was a pattern I wasn't seeing b/c my brain doesn't really hit its peak until 2AM LOL. Plus, as you noted, I hesitated to form opinions b/c I am a slow, low quantity lister.
@lacemaker3 wrote:@zamo-zuan, @shipscript, FYI.
@simply-the-best-for-you, there is very definitely a pattern to your item numbers. As you have noticed, the first 3 digits of your item numbers are always one of two 3-digit numbers. We have been calling that the prefix. In the chart below, I separated your two prefixes to make it easier to see the patterns within each 3-digit-prefix.
The next 9 digits are not sequential, but, they are always in order. By that I mean, they are always increasing. The second set of 3 digits, generally stays the same for each day that you list, but then the next day, this set of next-3-digits generally goes up by one (occasionally by two or three).
It doesn't always increment according to the day, though. There are several days here, where the next-3-digits went up by one in the middle of a listing session, on the same day. However, it is quite helpful to look at the next-3-digits, because that makes the pattern more visible.
When you put the next-3-digits together with the last-6 digits, the last-9-digits are always increasing with time. So, they are being assigned based on the date and time when the listing was created, and for someone who lists at your rate, that works out to approximately one day for each next-3-digits increment.
I believe that @zamo-zuan posts a lot more listings, and that would explain why their prefix has been incrementing more rapidly than @simply-the-best-for-you's prefix appears to increment. It's probably not exactly by the year the listing was created, it's just that with @zamo-zuan's rate of listing, it works out that their prefixes are incrementing by one at approximately one year intervals.
@simply-the-best-for-you's recent listings (total of 60 listings):
The 3-digit-prefixes are not unique to a seller, of course, even though they appear to stay constant. There are only 1,000 possibilities, and eBay has a lot more sellers than that. So the 3-digit-prefixes have to be reused between sellers.
I don't think that eBay is using a checksum for the last digit, because if that were the case, then occasionally the last-6-digits would not be increasing, and it appears that they are always increasing.
It won't let me upload here but if you'd like I could PM the list of my listing ItemID's to you in PDF form (it's the only format eBay would let me upload lol).
I'd only looked in to the first 3 so far and not beyond that.
See my response here for more history on the numbering. It's something I had started watching over a dozen years ago. The two-digit prefix was the key back then (as you have correctly surmised), and still is, and you will see that the third digit has incremented over time in my spread of old-to-new listings.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Item-numbers/m-p/33679018#M2194011
@lacemaker3 wrote:
FYI: in your previous post, you mentioned 3 listings that you had started "programmatically", which was supposed to mean they were all started at the same time. Actually, according to Watchcount, one of them (the middle one) was started one second after the other two.
223824691527 #1
223824691533 #2
383346568097 #3
start time item # item # 30-Dec-19 21:27:13 UTC 223824691527 383346568097 30-Dec-19 21:27:14 UTC 223824691533
In reality, none can start at the same time. There are only milliseconds (even microseconds) in there that have been rounded off, making the spread appear to be a full second apart. For instance:
21:27:13.49985
21:27:13.49995
21:27:13.50005
When programmatically uploading, due to multi-threading, the listings are not necessarily posted in order (there have been many complaints from bulk sellers who thought they would have an ordered list). But, nonetheless, if the 38 posted too closely on the heals of the first 22, it may have been bumped for load balancing to another tier.
As mentioned in my post, when I was closely watching the two number banks a dozen years ago, the upper bank never processed through the full set of filters, while the lower bank always did. I don't know if that is the same today. But I'm hoping it might shed some light on the two sets of numbers.
@lacemaker3 upper and lower banks (38 vs 22). The 22s had always passed through the full suite of eBay filters, whereas the 38s did not. In those early days, I had lots of 22s and only a smattering of 38s. I haven't paid as much attention in recent years, launching far fewer listings, so perhaps the apparent equal distribution in numbering is now due to load balancing (back to your multi-core processing).
