Sports Trading Card Categories Changed - Item Specifics Missing

[paytonrules2003]

Ebay changed its categories for sports trading cards from sport oriented to product oriented today without any advance notice.  I noticed it when I went to sell a new item by referencing one of my existing items and doing a "sell similar" and got no category listing. Since the item specifics still existed I could fill all of them out and list my item but it defaulted to the catch-all category of trading card singles as there were no others. I called and complained and got an email 2 hours later explaining the new approach.

Then eBay found a way to completely destroy the sports card category. If you try to revise a listing to get it into the correct product group or try to enter a new listing ALL ITEM SPECIFICS DISAPPEAR! I am a generalist and only have 100 of my 11000 items in sports trading cards but imagine if you have thousands of items in this category and can no longer revise them or add new ones with correct item specifics! What a disaster. Why doesn't eBay check things out before they destroy something that works?

[rbt2525]

When will we be able to ship out using the standard envelope option for cards already purchased?  Will that correct itself soon, or am I out of luck for those cards?

[arrowhead10-7]

So am I seeing this correctly, you can no longer list sports cards in a drop down variation listing? What a total mess...now I have to list 1000's of cards separately?  Please tell me I am wrong on this...what a disaster.  Who asked for this update?

[briancards]

Completely agree with this. I seriously hope this change is not here to stay. It would be game over for me, I use the app 99.9% of the time and I have 1700 cards listed with another 1000 to list. I hope they listen to the sellers and find a better solution or I’ll have to try another platform. 

[arrowhead10-7]

unmitigated disaster what they have done....destroyed this  category.  No one asked for this change, change it back.  

[mahisamk]

Select Trading Card Lots category for variation listing, not Trading Card Single

[og-s.cards]

Absolute mess. Now made generic item specifics do not apply to some sports or items and did they even test the form logic? It's just broken. I am amazed at how terrible of quality this is and how haphazardly it was rolled out. You'd think with the amount of money coming to eBay from sports cards right now they would exercise a little bit of caution, they would try to test their changes and get community feedback first.

This needs to be reverted. I really hope it is reverted!

[og-s.cards]

I think it was easier on their infrastructure to make all sports card single items one homogenized category.  This is what happens when you have project managers that invent a technical problem and then take-on this invented technical project to look technical for higher paying management roles. Thinking this would increase performance on the back-end and not be noticeable by customers.

And, this just the worst design trap to fall into. As much as possible they should never sacrifice user experience for performance. eBay is way to heavy handed with their changes and the reason why I dislike so many eBay changes is that they feel they can improve eBay with changes like these whereas eBay is great because of community content and what the community creates on eBay.

I think what the seller community wants out of eBay and what eBay wants out of eBay are opposed. Sellers on eBay just accept it and so eBay does what it wants and does not compromise enough to the needs of the seller community.

[og-s.cards]

With how bad the eBay standard envelope roll it has been and continues to be, they might be doing you a favor here.

[og-s.cards]

You are not acknowledging any concerns in this thread specifically. With this roll-out there are bugs and issues in the form logic. Are you not even fixing that? This is a horrible response. You should personally feel bad for it and that should motivate you to talk to management to resolve this.

[arrowhead10-7]

@mahisamk this does not work for my listings..tried and it still said variations could not be used 

[mcflack]

Can someone post some guidance on the different fields in the Item Specifics of the trading card category?

for example, I’m listing baseball cards from the 70s and earlier.  eBay asks for “Franchise” but the drop down does not list a single sport franchise or sport trading card line.  It is all entertainment oriented franchises.  

I can of course define it as MLB or Chicago Cubs, but eBay say the category is going to be required - so if I self define with the wrong term I’ll be in listing Siberia.  

suggestions?

[kosmosattik]

"Agreed, I have over 3,000 sports cards listed and this is an unmitigated disaster unfolding."

Judging from my handful of listings I would say this is not an exaggeration for a high volume seller.   I had to update every single card listing.

Then I switched to managed payments today with my deadline approaching and decided to delist all of my handful until I can do a reconciliation after my June 1 invoice payment.  This provides a second good reason for that, a couple of weeks for eBay to throw out more beta tests into production, like spaghetti against the wall, until something sticks.   Two weeks may not be long enough--I'll check back to see how things are going. 

It is my belief that eBay should require all coders, testers (if they have testers), and their first line managers to list and sell 20 items per year as a reality check.   The technical side of this operation seems to be siloed, disconnected from user experience. 

[kosmosattik]

Well, Arthur could not find a way to pin his somewhat useful advice somewhere rather than bury it down in this thread.  We get pinned threads on how to pack a package (eyes rolling) but not this?  Note that there will be "fluctuations" in the next 24-48 hours.  It would be pointless to update listings until then, or later if they mess that up.

"Deprecate"?  C'mon man.   I was an application designer in a prior life and never heard this term used in this  context.  What does that even mean?  Eliminate?  Regardless of eBays usage of the term, why would anybody think a seller on this platform would infer that meaning?  That's a little peek into eBay's technical silo.  

[raffieleo]

Unfortunately, not a person who has replied has marked this helpful because it isnt helpful. It makes things cumbersome and drawn out. We want sports based categories because well we like specific sports. I could care less about a single card personally of wrestling when I am looking up Mickey Mantle cards from 1960's or in general stars of the 1960's. I don't want to pull hulk hogan. It forces me to search more and more. This is terrible.

[kjsboulder]

Franchise indicates you are in the Non-Sports Trading Card Category, rather than the Sports Trading Card Category. Of course I am still sorting out the mess myself, so I may yet find a Franchise location, but if it is there, I would expect that for 70s cards only what is in the title matter, player, year, card number, brand, and team. The item specifics speed up the search if they are using keywords rather than searching item titles.