Question for ebay knowledgeables 0

[Gotham Kid]

I set my search on ebay for Detective Comics Golden Age (1938-55) but everyday I find myself having to sift through dozens of modern/bronze and even silver ( don't mind those as much ) age Detective Comics in that search.

Really frustrating.

Can I improve my search (and if so how ?) because people are just too stupid or not bothered to properly categorize their books ?

Thank you.

 

Edited April 14, 2019 by Gotham Kid

[Get Marwood & I]

Pain isn't it @Gotham Kid

There are a few things you can try to filter out the dross - you can use the 'minus' approach to filter out words - in the example screenshot you posted the top two books have 2011 and 2016 in their titles. If you searched as follows...

Detective Comics -2011 -2016

...any listing with 2011 and 2016 in the title would not show. So if you see regular offending words you can use that approach. It may be that there is a common word that brings up modern stuff - filter that word out.

Another thing you could try is the further sub menu. If I select "Other Golden Age Comics" for example that takes me down to only 49 results, all of which seem to be the older books:

 

Another approach, if there was a specific book you were looking for, you could add the date of it. "Detective Comics" brings up 1,702 listings in that category. If I try "Detective Comics 1949" it drops to 28 listings. Of course this won't guarantee you getting all the listings for 1949 books, as many people won't add that to their listings.

One final thing that could help - set your search to 'newly listed' if you haven't already. If you review daily, it is possible to see every new book listed for the day which will be a smaller percentage of the 1,702 results. I do this for Australian Marvels and it's effective - you quickly get used to where you were 'up to' and basically just vet the newly listed stuff. 

Ebay, alas, does not police the correct categorisation of its listings. So we will always be stuck with the dross. You need a lot of patience trying to keep on top of ebay - a lot of time spent daily, often for little or no reward. But you take a week off looking and everything gets listed and sold during that week. It's one of life's little gifts to the comic collector  

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

Oh, and for the kind of books you're looking for, these buttons will help:

...but you'll miss any listed with 99c starts of course.

[Bat34]

I have the same issue. They used to categorize them a bit further down the page (into Golden Age or Detective 27 etc) but that doesn't appear to be working lately.

[Get Marwood & I]

21 minutes ago, Bat34 said:

I have the same issue. They used to categorize them a bit further down the page (into Golden Age or Detective 27 etc) but that doesn't appear to be working lately.

ebay wants to make money. They're like the supermarket who change everything around, as they know that means you'll be forced to look at new things as you search for your stuff. And you might just buy them.

A funny thing happened to me on ebay recently. I had searched the previous day for a particular Amazing Spidey book. The next day, sitting in the middle of my listings for 'Charlton comics' was two copies of that Spidey book. Charlton was nowhere to be seen in the listing title or description. A similar thing happened with some Squeeze records appearing in a comic search. Are we surprised? I think as we go on, ebay will try to subtly put as much stuff that you have 'shown an interest in' in front of you as it can, in the hope you will buy it.  The days of getting only the results you asked for are coming to an end I think. 

[Gnasher]

This depends whether the seller when listing his product has bothered to put the books in the right era/category , in which case there is nothing you can do, save to grin and bear it.

[telerites]

Yeah.  I always search only in the GA listings but still get some carpola.  As example of search I do for a specific title withing the category of GA is this and it seems to get me fairly good results and nothing against Lonestar (or Conan) but I would rather buy directly from their site than Ebay as I don't pay the markup so I strike them from my search results as well as a few others.  I always have it sort by newest listed with 200 results per page which is the max per page.  On some of my saved searches, I would prefer to see only auction listings as opposed to BINs so that is part of the search parameter.  And on one, I have for any GA book, parameters set for auction only, between certain price ranges, free shipping, sorted by newest listed.

"usa comics" -dvd -cd -photocopy

[tv horror]

2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I had searched the previous day for a particular Amazing Spidey book

I try to narrow it down by doing a saved search listing for "Amazing Spider-man 2 Vulture 1st" that seems to sort the other titles out, maybe the OP can do something similar and mention a certain character certainly NOT Batman! Good luck. Also thank you Steve for the advice on Ebay it will come in handy. 

[RareHighGrade]

Peter, try this search in Ebay Golden Age:  "detective comics" 1940

You can try the same search changing only the date; e.g., 1941, 1942, etc. to get books from other years.  It's not perfect, but it filters out most of the unwanted books.

Edited April 14, 2019 by RareHighGrade

[Get Marwood & I]

On 4/14/2019 at 12:19 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

A funny thing happened to me on ebay recently. I had searched the previous day for a particular Amazing Spidey book. The next day, sitting in the middle of my listings for 'Charlton comics' was two copies of that Spidey book.

There it is again - two ASM's sitting in my "Charlton Comics" search 

 

[waaaghboss]

On 4/14/2019 at 6:15 AM, telerites said:

Yeah.  I always search only in the GA listings but still get some carpola.  As example of search I do for a specific title withing the category of GA is this and it seems to get me fairly good results and nothing against Lonestar (or Conan) but I would rather buy directly from their site than Ebay as I don't pay the markup so I strike them from my search results as well as a few others.  I always have it sort by newest listed with 200 results per page which is the max per page.  On some of my saved searches, I would prefer to see only auction listings as opposed to BINs so that is part of the search parameter.  And on one, I have for any GA book, parameters set for auction only, between certain price ranges, free shipping, sorted by newest listed.

"usa comics" -dvd -cd -photocopy

-photocopy helps bring my results page from 2-3 pages down to 1   It's mandatory on all my saved searches.   To the OP, also keep in mind that any GA auction usually has several people with bid snipers tracking the auction, so you almost have to overbid unless you want to lose every book in the last 10 seconds.

[tv horror]

17 minutes ago, waaaghboss said:

-photocopy helps bring my results page from 2-3 pages down to 1   It's mandatory on all my saved searches.   To the OP, also keep in mind that any GA auction usually has several people with bid snipers tracking the auction, so you almost have to overbid unless you want to lose every book in the last 10 seconds.

I remember Ebay had an automatic bid when you placed a max bid does it still work because I just snipe now.

 

[dporges]

I just drilled down to that ASM 121, and guess what?  The guy listed it as Charlton!  So it's not eBay doing a subtle selling trick, just a messed-up seller.  ETA: It's under "Description".

Edited April 15, 2019 by dporges
Added a fact.

[Get Marwood & I]

30 minutes ago, dporges said:

I just drilled down to that ASM 121, and guess what?  The guy listed it as Charlton!  So it's not eBay doing a subtle selling trick, just a messed-up seller.  ETA: It's under "Description".

I see it, under 'item specifics', cheers dporges. So it's not in the title or written description but it comes up anyway. Annoying isn't it. 

[BOOT]

On 4/14/2019 at 3:29 AM, Gotham Kid said:

Can I improve my search (and if so how ?)

Thank you.

 

If you see comics repeatedly miscategorized as you have shown, it is often specific to a particular seller.

In this case, as suspected, it is seller "newkadia". They have over 100,000 active listings. Apparently whoever lists their comics uses the starting date of the series as the basis for the listing category rather than the date of the actual issue.

So you can eliminate that seller's results completely.

Go to Advanced Search

Scroll down to Sellers

Click on "Only show items from:"

Click "Specific sellers"

Select "exclude" instead of "include" from the drop down menu

Enter in your desired seller ID to exclude. You can also add multiple sellers, separated by commas.

Then run your search.

Bookmark your search results so you don't have to do these adjustments every time. Just click on the bookmark, and the adjusted search is run.

The only risk is that the excluded seller(s) may have what you are looking for...

Let us know how it works.

Edited April 16, 2019 by BOOT

[woowoo]

On ‎4‎/‎14‎/‎2019 at 12:29 AM, Gotham Kid said:

I set my search on ebay for Detective Comics Golden Age (1938-55) but everyday I find myself having to sift through dozens of modern/bronze and even silver ( don't mind those as much ) age Detective Comics in that search.

Really frustrating.

Can I improve my search (and if so how ?) because people are just too stupid or not bothered to properly categorize their books ?

Thank you.

 

Real easy Peter go to Golden age click Detective than go price highest first and you will pass all that other stuff

[PeterPark]

I don't know who it is selling those photocopies but I include -photocopy into all my searches because there's nothing like waiting and waiting to see a rare comic finally up for sale and seeing that, listed as a golden age comic, is in fact a homemade facsimile of some kind for 7.95 or 9.99 or 99.99! Most of the Juniors and Sunnys I find are just that...replicas...if you want a tough search, try those. I don't begrudge people selling what they want, but don't list them as golden age comics when they were not published in the golden age. The same would go for collected editions, etc.