Ebay just made finding football cards a lot harder

[fadster]

Many of you know by now that eBay have gotten rid of the different sub-categories for each sport in the sports card section. There is a box to filter by sport but there are a couple of problems. First of all a lot of cards across sports have been put as "not specified".

A bigger problem though is that non-US sellers listing football cards will list under the "football" filter, US sellers selling American Football cards will also sell under the "football", meaning both are lumped together now. This wasn't an issue previously as under the hood the right subcategories shared the right subcategory codes, eg "Soccer cards" on eBay US had the same category code as "Football cards" on eBay UK, cosmetically different but functionally identical.

Essentially to get a half decent browse / search you now have to do a EU & UK only search on a UK / European eBay site with the "football" filter box ticked and then a "soccer" filter search on eBay US.

People thought it was a glitch originally, but some are now saying they have a press release from eBay announcing the new "features" for the sports card category.

edit: also if you use searches with just the "-" in front of a term, that doesn't work anymore

[Phxcoyotes85]

This flat out broke many of my searches for no obvious benefit to anyone.

Not sure what you mean by the “-“, for me it still works to remove listings that contain that word i.e. -digital to remove digital cards.

[YayNJ]

it appears that you can no longer list an item in two categories either, such as main category "football cards" and second category "baseball cards"

[fadster]

Originally Posted by Phxcoyotes85

This flat out broke many of my searches for no obvious benefit to anyone.

Not sure what you mean by the “-“, for me it still works to remove listings that contain that word i.e. -digital to remove digital cards.

So for example if I search for:

Prizm -digital

that works fine, it returns all Prizm items excluding the ones with the term digital.

However if I just search for:

-digital

i get the "expensive keywords" error instead of returning all results except those containing the word digital. If you have a search that only excludes terms that no longer works.

[KhalDrogo]

If I search "messi 2004 megacracks" I get 209 results. If I search "messi 2004 megacracks soccer" I get 218 results.

[fadster]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

If I search "messi 2004 megacracks" I get 209 results. If I search "messi 2004 megacracks soccer" I get 218 results.

Wow I just tested that out, really odd it does that. On the UK site adding "soccer" almost halves the number of listings, adding "football" instead almost gets rid of everything.

[mfw13]

It's also going to be bad for any product lines that are sold across multiple sports....i.e. Prizm, Immaculate, Mosaic, etc.

Now your searches will turn up cards from all three sports, not just the one you are interested in.....

[salthill]

Originally Posted by fadster

So for example if I search for:

Prizm -digital

that works fine, it returns all Prizm items excluding the ones with the term digital.

However if I just search for:

-digital

i get the "expensive keywords" error instead of returning all results except those containing the word digital. If you have a search that only excludes terms that no longer works.

What’s the use-case for a search with only negative terms? Feels incredibly broad - ie it’s basically “every item on eBay” less anything that mentions these keywords…

[fadster]

Originally Posted by salthill

What’s the use-case for a search with only negative terms? Feels incredibly broad - ie it’s basically “every item on eBay” less anything that mentions these keywords…

Basically if I'm browsing for anything vintage or pre recent hobby era I have searches that are along the lines of -chrome -prizm -immaculate -attax -adrenalyn etc. I also have similar searches to exclude the most popular current players, eg -messi -ronaldo -mbappe -haaland etc Obviously if there's something specific I want I just search for it but this method has worked well for finding older cards especially pre prizm / chrome era and for cards from abroad or from non hobbyist sellers.

[thenightman]

Ebay has been telling sellers for months now to start filling in item specifics. Now people understand why they've been doing that.

Technically speaking, you can type in something like "Sapphire" and then narrow down the filter, including sport. The problem is that the vast majority of listings don't have item specifics filled out so it's all "not specified".

Eventually, ebay will just have to fill all that info in themselves and everyone is gonna get mad that they don't have any control over their listings anymore, when all the while they had it, they just didn't ever care enough to use it.

[Ray V]

What a disaster! Does eBay even think when they make changes like this? All across the years, eBay continually finds ways to "try" to fix things that aren't broken, and making them way worse! Now I know why many of my searches broke today, like "sapphire lot" with a filter on soccer cards .. that explains why I'm now getting gemstone listings lol.

[Ray V]

Originally Posted by salthill

What’s the use-case for a search with only negative terms? Feels incredibly broad - ie it’s basically “every item on eBay” less anything that mentions these keywords…

Maybe you use this once you are filtered on a specific seller, then you can narrow the items down using just "-". I've used it a few times that way. For example, a seller has 990 Pokemon cards and 10 football cards, you can quickly filter out all the Pokemon listings by just typing "-pokemon" in the search box.