By Dave Tracewell – HONOR PUBLISHING COMPANY

Finding, bidding, and buying Scouting Books, collectables, and Other Stuff On eBay:

Ebay 101: Since 1995, when computer programmer, Pierre Omidyar, and his wife decided to trade collectible goods using the Internet in San Jose, California, ebay has become the largest online garage sale selling virtually everything imaginable. One of the great things about buying Scouting Books, collectables, patches, or Scout stuff in general on eBay is that there are so many ways to find exactly what you are looking for and get some really great deals in the process. But like any large phenomenon, ebay has developed their own culture, language, fanatics, groupies, and, unfortunately, bad guys that can take advantage of people who are eager to get in on these good deals. The more you know about how ebay works, the better experience you will have in finding those wonderful treasures that you seek. We will start with a very basic overview of how ebay works first, and then delve into the specifics of how to find Scouting Books, patches, collectables, and other great Scout stuff.

Registering: In case you are new to ebay and auctions, the first thing you will need to do is register online to be able to bid or buy items on ebay. You can visit the following link to accomplish this and learn more about ebay: Registering

Ebay does a great job of giving you a lot of information about how their auctions work and how to bid, and what to do after you bid or buy an item. Sometimes, because there is just so much information on their pages, it may be difficult for some to find this information.  A good starting point is at: eBay Help

When looking at items on ebay, there are many times where the sellers will use abbreviations and acronyms to describe their products. Ebay, again, has attempted to standardize these terms so everyone is using the same terminology. You can find a useful list of these acronyms at: Acronyms

Ebay has also spawned their very own language. You will find people referring to themselves as “POWER SELLERS”, or as an EBAY “ASSISTANT”. You will see terms like “PayPal”, Final Value Fees, you will see little stars and symbols. To find out what these mean, ebay has a glossary to refer to at: Glossary

Searching for the Right Stuff: How to FIND what you are looking for on ebay

Start with a general identification or term If you do not really know what you are looking for, or just want to see what’s available, you might want to start with a general term like “Scout”. This would bring up all items that have the term “Scout” in the title. This can bring back thousands of listings, but is a fun way to start. After you see what available there, you can then start narrowing your search by limiting items to specific categories. You can then select the category you want from the drop down list or from the list on the left side of the page. In this case, the categories brought up at the time of this writing were “Collectables”, ”Historical Memorabilia”, “Post Cards & Papers”, “Militaria”, & “Books”. You can then start to narrow your search even further using some of the following methods.
 
Search for the specific book name (but this may limit your search. Not all sellers know the “real name” of some of the Scouting Books & collectables. For instance, if you look for a “First Aid Merit Badge Book”, you may, or may not really find what you are looking for, which is a “First Aid Merit Badge Pamphlet”. You would then be better off just searching for “First Aid Merit Badge”; which would give you all listings related to your search. You can further refine your search by adding “quotes” around the phrase. When writing this guide, a search without quotes brought up 49 items (not all related to Scouting) while adding quotes brought up only 11 items, all relating to the exact search we’ve made.
Search by ISBN. If you know your books ISBN this is a great way to search. Simply type it in the search area like you would a book title. The ISBN number is usually located in the first few pages along with the BSA item code and copyright information.

Advanced Search. This is located next to the search button. You can cut down your searching greatly in many ways. With this you can enter things such as key words, price range, if you are looking for someone who only takes Paypal, etc.

Search for collectables by name. Again, try to find out exactly what you are really searching for. Now this may bring up a lot of other items. When doing your search you will notice on your left you can see Matching Categories. For instance, say you are looking for a “Boy Scout Compass”; locate the Collectables selection and you will see all the Boy Scout Compasses in the category. If there are still a lot of category options left, check out each category. Some categories have sub categories such as Camping Equipment --- Camping, Hiking --- Backpacking, etc. This helps you limit your search even more and may give you other areas to search that you may not have thought of.

6. Search title and description Under the search box after your initial search, you will find a check box with “Search title and description” next to it. If you check this box, the search will include descriptions located within the text of all of the items it searches (not just the titles). This will usually result in more choices, but may bring up items you do not want to search for. For instance, if you do a search for “Boy Scout Handbook”, you will probably get a multitude of Cub Scout and Webelos books in your search. If you add a “-“ sign after the search terms you DO NOT want to search for; (i.e. Boy Scout Handbook –cub –Webelos); and then check the search title & description box, you will narrow your search way down to what you are looking for.

7. Widening a Search If you are looking for an item that can be better described using TWO WORDS or more (i.e. boy scout & canteen) You can use the search (Boy Scout, canteen)  which would bring up all searches for BOTH terms at the same time essentially doing two searches at once. You can do this for as many terms or words as you like, but each time you add a term or word, it will return more searches.

Search Options Box:  Looking to the left side of the search page, you will see a “Search Options” box. Using the check boxes provided, you can choose how you want the search to be preformed. This will allow you to not only search for the items you are looking for, but also HOW those items are offered on E-Boy. (Auction, Buy It Now, in someone’s E-Bay Store, etc.)

Comparing Items: If you find a couple of items you would like to compare, you can click on the "watch this item" button located usually on the upper right hand side of the page. Once you are done picking out the items you want to compare, go back to your My Ebay page and look under "Items I'm Watching". Check the boxes you wish to view then click on the compare button at the bottom of that section. This will take you to a page that you can compare things such as: Time Left, Bids, Seller (This also includes what percent feedback they have), Price, Shipping, Ships From, Payment Methods, and PayPal Buyer Protection. This is a great feature that can help you compare a bunch of items at once and may help you save some time.

8. ONCE YOU’VE CHOSEN AN ITEM:

Let’s say you’ve been successful in actually finding the item you were looking for. Now comes the part that you really have to pay attention to. This is the part where you bid or buy the item and commit to paying for it. There are a few VERY IMPORTANT things you need to pay attention to before you press that “Commit to Buy” button; let’s take a look at the whole process from start to finish:

Looking at ALL of the Facts

Now the next important thing is to make sure it is what you are looking for. Ebay provides a great option for sellers to help the buyers accomplish this. Located at the top of the description area is a boxed in Description area. (see graphic below) Located in this box is the sellers’ information

about what they are offering. Information like Author, Publisher, ISBN, Format (hardcover, soft cover, or mixed lot), Special Attributes (signed or first edition), Category (romance, western, horror, etc), and Condition (new, used, other) is included in this area. Note that NOT ALL ebay listings have this box and the seller can opt to put their own information in the page if they wish.

Meet the Seller

Next, look at the box at the top right of the web page. This box tells you about the seller and how he handles his ebay auctions and sales. This box gives you a wealth of information about who you are dealing with. I suggest looking at the number just to the right of the seller’s name. This is the FEEDBACK SCORE, based on the number of ebay transactions this seller has completed. Initially, If it is a fairly low number (less than 100), I would be cautious about this seller and look a bit closer at some of the other information that could let us know if this seller is ok to buy from. This would simply mean that either he has not been doing this very long, or he has other problems that we need to look at.

Ebay has developed an “honor” system of sorts. For each transaction, the buyer and seller are allowed to rate each other by leaving feedback. Each feedback left consists of a rating (positive, negative, or neutral), and a short comment. These ratings that members leave for each other are used to determine individual member profiles. The member profile for eBay member "deartie" is shown above.

This “FEEDBACK SCORE” represents the number of eBay members that are satisfied doing business with a particular member. It is usually the difference between the number of members who left a positive rating and the number of members who left a negative rating. In the example shown above, the feedback score is 247. If anyone were to leave a negative feedback, that would be deducted from the feedback score making it 246  (247 -1 = 246). Generally speaking, the Feedback score should be 97% or higher. (Based on the positive, neutral, & negative feedback left by his customers) If you click on “Read feedback comments”, you can tell if the complaints, if any, are recent and what the complaints were. This is the seller’s reputation, and if he’s been doing business right, he should have a high score and lots of sales. 100% is the best. For more information about feedback scores go to: Feedback

If a seller has a low score, recent complaints, and/or has not been around for any length of time, it’s probably better to avoid them and find someone else with a better reputation to buy from. Also, look at the comments and see if they are from just a few people. Some sellers sell hundreds of “penny items” to their friends so they can leave positive feedback. Just check out the comments and look at what they have been selling to get a “real picture” of who you are dealing with. If most of the feedback is from one or two people, again, avoid this seller.

Other information that is useful in this box is the sellers return policy and if the seller is auctioning off other items (list) also runs an ebay store. (store) An ebay store is where sellers can put their wares up for sale without having to auction the items. You may find related or similar items you have been searching for in the seller’s store.

Another nice feature is the ability to Ask the seller a Question. If you have any questions about the item you want to bid on, you can e-mail them before you actually bid or buy the item. Also, you can Add the Sellers Store to your favorites for quick entry into their store when you want. It’s a nice touch for both the sellers and the customers.

Time to choose

So now you’ve found the item you’ve been looking for, and you’ve found a person that seems to be OK to buy from, now is the time you have to choose if you want to buy, or bid on the item. There’s still a couple of things you need to look at before you do.

When buying or bidding on something on ebay, you will almost always wind up paying some sort of shipping charge. Check out the "Shipping, payment details and return policy". Here you will find how the person ships the item. Some sellers offer several different choices for shipping depending on how soon you want it. Another thing to beware of is the sneaky practice of charging high shipping charges to mask a low Buy It Now price. You might buy something for $ 1.99 and wind up paying $ 20.00 to have it shipped to you. If the shipping price is not listed, email the seller prior to bidding or buying to see what they are going to charge you.

Sellers have the ability of either charging a FLAT RATE or having the Post Office figure the postage based on zip code and weight. Some sellers will state a higher weight for the item to charge you more, while others will add an additional fee for shipping and handling. Just be aware of what the actual shipping costs are going to be BEFORE you commit to bid or buy an item.

9. Using Reviews

With the newly added Reviews and Guides area on eBay, gives you the opportunity to do two things.

1. You can check out the item before you buy it. See what others have to say about it and look more deeply into that item.

2. After you buy it and use the item, you have the chance to tell others about it. The more you describe it the more you can help others with there decision on if they should purchase it or not.

To find out even more about collecting Scouting memorabilia, go to www. Scouting books. com and check on the E-Bay guide which has a more comprehensive listing of Scouting resources.

Good Scouting to You,

Dave Tracewell
Publisher / Owner
HONOR PUBLISHING COMPANY
Kansas City, MO