Book Board Chat

Hi Joanne and Hi Dianne; yes was on the Book Board many moons ago and do come back sporadically. Seems as though the 3-day changes created enough "noise" that it has been rolled back. I agree, however, that Ebay does anything it wants because they are, essentially, the "only game in town." Sure you can try and sell stuff on Amazon, Etsy etc., or if you have high $$ items, some of the good auction houses, but basically they are still the 100 lb. gorilla. There is nowhere else in the World I can find over 100,000 high school yearbooks listed for sale/auction and also see about 7,000 "new" listings every week (the other 93,000 hang around forever!!)

Hope all goes well for you, and some of other book board denizens. As always if anyone has a high school yearbook and would like us to reverse-search our "one-of-a-kind" data base to see if there is anyone sufficiently notable to increase its value, we are always happy to do this before a book is listed on Ebay! sethpoppel@aol.com

Ebay has done it again! I am only a buyer on Ebay (do not sell) and I realize most of you are sellers. I have 100 "saved searches" in each of 3 accounts for specific books or groups of books or "group searches" and 2 days ago when I logged in to do my searches they had totally changed the titles for my searches (as I number them.. they eliminated all of the numbers) and many now come up with no hits, when I know there are hundreds or thousands of items that should be showing up.

Why do they incessantly screw around with the site (often without telling people what they are about to do, so one can prepare.) Thus, as sellers, if you notice that your sales drop from this week for the next few weeks you can thank Ebay.

A warm and happy Thanksgiving to the many old (meaning long-time) friends on the Book Board.
Perhaps today is the day you take out your old high school yearbooks and share with the family ;>>)

Ebay now says that the hacking took place about 2 months ago. The hackers have our name, our date of birth, our address, our e-mail address, our phone number and an encrypted (although probably no longer) password. This is fertile information for identity theft, so be extra cautious over the next few months with regard to any unusual activity. If you don't intend to apply for any credit you might want to put a "freeze" on your various credit reporting accounts, which you can do for no charge; however if you apply for credit while the freeze is in place you will not get it; however if the bad guys try and create an identity with the information it will go a long way towards protecting you.

In addition, if you used that password for your bank account, brokerage account, Paypal account or anything else sensitive financially, be sure to change THOSE passwords as the hackers have sufficient information to glue the pieces of your life together and will try and use those passwords on the most valuable potential sites.

fwiw...Many Ebay users have the same password for their Paypal accounts as they do for their Ebay accounts. If someone is sitting with your Ebay password (that they bought from the hackers) there is a good chance they may try it on your Paypal account, so:
a.) Good idea to change your Paypal account password IF you were using the same password as for your Ebay account.
b.) Make sure for your new passwords that they are not the same.

Given how less-than-forthcoming all of these organizations (i.e. Target, Neiman Marcus) have been about hacking of passwords you may wish to change your Paypal password anyway since the second shoe to drop could well be when they reveal that Paypal passwords have been hacked!!

As for concerns about being dinged on the 1-day shipping, my hunch is that they will give a dispensation for these next few days. Remember, not only can't people log on for shipping purposes, but basically overall commerce on the site has come to a crawl.

Anyone on this board in the Seattle, WA area?? Thx., Seth

Diane, mysteryhorse...Thank you...will try all of your suggestions. I knew that they were an auction house but did not know that they somehow had their own grading standard. All best, Seth

Hello bookboard people. I have someone interested in a very scarce, desirable yearbook which is a duplicate copy and thus I would be willing to sell it. He has asked me to grade it in the way "Hakes" grades books. I went to the Hakes website but did not find any kind of grading criteria on their site. Can someone provide a link or help me out on this as I normally provide a detailed description which SHOULD incorporate everything a prospective buyer would be interested in, but would like to conform to his request, if possible?? Thank you, Seth

I am glad to see that the "bookboard" still have some of the long-time people, as well as some newbies all offering constructive and helpful advice. Bookdelle, lookwhatbobfound....she WAS selling PCs and actually did most of what you suggested and had a lot of success, but was basically left with the "commons" but we now want to get a large batch of listings of something else (in a completely different category) up ASAP and will try and backfill with more detail after the listings are up...but feel there is value in getting the titles listed. Beth, I will look up Auctiva with Danine and see if it seems to give us the tools we need over Ebay's Selling Manager and Turbolister. Paula, hope all goes well for you. We finally feel like Seattle people 5 years after our move from Long Island. We can honestly say that we miss our long-time friends and neighbors there (lived in the same house for 38 years!), being 5 minutes from Jones Beach and the trips in NYC for fun (as opposed to work or dr. visits)....but over time not much else and we LOVE Seattle. All the best and hope to start posting more regularly on the completed sales results for celebrity yearbooks as I used to!! Again thank you all for the time you have taken to post helpful thoughts!! Seth

As a buyer, I am somewhat naive about the "seller tools" that are available for Ebay. My wife has been listing postcards on Ebay and it has been quite laborious. She now would like to list a large batch of items (2,000+) with a "stock" photo (all of them will have the SAME photo) and a "stock" descriptions (all of them will have the same description) but with DIFFERENT titles. Is there some way she can create a file of the titles and then upload that to some kind of bulk lister which will insert those 2,000+ titles into the "stock" layout?? Then there will be different prices, although they can be sorted in lots of probably 100 or 200 which will have the same price amongst the 2,000+ Longwinded way of saying each listing will be 100% indentical except for the titles and the prices (but the descriptions, photo, shipping, etc. etc. will be all the same). What should we be looking at to accomplish this most efficiently?? Thank you. If you prefer to e-mail to me directly rather than taking up board space with it, that is fine also. sethpoppel@aol.com

Well, I guess Ebay couldn't resist screwing up more things just before the Holidays. First they have used their palette of available colors and lightened the blue color on search findings about 3 shades, making it more difficult to read (they must have a graphics designer there who has never searched?) Then they developed a new format that lists many fewer items for each page jump (so takes longer to search the same or shows fewer for given time period) and the "straw" that breaks the camel is:

Seth, your wild card * searches will not be supported
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Your saved searches will change on November 5
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Dear sethpoppel,

You're receiving this email because we noticed that you are using a wildcard (search terms with a *) in one or more of your saved searches in My eBay.

Starting on November 5, we will no longer support wildcard searches. We encourage you to revise your saved searches to whole words without the *.

So with 2 days notice their search "improvements" (somebody must have really screwed up their programming) can no longer do wild cards and want everyone to create a search for each variant of a term or next them within a parenthetical. My hunch is that that they didn't even realize they had screwed up everyone's searches till today!! </b?

Thank you for all of the thoughts and discussions of mailing after my rant. Appreciated!

Ebay is so astoundingly stupid I find it hard to understand how they have made it this far and become such a huge success. Every time one turns around you can see a new "rule" or "procedure" or "best practice" that is so completely assinine. My wife sells postcards along with our duplicate yearbooks. Ebay's new rule about requiring tracking on 90% of the transactions in order to be a "Top Rated Seller" has forced her to end about 1,000 postcard listings ($50/month of revenue for Ebay + final value fees etc.) because when she ships a postcard she does so in a hard plastic holder, which is, in turn, placed in an appropriately-sized heavy-stock envelope, which carries for the U.S.P.S. First Class 1 oz. fee (i.e. we put a stamp on it and ship). There is no tracking, no shipping label, but it gets to the buyer in 2-3 days in superb shape and we pay the .45 postage, the .25 holder, the .17 envelope + Ebay listing and final value fees and Paypal fees. When one sells a $6 postcard that doesn't leave much left. After speaking to "Mikey" in India, I was finally put on with someone in CA who suggested that we use the Ebay "thick envelope" first class for $1.75 or avail ourselves of a new trial with Stamps.com for 1st. class tracking for $.40 or $.30 a shot. My jaw dropped at their total stupidity and insensitivity to the realities of selling. Obviously they are THE game in town so they get away with a lot. I am sure that a "buyer's fee" will be upcoming on certain auctions (just as they are now instituting the fee for auction-style listings that end early.) Truly amazing.....but they have the game, just like government ;>>)

Beth, Diane, Jude51 Thank you!! It has been reported and the poor woman at customer service gasped when she read the note ;>>

Welcome from Snowy Seattle ;>>) Quick question for Ebay veterans...
If you block someone from bidding on your auctions, does that also block e-mail communications from them? My wife received the most vile e-mail from someone who happens to be trying to sell the same book she has listed, except he/she has it at twice the price. Absolutely foul and improper.

Top Prices Obtained for "Celebrity" High School Yearbooks Past Two Weeks

$1999.00 A set of Carrie Underwood's school yearbooks from K-12 (missing 6th grade) - Only one bid and I assume they are ardent Carrie Underwood fans, or perhaps her family. Huge price to pay for such recent vintage yearbooks and it is not like she is Janis Joplin??

$625.00 Rod Serling Senior Year - I guess reports of big spending for the Christmas Holiday season are true as this is a monster price for someone to pay. Have seen many sell in the $75-$150 range for Twilight Zone fans.

$511.01 Robert Redford/Don Drysdale JUNIOR year - However, this one had an almost full-page inscription on the inside back cover from Robert Redford to the original female owner.

$510 John F. Kennedy Senior Year - Well, interesting set of values as we go from Carrie Underwood's books for almost $2000 to a relatively scarce John F. Kennedy Senior Year Choate book for $510. The spine was naked and the boards were beaten up, but the pages were wonderful and the binding was still fairly tight. There is a happy collector who truly believes that a book is not always judged by its covers!!

$510 Justin Bieber 8th Grade BUT this was inscribed and signed by him to the original female owner with a heart. I am sure some father (or grandfather) just bought his little girl her Christmas present; however the juxtaposition at the same price as a JFK book again makes it seem very out of place.

$500 Jean Harlow 3rd Grade - She appeared in a group photo (which I helped both the seller and buyer confirm), quite lovely and easy to spot. Very few of these soft-covered booklets from a small tony private school in 1920 still exist. Her name at that time was Harlean Carpenter.

$399.99 Louis Brooks Sophomore Year - From that same era and geography is Louise Brooks' Sophomore yearbook (her last year attending school before embarking on her showbiz career......not that different today as the kids sleep in cars out in California with their moms waiting for an audition call at the age of 13 these days!)

No doubt that $$ have loosened up in the past 4-6 weeks. I hope to post again before the Holidays, but if not, I wish all of you a VERY HAPPY and FULFILLING Holiday (and I guess it will be filling at least) and a SUPER 2012!! If you ever need any help with these items, just e-mail to me directly and I will respond promptly.

After rooting around on the site I finally found where they have hidden this kind of search....but...Why all the messing around??

Ebay Strikes Again

In its continued drive to change things (especially around Holiday season) for the sake of change, they have done away with the ability to narrow a search to items put up in the last day, 2 days, etc. etc. Amazing!!

I wonder who comes up with all of these "enhancements" which reduce the site's search functionality?

I realize they are saving their big act for next year when they put in a buyer's premium, but all of the fiddling (like the great checkout cart) is just absurd.

Venting

Highest Prices Obtained for Celebrity High School Yearbooks that were listed on Ebay

$1480 Elvis Presley Senior yearbook in excellent condition. Slightly below what this book might have sold for a few years ago, but still a solid price. The same book signed by him (when in high school) brings about $4500+

$700 Buddy Holly Sophomore book in seemingly excellent condition. This sale may not last as the seller had described this book as Buddy Holly's SENIOR book, when, in fact, it was his Sophomore book, typically worth about a third of the Senior price!! On the other hand if it is an overseas buyer who is not terribly familiar with U.S. schooling, he may not even realize the difference.

$450 Michael Jordan Senior book in excellent condition. There is no doubt that most celebrity books reach a peak value when the celebrity is also at their peak and this book is no different as this would have obtained $750+ during Threepeat. A similar example is Madonna, where her book 15 years ago would obtain twice what it would today and that is more a function of passing her peak than the soft current market.

$375 J.D. Salinger Senior book with water damage. This was an interesting condition situation as the covers were like new, but somehow the bottom of the book had been exposed to water. To make it more interesting the page with Salinger's Senior photo was excellent with virtually no damage; in excellent condition this book would go for $1000+ as there are not many copies which survive in good shape, but this one took an appropriate condition discount.

$325 Al Kaline Senior yearbook. Detroit sports icon around Playoffs time with Tiger fan spirits high.

$299.99 Tiger Woods Freshman yearbook. Seller should be THRILLED. Tiger Woods is OLD NEWS and even his Senior yearbook would have a difficult time selling for that amount today.

Not a lot of transactions since the last report.

Highest Prices Obtained on Ebay for "Celebrity" High School Yearbooks

Well, unlike last week where the prices were somewhat weak, people seem to have opened up their pocketbooks quite wide with an eye-popping assortment of prices.

$1259.55 Vince Lombardi Freshman Year "Signed" by him as "Lom" under two group photos he had. This price clearly was related to the signings and not as much to the yearbook (although any of his books are quite scarce as he attended a 6 year program leading to the priesthood; leaving after 4 to finish at conventional prep school.) As a yearbook without his having "signed" the value would be a fraction of this.

$1000 Andy Warhol Senior Year: This is a VERY strong price for this book which usually sells in the $500-$1000 range. Warhol, of course, has a strong collectible following and this book is rather scarce in excellent condition owing to a plastic spiral binding and soft cover, leading to few intact, surviving pieces. Also, Warhol did not achieve major national fame till about 15-17 years after he graduated and thus not a lot of these were saved/preserved for his presence in them (unlike, e.g. Elvis, who became a national sensation within 18 months of his high school graduation, leading everyone to provide much safer keeping of the book!!)

$1000 Bob Dylan JUNIOR year: This is interesting as the seller only showed his posed head photo and did not make it explicit that this was NOT his Senior year (which normally would be worth a multiple of a lower year) and perhaps the buyer either didn't care or didn't realize. In any event this is the highest price I have ever seen this book sell for.

$810 and $510 Metallica-James Hetfield-related These were two high school yearbooks relating to James Hetfield's early high school days and one contained a long inscription by him referring to one of his early bands and the other had his posed head photo BUT the key is that they both belonged to Ron McGovney, an early member of Hetfield's band. Thus the value was based less on Hetfield's presence in the books and more on the circumstances and ownership of them.

$511 Janis Joplin SENIOR Good solid price for this book. Plenty of copies, but also plenty of fans.

$500 Steve Jobs JUNIOR year listed and sold shortly after his death was announced. Same book had been purchased on Ebay for $299 the prior week while he was still alive.

$449 Madonna SENIOR year: The material girl still carries some collectible weight (even if she has kept off any other).

$400 Jonas Salk SENIOR year: Iconic name for the 20th Century, but a very STRONG price; higher than I have ever seen for this book.

$369 Robert Lowell SENIOR year. Buyer got a sensational bargain because the book had a few cutouts in the advertising section; aside from that book was in superb condition from a tiny private school with only about 30 graduates pictured. Extremely scarce low-volume, depression-era book of a Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and "Poet Laureate".

Again, if anyone has any questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail to me directly.

Highest realized Ebay prices for "celebrity" high school yearbooks

$900.01 Best offer accepted for Mickey Mantle's Sophomore yearbook. Normally a Sophomore yearbook would realize much less than the Senior book, but in this case the book is very fragile with a soft cover, and hand bound with clips so it is quite scarce to see one that has survived in good shape and intact. In addition Mick has a really nice individually-posed head photo (often lacking in lower year presentations.) A good price for a tough book.

$382 Joe Perry Senior year. The Aerosmith singer attended a small private academy and thus, again, one does not see this book very often. It has a full page of photos (as they were allowed to design their own Senior pages.) Strong price

$375 Set of 3 yearbooks comprising 2003, 2004, 2005 Laguna Hills High School and portraying all of the Reality TV personalities from The Hills etc. including Lauren Conrad, Kristin Cavalleri etc. Someone is a big fan as that was the upset price and it did not go beyond.

$374.99 A set of Sophomore, Junior and Senior yearbooks for former pitching great, Hall of Famer and now President of the Texas Rangers, Nolan Ryan. This demonstrates how far the market has fallen for these kinds of books, as this set was in overall OK condition and Nolan has good appearances in all three books. In 2006 this would have sold for $1200+

$305.03 Ted Williams Junior Year. Ted only appears in a group shot of the baseball team, and even if you are under 40 you need to squint a bit to make him out. Only commands the price due to the name...and was a decent price for a relatively unattractive book. The Senior version sells frequently in the $500-$1250 range depending on condition.

$199.99 Tony Robbins (self-help guru) Senior year. Buy it Now FAN

$189.99 Steve Jobs Junior year (sold 4 days before his death...another copy listed after his death at $699.99...doubt if it will sell!) Nice small posed head photo and as a bonus one gets a small posed head photo of Chris-Ann Brennan, the mother of his first child, Lisa (whose paternity he denied for several years, forcing mother and daughter to live on welfare...oops not supposed to drop notes like that while all of the homages are still out there?) The Senior version has sold in the past for $400-$600 as he and Bill Gates have an iconic following as THE two tech titans.

$169.99 Jeffrey Katzenberg and Leon Black as Seniors. Smaller school, might not even have been bought for the personalities, but to replace lost personal book or because a relative/friend was pictured.

Overall, as those here from the old Book Board know, I would be able to fill a long post with books that sold over $1000 quite often going back 4 and 5 years. That world has dramatically changed. The very, very top end is still fairly strong, but most everything else makes a GREAT market for collectors....and since I am a collector, I do not mind seeing the prices I pay go down.

Hello!! Great that we have a new venue!

Signed up for the new book board and think it is great. Shame Ebay is staffed by such a bunch of XXXXXs.

They continue to make changes without the slightest understanding of what the implications are from a user perspective. The expansion of the number of characters in each title has some good points and bad points, but my hunch is that no one at Ebay simulated being a buyer who is browsing listings or searching for something that is a bit less than 100% specific!! With the listings not filling out the line anymore, it takes much MORE time to browse (spell that less items viewed, spell that less that one buys!!). When someone does a search, because sellers are now loading up their titles with lots of CARP, you get 3 or 4 times or even more the number of "hits" and thus, again, it takes that much longer to wade through (and thus less items seen and less bought!!)

I realize there are some positive aspects also.

The next big news will be when Ebay implements a buyer's fee!!

If all goes well, I hope to re-institute the weekly price report for celebrity yearbooks and look forward to hearing directly if anyone needs help with selling yearbooks. Just e-mail to me directly at: sethpoppel@aol.com as my attendance on the board will be sporadic and a direct communication will get a prompt reply.