Sunday Night Kvetching

Phil Merrill_

I swear to St. Pete, sometimes I think that if you put two stamp sellers and a rock in a closet, the rock would get out first.

Tonight I tried searching for French multiples. In our dear hobby, what is a multiple? Right! Several stamps together in a block or a strip. Agreed? WELL TELL IT TO THE GUY NEXT TO YOU! Under France>multiple, about 10% of the items are actually multiples. The rest are complete sets(multiple stamps....) single stamps, stamps from other countries, modern French booklets. Unnnh, it was really disappointing.

I got much better results under "blocks" so I'm happy, but still, there are many, many examples of items placed un completely wrong catagories. I tried looking under Germany>DDR once and couldn't find any for all the misplaced regular German stuff.

Here is your ear back, thanks for your attention.

Bob Woodbury

Phill. One thing I have learned on this site is that you have to learn how to use it. It is generally possible. But it is rarely easy to find what you want. Good Luck.

Richard Pauls

I am a seller only. And I am apparently dumber than a rock.

I do list multiples occasionally, but would never describe them in the item title as a multiple. Instead, I would describe as "Block of Four" or "Pair" or "Strip of Three" or "Strip of Four", etc. To me this is much more descriptive than using the term "Multiple".

If I saw "Multiple" in an item title, I would assume it could mean a block or a strip, but could also mean multiple individual copies of a stamp.

https://www.hipstamp.com/store/okstamps

Phil Merrill_

Richard, I must apologize, but I should have been more specific. I usually do not search for anything by title, I use the filter and fields provided by hipstamp. So let's pick Europe>France & Colonies. Then I go to the
filter box and down to "Stamp Format." There we
have a number of choices:
Single, Block, Plate Number Block, Full Sheet, Miniature Sheet, Multiple, & etc. I pick "multiple" and that is where all the garbage shows up. Now I don't list items for sale here, so I'm not certain about the process, but I think that the seller chooses which of these to place an item in. Why would a seller choose "multiple" for a single stamp, or a set of different stamps, or stamps from Argentina, not France, or anything but a multiple? Even 25 examples of the same stamp is more strictly a "lot" not a "multiple."

So you see, it is not the titles of items I have a problem with, but the incorrect catagories that dealers choose to use. I hope that everyone understands me better now.

Michael Almond

"Why would a seller choose "multiple" for a single stamp, or a set of different stamps,"

I agree on a single stamp but what other category could you use for a collection of different stamps and /or set?

Henry Brooks

Depending on how you are listing (bulk loader, sell similar,etc) there is no consistency as to some of the fill-ins. I have learned (painfully at times) that you have to go back through and check for system made errors.
Example - I listed a couple of Fermented Malt Liquor revenues as "USIR Fermented Malt Liquor revenue - 1/4 Barrel - 1934" in the bulk loader - it was listed as "Worldwide" and was categorized as "general issue" even though the word revenue is in the title. It is not foolproof and it is all to easy to screw up (especially us old timers).

Ted Tyszka

As far as I know, listings are not automatically categorized as general issue, semi-postal, revenue, etc, from title keywords, as they are for countries. If you are using the bulk lister, you need to include a column to specify such. If there is no column, the system will default to general issue.

Henry Brooks

Thanks Ted - guess I have a lot of checking up to do at some point in time - will check all listings as I proceed from here on out. I guess I should have remembered that I always change it when I use "list similar"

Michael Duehr

Ted,

It will usually do so if you are using a Scott's cat number for the item in the title.

Ted Tyszka

Thanks, Michael, I had no idea, and I consider myself pretty proficient in using the bulk lister.
File undelr: Learn something new every day.

Scott Payton

Yes, with Bulk lister (which we use often) you may notice our bulk listing by the title "US - Description". The US auto categorizes the country (US) and the item. That's easy because Scott at least did a good job of creating unique identifiers for each issue type. C<#> = Airmail, J<#> = Postage Due, RS<#> = Private Die Medicine, etc. FoB of course, just a #. So programmatically, it's very easy to parse this. At least for US as well, it has a set of meta data that will populate other parts, like year and color, even if they aren't in the description. It will also parse centering and condition from the title, if you include it.