USAF Sabre Jet Motor Lodge sign

AIR FORCE SABRE JET MOTOR LODGE SIGN AGED METAL


ended - Sunday, March 9, 2008

Auction grade: B

Starting bid: $22.95

Final selling price: $0 - no bids


Up for bid in this eBay auction is a vintage motor lodge sign featuring the USAF F-86 Sabre. The seller claims that this a current production sign with a 1950's theme to it.


I like this sign and the vintage look to it, but changes need to be made to increase traffic.

First, the title needs some adjusting. It needs to be written with regular sized characters, and certainly not all caps like it is now. Also, a few more keys words need to be added to the title. "USAF" and "military" will definitely help increase the number of viewers.

The other main part of the auction that needs adjusting is the item's description.

First, the seller needs to say directly whether or not this exact sign was made in the 1950's or if it was made today and designed to look like it was from that era. The title says "aged metal", but the description mentions "current production sign." Well, which one is it? Vintage items are popular these days, and some companies are producing modern day replicas of vintage signs, furniture, etc.

Second, the seller could easily have gone into a little detail about the F-86 Sabre. I know from my own independent military aviation studies that the F-86 was the primary fighter used by our forces during the Korean Conflict. It hunted and destroyed Soviet-made and Soviet/Chinese/Korean-piloted MiG-15 fighters in "MiG Alley" on the China-Korean border. Any facts and pieces of information like that are excellent add-ons for the item's description. By mentioning a little bit about the aircraft, USAF, military, and Korean War, all of a sudden you have a bunch of excellent key words. It will also help you look more professional as long as your facts are correct.

Third, the spacing and general format of the description needs to be fixed. A bunch of sentence fragments separated only by periods (no spacing) isn't the way to do it. Dimensions are best being listed separately so they stand out and are easier to read. Facts and observations should be listed first in one paragraph, and opinions and other pieces of information need to go in following paragraphs.

It's interesting to see that the sign has the aircraft spelled "SABER JET". The military spelled the aircraft as either "Sabre" or "Sabrejet" (no space). The seller even spelled it correctly in the title. Did the designer of the sign intentionally misspell the aircraft, or was it an accident?