GI Joe aircraft carrier - USS Saratoga

GI Joe USS Saratoga Air Craft Carrier Military MINT


ended - Thursday, April 10, 2008

Auction grade: B+

Starting bid: $25.00

Final selling price: $0 - no bids


Up for sale in this eBay auction is a vintage GI Joe USS Saratoga toy aircraft carrier from the 1980's.

The title isn't bad and the seller has the right idea of using relevant key words, but some changes still need to be made.

First, "Air Craft" needs to be together in one word. It's an "aircraft" carrier, and that's how most people are going to search for that item.

Second, this may be in excellent condition, but the seller shouldn't use that exclusive "mint" term for an item that has been used. It's not even mentioned if this comes with the original box.

The problem is that on eBay and other online stores, mint is used to describe the highest state of perfection with an item. Those are items that are still sealed in their original factory packages and haven't been touched or used by another person. This can still be used to describe items where it's absolutely necessary to remove the item from the box just to take a picture.

Since this auction is labeled as "used", the seller can use similar phrases such as "excellent", "perfect", and "like-mint", but not "mint" by itself. Save that term for unopened and unused items.

Again, throughout the auction's description the seller keeps mentioning that it's in mint condition. It may be in perfect working order and in excellent condition, but it's not mint. Sorry. Again, like in the title, the seller needs to refer to this as an "aircraft" carrier, not "air craft".

I like how the seller mentioned the manufacturer and the overall dimensions, but this description would look and read a lot easier if it wasn't a mass of sentence fragments. Use a little spacing and make this neater and easier to read.

"moving satellites" --- The seller is most likely referring to the various radar dishes and other antenna on top of the aircraft carrier. I doubt that this carrier has any orbiting objects out in space.

Overall, this auction looks pretty good, and a few minor changes will help bring in extra potential buyers and help with the overall accuracy.

Like every other boy back in the 80's, I used to play with GI Joe action figures, too. I had a few of the larger aircraft including the Cobra Night Raven , Tomahawk, Cobra Condor Z-25, and later the massive Mobile Command Center and Crusader Space Shuttle with Avenger Scout Craft (my personal favorite.) It was always hard to compete with that spoiled kid down the street with the USS Saratoga in his basement (forgot his name as it was 20 years ago and when we lived in a different state). My Mobile Command Center was pretty cool, but it wasn't added to my collection until later when we found it accidentally marked down too much in a store ($20 instead of the usual $80+). This makes me wonder how many of those toys and other 1980's action figure playsets are still sitting in various boxes in the attic at my parent's house.