German / Soviet POW story

WWII booklet/book! PRISONER OF WAR! STORY! NEAT!


Auction ended: Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Auction grade: D-

Starting bid: $0.99

Final selling price: $0 - no bids


Up for sale in this eBay auction is a book about being a Soviet prisoner-of-war during World War 2. There's just one minor catch with this book - it's written entirely in German.

For starters, this auction's title is very childish and does very little to sell the product or even capture your imagination. "STORY!" and "NEAT!" is just plain dumb when talking about a person's ordeals through one of the world's largest and costliest conflicts. This technique is also insulting to those people who have an actual interest in this subject. "German", "Soviet", and "Russia" would have been much better words in the title.

The auction's description is also horrible. At no point does this seller even try to describe this book or make an attempt at selling it. According to this seller, this is "a REALLY NEAT WWII BOOK" about "A STORY ABOUT A PRISONER OF WAR!" that is "INTERESTING READING!!!" and "READY FOR YOUR COLLECTION!!!" (in there twice, so it must really be important).

This is complete crap when it comes to marketing the product. You can easily tell that this seller has not done any product research and, apart from looking at the barb wire on the cover, knows nothing about this book or the author. When it comes to selling a non-fiction book, it definitely helps to have at least a little bit of background information about the person who went through the experience and wrote the story.

Apart from the horrible title and description, the seller did a good job with the pictures and low starting bid.

So can this auction be salvaged and turned into a winner? I honestly don't know.

The main problem with this auction and item for sale deals with the book itself. This is a book written in German (no English translation as far as I know). That problem alone is going to vastly limit the target audience here in the U.S. There are many people interested in P.O.W. stories, but the language barrier is something very hard to overcome. This seller would probably be best off marketing this book to high school and college foreign language departments, though it's probably too advanced or difficult for most of those students.

If I were to pursue this auction, I would just include it in a lot of other German or World War 2 books and other small items. It's easy to find basic information about the seller and talk about that in the auction's description, but that alone won't make the sale. If you're not knowledgeable about this author or subject, it's not worth it to take the extra time to educate yourself. You could be marketing other items instead.

LOT of NASCAR items

Toy Car Nascar Racing Lot of 3 Petty Cards Book(#6)


ended - Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Auction grade: C-

Starting bid: $1.99

Final selling price: $0 - no bids


Up for sale in this eBay auction is a small collection of semi-vintage, assorted NASCAR memorabilia.

The auction's title looks a little bit weird because it doesn't make much sense reading it from left to right, but the seller did manage to hit the major key words. This auction should have enough exposure, but by rearranging the words more people will click on the link and take a look at what's for sale.

The auction's description is where the seller really dropped the ball. The text and flow of words is horrible, and the seller failed to describe the items for sale.

"Lot of Three Neat Nascar Racing Items"

This part isn't bad despite the seller capitalizing the first letter of each word. On a side note, all of the letters in NASCAR are supposed to be capitalized. After all, it is an acronym for "National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing".

"Included are one Nascar toy car
A set of Richard Petty Cards
and a Nascar Collectible Book"

If you're going to do the trouble and pay the money for listing an auction, don't you think you could have done a slightly better job with the description than this? Let's look at this one line at a time.

"Included are one Nascar toy car"

First of all, if you're going to make a listing, use a colon followed by bullet points to separate the items. Otherwise, you'll end up with a sloppy and unprofessional statement like this.

Aside from the grammar problems, the seller failed to mention anything about the "toy car". Many buyers and fans of racing would like to know that this is a recreation of Dale Earnhardt, Junior's #3 ACDelco Chevy Monte Carlo car that he used when he won the 1998 Busch Grand Nationals Series Championship. (It took me less than two minutes to find that information chock-full of excellent key words.)

"A set of Richard Petty Cards"

So are these playing cards you would use in games like poker and blackjack, or is this some type of a NASCAR collector card set featuring highlights of the driver? The picture doesn't show us anything useful about the cards.

"and a Nascar Collectible Book"

Looking closely at the enlarged picture, this is a March 1992 Speedway Limited Edition racing memorabilia pocket price guide. When most people describe a sporting book as being a collectible, that usually means that the book focuses on a player, team, or entire sport for a season and gives you all sorts of facts, pictures, and other pieces of information. What we have here is a guide telling you how much certain memorabilia is worth. Being an outdated pricing guide that is nowhere near correct with today's values and prices for certain items, the book itself isn't exactly a collector's item.

"Email me if you want names or details of each box."

Is this referring to this lot, or is there something else that the seller didn't mention?

How about just taking the few extra minutes and listing everything in the auction in the first place?


Luckily for us potential buyers, this seller provided a large enough picture for us to see enough details about the items (except for the Richard Petty cards). The problem (aside from the problems already addressed above) is that showing items in a picture does not equal actually writing about them in the auction. The eBay search engine cannot look at the picture to see if something that somebody is searching for is in your auction.

For example, if somebody had their heart set on finding that 1992 Speedway Limited Edition racing memorabilia guide, they're certainly not going to find it from this seller. I found one available from a different seller, and it's only $0.49 (auction ends in twelve hours).


This seller has a lifetime history of over 6,000 positive pieces of feedback. Many of this person's other non-NASCAR auctions look neat and professional, so, obviously, they know how to sell on eBay and they've been doing it for a while. The seller admits that they don't know anything about racing by saying "I am not sure about these cars or the drivers" in a previous auction for a couple of die cast NASCAR cars.

I cannot say this clear enough: By not doing simple research you are leaving money on the table!

Take the few extra minutes and do some quick Google and Wikipedia searches and see what you can find.