strange selling patterns

I have been noticing this for quite a few months now and mentioned it in direct emails to some other sellers I have direct contact with.

Every now and again I seem to get a "spurt" of sales of items that have been listed during a very short period of time of each other (often several years ago).

Also, although slightly less distinct, I seem to be getting short periods of increased sales to one particular country, even though the items is question are not topographical and/or directly related to that country and may cover a variety of topics.

This weekend I've had a disproportioned number of sales to Scotland of "non Scottish" items and I've also had a large number of sales of items that were originally listed during a 6 week period in 2010.

On previous occasions I have seen a sudden increase on items listed during a similarly short different periods.

Has anyone else noticed this sort of trend?

If so, the question is if Delcampe is hiding/showing our items on a random (or not so random) basis.

For quite a while now there have been a couple of sellers (you know who I am referring to), who have been reporting that they can't find their items when they search for them. If there is some sort of "fiddling" going on that would explain, why sometimes items don't show up, but later on and/or searched for by a different person they do show again.

It is my observation, that it has be some kind of hide and seek search within search engine. It is very unpredictable sale pattern. I wish there is graph tool in D to find out these trend setting for latest listing sales and older listing sales.

It is the in between spurt periods that are worrying. Sales can and have literally fallen through the floor for me from time to time - then inexplicably they surge.

I thought this may be to listing - sales fall away very rapidly if you do not list all the time but I cannot understand why the surge in sales is very often on older material that has been on the site for ages. There is often no correlation between what is being listed and what is selling!

Mainly & I discussed this in direct e-mail some months ago, and while I agreed with much of the general trend of what she was saying at that time, I didn't feel it was exactly as she described, however recent sales patterns have made me give more credence to it. I had wondered whether this was some phenomenon of my predominantly stamp sales and hers of postcards.

Two separate instances spring readily to mind which would back up her views. I recently had brief 'spurts' of interest in Isle of Man and North Borneo stamps, for a couple of weeks each, and which then died off again. I had listed nothing new in either of these areas for some months so the interest was not being driven by new listings attracting buyers to my store.

Here's my thought of what is happening:

New listings are available freely on the site in plain view for a period of time (I reckon about 3 months)

As well as this, selections from individual stores are also readily available, based on certain areas, in my case generally countries listed at or about the same time from whatever collection I'm breaking at the time.
These selections are changed every couple of weeks or so, so that all of a store IS visible over a period of time, a number of months probably depending on the size of individual stores.

Of course, anyone actually going into an individual store, rather than just in a general search, will find everything almost all of the time, but not everyone does that.

Conclusion - the site cannot handle everything that is listed because of limited capacity, therefore older sales listings are rationed among sellers. This is going to be particularly pertinent to older ( in terms of time listing on the site, in case anyone takes umbrage) members, and I note that quite a few of those who have come in above me on the top stores listings are more recent sellers. Good luck to them, but if what I'm postulating is correct, is this fair to the rest???

My sales recently have dropped like the proverbial stone, noted as if I needed told by dropping 17 places in the top stores chart. Didn't really surprise me, but obviously it's not just an allover thing as those who have climbed above me have been busier selling ( not that that would have been difficult)

Thank goodness I took advantage of free listings promotions elsewhere, where sales have been excellent (Delcampe please note)

Ah well, as I've actually just sold something for the first time in 3 days, I suppose I should go and do something about it.

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

I've kept quiet on this subject so far but, like others, I have surges in older material from specified countries or with buyers from specified countries then it all goes dead again for a few weeks. Items do disappear from time to time but I have to say not that often.

There is clearly some kind of prioritization going on but I am not that talented in crystal-ball gazing to ascertain exactly how or what.

It would be nice if Benjamin or someone who knows at D would kindly explain this phenomenon.......I do not believe in 'chance' as it happens too often. Chaos theory - yes, chance - no

One severe irritant at D is that sellers have to keep constantly updating, re-listing etc to get a fair crack of the whip....which takes time that we can all ill afford.

Like other contributors, I sell on other sites on a fixed-price 'shop' basis without this problem - possibly because the software on the other sites prioritizes on lowest prices rather than date of listing. Simple to update if necessary.

Sales on each of those sites are presently showing regular growth with no sudden ups and downs. Maybe, one day, D will address this....yes, D do have 60m items listed apparently but with recorded sales of 400K or so a month, the conversion rate is dreadfully low....about 0.7% a month....

Dear Sellers on this thread,

Could your scattered sales patterns not simply be due to newer members with specific interests discovering your older items as they become more familiar with the site's features and search engine? After their initial buying sprees into your shops end, their purchases then slow to a more adhoc pattern that is more tied to your (re)listing activities than anything else, since these generate 'news' that are prioritized in their search results?

These questions reflect my history on the site. I joined it mid-2010 with very specific postal history interests, and my purchases since then have been as follows, with almost all those from 2013 onwards being from 'new' listings only: 74 in 2011, 210 in 2012, 43 in 2013, and 20 to date in 2014. I should also point out that my average purchase price is relatively high, and makes me generally insensitive to postal, payment and other charges. Also, I have generally experienced zero technical problems with the site, the most being during early 2013 when there were clearly fundamental slowness and image problems. So overall I would say that my purchase pattern is for the most part entirely explained by the pace at which I discovered the site's contents and allowed myself to buy it.

Could my story multiplied by hundreds of similar others not translate into the patterns you observe? I have no real insight into what Delcampe does do, but personally I find it somewhat tenuous to argue that for technical or other reasons, they deliberately filter, prioritize, ration, etc., store or search listings beyond what we do know, such as the fact that search results are limited to 10,000 items shown in reverse chronological order, based on their (re)listing date/time.

If my theory holds, then the key for Delcampe's future is the pace at which it attracts new members, while the key for sellers is to keep on (re)listing, to overcome the limitations of the current manner in which the search results are shown (in this respect, I note that all manners of showing search results will have their limitations, which the detractors of the current method sometimes forget).

I apologize in any event for the length of this message, and simply hope it's a useful contribution from a buyer's perspective (there aren't many on this forum).

Best regards,

Brice

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Tenuous or not, it just seems strange that, for instance, I had several sales (10 items to 5 different buyers) relating to country x that I had listed 12 months ago during June 2014 compared to NIL January to May 2014 and 1 only since June. I had made no alterations to those items. This is just one example of what I and other contributors are querying as this sort of random "surge" happens quite frequently.

Your points may well be valid - this question has, however, been raised a few times on this forum and Delcampe have been invited to comment. To date, not a whisper.

All Delcampe has to say is that the surges are co-incidental, due to the factors that you have mentioned, no deliberate policy to "ration" listings etc etc and that will be the end of the matter......

Thank you for contributing, Brice - always useful to hear the buyers perspective as we sellers (particularly yours truly) often get bogged down in petty site problems and possibly forget that my sole reason in being here on this site is to sell!

Mike

First of all an apology to all the contributors of this thread. I started it, but never acknowledged any of your replies.

Briceropion, your analysis would make perfect sense, if I was seeing (relative) newbies buying older items. Personally I collect 2 very small areas. When I first joined the site I searched for the items and looked through all the search results, picking up a few items that had been listed for a long time. Now I check once a week, but only look at new items, which are few and far in between - both searches only produce about 50 results.

However, what I am seeing are 2 different "patterns"

One is a sudden disproportionate amount of sales to buyers from a particular region/country, buying wildly different items, i.e. 6 or 7 Dutch buyers at the same time buying "royalty", "military", "children", etc.

The other one is a sudden increase of sales of items that were listed during a 4 or 6 week period several years ago. The items tend to be unrelated and go to different buyers, even though I have not listed new material in the relevant categories.

In both instances almost all of the buyers are long established Delcampers.

In the past I have often noticed that when I list some new royalty cards, all of a sudden I tend to get some sales of older royalty cards (or any other subject or region). I can fully understand that. As a buyer if I spot new items in my area of collecting, I would also check out the seller's other items.

Recent events are different though and I don't think they have anything to do with the 10K limit either.

I was indeed talking about you and Old_postcards, but didn't want to mention your names. As you've both contributed to the thread I suppose it's ok to "name and shame"

You may recall instances where I have searched for items you couldn't find and they would show up for me. You are in France & I'm in the UK. Could this confirm my "conspiracy theory", that items are being made available/visible to certain countries at certain points in time?!?!?

I'm certain you are correct, Mainly. I've also noted a 'country' pattern, with certain countries appearing in numbers for a time, both buyers and, courtesy of flag counter, viewers. Countries then 'disappear' from views/sales after a period, except in my case UK, which as all my listings are on the UK (and allegedly international) which remains pretty constant.

I've never moved my sales to another 'country' site so can't confirm this. Perhaps someone else who does move their sales around can comment?

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

I'm not 'blaming' Delcampe as such, but there are apparently currently 60 million+ items for sale on Delcampe and the question arises, 'are these items all readily available for buyers to view without going into a seller's store to see them?' and the answer, for whatever reason, is NO. This is not, by all accounts, unique to Delcampe, if anyone scans the eBay sellers forums, almost identical questions can be found.

I'm not suggesting either that visibility is the sole factor in sales patterns, merely that it IS, in my view, very influential. I know there is little point, for example, in my expecting large sales from say France in August as this is the main French holiday period and many people will not have such ready access to the internet or even time to browse.

No doubt someone will come along and say differently, but I can only speak for myself.

I still cannot find any other reasonable argument for spikes in sales of certain categories of items or countries for periods of time, and then nothing for subsequent periods other than that they are not always visible to buyers from that country.

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

I don't know if there's anything anyone can do about it, and it wasn't until Mainly raised the topic that I began to look at it seriously.

I note Delcampe remain totally silent on this topic - perhaps between us all we are correct and it's not something they care to admit to.

Ah well, back to preparing some more items for sale, all being well someone will see them at some time

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

Searched for SS Majestic and S.S. Majestic and nothing.

Just Majestic turned up one result, but not a Pamlin print.

Searching for Pamlin in description gave 9 results, but no SS Majestic among the lot.

Le informazioni non sono più disponibili perché l'account di questo utente è stato eliminato (Regolamento RGPD).

I just searched for Kyles of Bute. In my control panel I have 10 items and searching in my store 9 show up.

This one does not appear in my store: Link (http)

If you lot have time on your hands, use a variety of keywords and see if you can find it.