General Forum

I’m not going to bother putting in the links-just search it yourselves-but I just can’t take it. Now Dean’s Cards is listing “Partial Complete Sets.” Some of the listings are for 4 or 6 out of 24 cards. (1938 Goudey) Do they have a Director of Misdirection who comes up with these abominations of the English language? 

On the other hand, WooooHoooo!!!! I have a partial complete T205 set! You know, because I have three of them. 

And the descriptions say it’s a “majority” of the set. 

Sheesh. 

V3

Another oxymoron. Jumbo shrimp, genuine imitation, original copy..... partial complete. Makes perfect sense. Right?

Sounds like a good, bad thing to me,you.

Partial Set would be correct.

Almost complete set would be correct.

Incomplete set would be correct.

What they are doing is called "Keyword Spamming" and it's against ebay's rules. For those who feel strongly about that, please report each listing of theirs you find with that oxymoronic wording. :)

What I hate about these things is when I'm on ebay and if I am looking for a complete set I get tons of junk items that turn up on my searches.

I have noticed that too. I get a lot less junk listings if I add either the last card number to the search ("1987 Topps Set 792") or if I use this: "1987 Topps Set -Team -Pick". These 2 methods really get rid of the listings we don't care about when looking for a complete set.

That was my thought too vroomed.  it's all about keyword searching.  I find the same when I search ebay.  For set collectors like myself, what should be a simple search ends up with a lot of exclusions like 'set break' or 'near complete'.

I agree that too many listings get flooded with keyword spam, but one way to minimize is to add "-words" to your ebay search query.

Whereas "1974 Topps Complete Set" gives you a ton of junk...

Don't want partials?  Add -partial to your query...

There's still some other junk so get creative with what you want to exclude...

Oh, I know what it's about. I doubt EBay will do anything. I actually sent a message to Dean's, and to their credit, they responded. But not in any way that acknowledged the stupidity.

"Almost complete set" would NOT be correct for 4 of 24 cards. And the 24 cards are only a subset of the complete set.

And, yes, I find all the incorrect listings that pop up when I do searches, due to the false advertising, to be quite annoying.

But, mostly, I just complain and warn. Not important enought to do full-on battle, to me.

v3

vrooomed wrote:

Partial Set would be correct.

Almost complete set would be correct.

Incomplete set would be correct.

What they are doing is called "Keyword Spamming" and it's against ebay's rules. For those who feel strongly about that, please report each listing of theirs you find with that oxymoronic wording. :)

I often chuckle at Dean's Cards descriptions both on ebay and on their website. Although, to be fair, they do have a well organized website and it seems the actual descriptions of the cards are accurate (in terms of condition). They are on the high-side price wise, but they are a retail store.

There is a science to key-word searches on ebay. Sometimes it makes it difficult to find what you want because you have to sort through so many intentionally mislabeled or ambiguously labeled items.