Help an eBay Novice

[DrFidelius]

I am tempted to put some of my books for sale on eBay. The Wife tells me that I have been underpricing my Amazon sales and could get more for some of the books in an auction environment.

So, I now have an eBay identity. I want to research past sales to get a feeling for how much I can ask as an opening bid or a reserve. Or, conversely, to see whether it is worth my time to put my first edition of “Fastnet, Force 10” up for auction.

eBay says that to search completed listings I need to

Just follow these steps:
Go to the Search page. You can get there by clicking the Search button at the top of any eBay page.
Enter your search keywords and other search options (if desired).
**Click the “Completed listings only” checkbox. **
Click the Search button, and you’ll get a list of items matching your search that have ended during the last 15 days. If you are not currently signed-in, you will be prompted to do so to see the search results.

Bolding mine.
There is no such checkbox on any Search page I can access.

Any suggestions?

[GorillaMan]

Click on ‘advanced search’ in the top-right corner of the front page

[Giles]

This page has “Completed listings only” about half-way down the page for me (when I’m signed in. Does it not for you?

[DrFidelius]

Colour me stupid.

Somehow I believed that just because it greeted me by name (right up there on the top of every page) I was “logged in.”

Many thanks.

[Mangetout]

Since you’re a newcomer to eBay, I’ll offer some off-topic advice (which you might already know:

If you get an email saying that your eBay account (or your Paypal account, if you have one) has some sort of dreadful thing wrong with it, do not follow the instructions in the email; I get a couple of these messages every week and they are bogus - if you click on the link, it will take you to a page that looks like eBay, asking you for account details, possibly credit card details too - if you were to enter the details, the information will be used to defraud you.

If eBay needed to contact you for such information, they would tell you to close the email, open your browser, go to ebay.com and log in. Never follow a link in an email purporting to be from eBay - you can also forward a copy of any such messages to spoof@ebay.com (or spoof@paypal.com) and they will take steps to get the bogus website taken down.

[Rodd_Hill]

I will echo the Mange-man’s sage advice, and add that beware of very offical-looking emails from banks, saying that your account information has been compromised, and also especially beware of emails saying that an ebay auction that you have been bidding on has been shut down by ebay, and please click here for details: a good friend of mine (and a 7-year veteran of ebay, who should have known better!) did so, and within 20 minutes, his ebay account was hijacked, and a honda goldwing motorcycle was for sale on his account.

He contacted Safeharbour, and they froze his account immediately, so no harm done–except that it is now nearly two weeks later, and he is still “no longer a registered member.”

I basically ignore all emails from ebay, and only act on “my messages” from the “My ebay” page, or use my PayPal account page to send invoices. Spoofers are getting more and more devious.

But it’s still fun and profitable!

[Jayrot]

More obvious (to some) advice:

As a seller, beware the “overpay” or “money order” scam. See here for details.

[Mangetout]

Just for the record; I had a different kind of phish attempt the other day; a spoof eBay email inviting me to become a Power Seller* - “we will only make this offer once, so click here now!”

*PowerSeller status is based on performance, not invitation.