Published: 29 May 2026 by Dan Williams
Seller observations from running a stamp dealership on eBay.
These notes started with a simple question: what happens after a buyer finds a listing?
Some articles are about discovery: search, recommendations, buyer journeys, related inventory, auctions, similarity, Cassini, Best Match and how specialist buyers seem to move through eBay.
Others will become more practical notes from the seller’s workbench: listings, descriptions, photos, pricing, postage, buyer confidence and mistakes worth avoiding.
They aren’t secret algorithm claims or guaranteed eBay tricks. They’re working notes from selling specialist material online, reading public eBay engineering articles, and trying to make sense of what I see in practice.
Free PDF companion
I’ve pulled the main ideas from this series into a free PDF companion. No signup or paywall – just a more convenient version if you prefer to read or save it offline.
The live notes on this site remain the version I update as my thinking changes.
Download the free PDF companion (Version 1.0 – June 2026)
eBay Discovery Notes
These articles look at how buyers find, compare and purchase specialist items online.
Read from the top if you want the thinking to build in the order I created the articles, or start with Beyond SEO if you want the overview first.
Articles in This Series
- Search Is Not Dead, But Recommendations Are Taking Over
Why search still has a job, but recommendations increasingly shape what happens after a listing is found. - Why a £1 Stamp Can Be More Valuable Than a £50 Stamp
How a low-value item can become an entry point into a wider buyer journey rather than just a small sale. - The Green Wave
Why related items sometimes appear to sell together, and why buyer behaviour, similarity signals and recommendation systems may all play a part. - Why Collectors Behave Differently From Most Buyers
Specialist buyers often browse, compare and purchase differently from general shoppers. - Thematic Density
Why groups of related inventory can create more opportunities for discovery than isolated listings. - Vectors, Similarity and Why Two Unrelated Listings End Up Together
A plain-English look at similarity, embeddings and why marketplaces can connect items that sellers may not initially see as related. - Why eBay Auctions Are About More Than The Final Price
The final price is easy to measure. The wider effects of an auction on discovery, buyer behaviour and future purchases may be much harder to see. - Cassini, Best Match and the Rest of eBay Discovery
Trying to piece together eBay search, recommendations and discovery from public engineering articles, seller observations and a healthy amount of uncertainty. - Search, Recommendations and the Successful Buyer Session
Why modern marketplaces may care less about a single search result and more about whether a buyer completes a useful journey. - Beyond SEO: Visibility, Discovery and Selling on eBay
The synthesis: how these observations changed the way I think about stock, listings, promotions, trust and selling on eBay.
From the Seller’s Workbench
Practical notes from listing and selling specialist GB stamps on eBay: titles, photos, descriptions, condition, pricing, postage, buyer confidence and mistakes worth avoiding.
These are working notes, not rules, platform secrets or an eBay selling course.
Workbench notes
- The Anatomy of My eBay Listings
How I think about titles, scans, condition, descriptions, price, postage, returns and buyer confidence when listing specialist GB stamps.