Ebay Descriptives

[HarrySmith]

We all know sellers like to embellish thier titles and descriptions with flowery words and even occassionally make up thier own. I found this this morning:

Telephone company hat - phone cap - mintyish -LN
MINTYISH???
Does it taste minty?

[Adam]

eBay is a virtual cornucopia of hashed English.  There is currently an auction in the phones category which is describing its item as VENTAGE.

I also love the constant misspellings of rotary (rotery, rotarty,etc.) and dial is frequently spelled dail.

[Doug Rose]

Eames Era .....Now that says it all!....Doug

[rdelius]

Why do people list as "bell systems"?
Bugs me
Robby

[Dave F]

Here are a couple of ROTATORY wall phones, in case you don't yet have any:

http://tinyurl.com/3dy6qt8

[DavePEI]

Here are a couple of ROTATORY wall phones, in case you don't yet have any:

http://tinyurl.com/3dy6qt8

Note: According to the seller, "Both show some ware, but not too bad for their age"

[Phonesrfun]

Every once in a while someone will post a picture of an AE phone and call it Western Electric, or I have even seen a picture of a Western Electric called a General Electric.

[DavePEI]

Every once in a while someone will post a picture of an AE phone and call it Western Electric, or I have even seen a picture of a Western Electric called a General Electric.

Better yet, you have those who post a Northern Electric Uniphone, and describe it as a North Electric! 'Nuther pet peeve!

[JorgeAmely]

"Fresh from the barn"  rings a bell too (no pun intended).

[Ed D]

Or "American Electric" instead of "Automatic Electric."

[Doug Rose]

Or "American Electric" instead of "Automatic Electric."

American Electric is a real Telephone Company, predecessor to Automatic Electric. You will see some 1As with their Monophone name plate...Doug

[K1WI]

      Selfishly , I think it is great. Shouldn't give away secrets ..... but over the years I 've gotten some super buys on e-bay due to poor spelling , wrong catagories ,etc.  Recently I won a BLUE 500p at the opening price , it was listed as a  " NITELITEPHONE" all one word. ,with a very poor picture , in an unrelated catagory. Guess I was the only one that saw it !
     So have fun searching , there are some real "doozies" out there.
   Andy     (K1WI)

[MDK]

I know what you mean. I used to find good deals on saxophones by searching the misspelling, "saxaphone" or "saxiphone". Smart sellers are including multiple spellings in their listings.

[Willytx]

I picked up a North Electric 540 that was listed as a "Northern Electric phone". There weren't any other bidders! Nice

[jsowers]

      Selfishly , I think it is great. Shouldn't give away secrets ..... but over the years I 've gotten some super buys on e-bay due to poor spelling , wrong catagories ,etc.  Recently I won a BLUE 500p at the opening price , it was listed as a  " NITELITEPHONE" all one word. ,with a very poor picture , in an unrelated catagory. Guess I was the only one that saw it !
     So have fun searching , there are some real "doozies" out there.
   Andy     (K1WI)

That 500P is a real doozie! Andy, please start a new thread in Auction Talk with a picture or two and a story about finding it, with a link to the auction. I think we'd all like to see it. That's a rare phone and eligible for Find of the Month if you got it on the cheap, which may be the case. Was it aqua blue or dark (Mediterranean) blue? Either way you got a rare phone there. Congratulations!

Now about misspellings, yes sellers can be their own worst enemy. It's also hard to get them to ID the exact color of the phone, since they don't know the colors. I know I've seen at least 20 different spellings of "avocado green." Last week I saw "alvacoddo" and regularly see "avacodo" and "avacado." I should have kept a list.