I got two hats on the way as well. Well, caps, not fedoras but still... Doubt it it would've happened if I wasn't here.
I think a week is too soon. It’s not hard to see the view stats on a post/ thread and accurately gauge interest. The hard part is when people ask questions and the thread gets bumped by default. Those things can’t be controlled and are artificial bumps. Same can be said of non buyer commentary, which I am often guilty of... I’ve seen some seriously excessive bumping, especially lately in the classifieds. Too me that is abuse of a free system and an attempt to monopolize a free resource. Yeah there’s the occasional necromorph bump but in general...if it hasn’t sold in three weeks you have about a 3% chance of selling it at all here. To see the same ad bumped week after week for months and months...fling that to eBay and reach the broader market. 90% of the time I create the eBay listing first and link it here, as this market is really tiny by comparison.
I also think it's a shame that lots of things in the classifieds are sold... is there no way to delete a listing once it's sold??
Better would be to lock it, so future posts wouldn’t bump it. But if there’s a problem...then there’s no public grievance option, or quick flip via bump if it doesn’t work out.
I never realized there was such demand for hats. I have a hat here all packaged up in its original Stetson box and I've been trying to work up the motivation to figure out how to do an eBay listing. Shouldn't be too hard, I suppose, lots of people seem to do it. I should just list it here. If I do, I'll be certain to put 'Hat' in the title. And the size, too. Drives me nuts to have to click through to find the sizes of things! How do people do payments? Receive 100% via PayPal then ship the item?
The official recommendation by the moderators is for sellers to not delete the thread, but to add a final post stating that the item has sold. I still think this is the best solution. The thread is still there for others to evaluate the market even if the final sale price is not always clearly visible. Locking is a moderator-only action. I think it would be asking too much. It's too involving for the moderators who after all do this in their spare time.
One rule I remember form some other forum years ago was no bumping unless you drop your price by 10%. But regardless, rules are worthless unless followed and enforced. Do we really want to deal with all that? In my opinion, the guys that bump every other day just look like the fools they are. Nobody is buying their merch because it’s either crap or overpriced. No amount of bumping will help their cause.
original posts are locked from editing after a couple of days, and thread titles from the beginning, which prevents adding the SOLD description at the top.. if you need to make another post to say its sold.. you effectively are bumping a sold item back to the top.. defeats the purpose
That's a good point about the title...would eliminate the bump. I've thought about this with my listings but would rather let people know it's sold and not leave a hanging chad.
100% agree, if you could edit the thread title from "For Sale" to "Sold".. eliminates the issue. I never did understand why thread titles are locked.. and getting back to the OP's original thought.. I have no problem with a separate sub-category for Hats for Sale. I don't have an issue looking through the listings but I get it.
Personally I try not to bump (not saying that's a bad thing as I have once or twice). If it doesn't go here it will usually take off on the bay because of more exposure.
If that's the case... which I would understand since I do check on what folks are asking for their hats, then it would be cool if they could (unless they can already) edit the title to include "sold" in it. It's hard enough to find the hats amid all the jackets, but then you find one only to get to the end of the comments and find out it's sold.
10 years ago, I'd say that easily half the classifieds were hats...today, seems like there are more leather jackets on here than anything else.
I wonder if that’s because hat folks don’t flip as often? Seems like hats are even more a collectors item than jackets. I know nothing of the hat market as I don’t wear them, which with my hair (or lack thereof) I probably should. LOL. Also seems a hat isn’t effected by a change in body weight or physique, so they are not likely to be sold by a gain or loss of lbs. All that aside you’re absolutely right. I never used to look here for jackets but these days if you aren’t checking in at least twice a day, you are likely to miss something extraordinary.
The search facility inbuilt to TFL is, unfortunately, a software thing that we can't do anything to change (save to migrate the entire forum to something else). In truth, it's a common problem across all fora I've ever known. The best option is to enter "The Fedora Lounge [search terms here]" into Google, and turn it up that way - tends to be better, especially if you have a specific term in mind that corresponds to a thread title. As a rule, yes, the best approach is to leave the thread. We have locked some in the past, I believe, but as you note we're all volunteers doing this in our spare time, so it's not really practical to keep that level of a watch. In the thirteen odd years I've been around this place, certain things go in and out. Back in 07 hats were the biggest noise, suits regularly change hands, and now leather jackets are bigger. I think as much as anything it's because we're in that middly phase where the supply of original stuff to the period of interest is dying out, worn out, or mostly now in the hands of collectors and so you see less of it on the market, while reproduction is just beginning to rise on the market (especially in menswear). The hat guys also seem to be some what less obsessive about the minutiae of fit the way some of the leather jacket guys will reject an item if they think it's half an inch too short or such. Outerwear on TFL now is also something of a crossover, with a lot of folks who aren't really interested in the vintage aspect of leather jackets so much as quality and style of the reproducers now, so you have a larger market here for that aspect than some of the more 'vintage only' sides of what we do here.