Anyone else noticed that only today Ebay has revamped the categories for searching for vintage watches? Rather than the familiar vintage categories for watch searches: pre-1920, 1920-1970, we select from this: Year of Manufacture (Omega in this instance) Show only Pre-1920 (1item) 1920-1929 (1item) 1930-1939 (2items) 1940-1949 (3items) 1950-1959 (8items) 1960-1969 (14items) 1970-1979 (20items) 1980-1989 (6items) 1990-1999 (7items) 2000-2009 (10items) 2010-Now (13items) Not Specified (7,380items) (0)Filters selected I realize that didn't reproduce as it appears on Ebay but one gets the idea. This is useless for the vintage watch fan. I seldom peruse anything newer than the old 1920-1970 category and don't want the unnecessary baggage of viewing a bunch of watches which hold no interest for me, requiring the extra time it takes to look beyond them in search of models which do interest me. Presumably, one is now suppose to include the date of manufacture in his auction title in order to have it show up in one of these categories, otherwise it is lumped into "Not Specified." "Not Specified" is inconvenient. A specific year isn't a truly worthwhile method of searching for watches. If a particular year was sought then it could have been added into a custom search. This is unhelpful to someone interested in a wide range of watches falling within a certain era.
I just noticed that too, and thought I was on a different country's site. The options for movement also seem less clear, and could be confusing for the buyer that doesn't know what they have.
Searches using an age search parameter are only useful if the seller... a) actually knows the year a watch was produced; and b) bothers to enter the information. In other words, useless. This applies to most, of not all, other search parameters, including whether or not watch is quartz.
I called Ebay about this after I could find no proper suggestion box on the site. The person to whom I spoke by telephone said the suggestion box had been taken down. She claimed she understood why this new search system wouldn't work as well for vintage watch searches and told me she would pass the information on. Somehow this was not confidence-inspiring. English was not her first language. I closed the telephone interview by requesting that she make a note to "just put it back as it was yesterday." I took up a search of antiquarian books and it took me down a different pathway than that which was familiar to but finally did land me in a proper century-by-century category convenient for those who want to search books in that manner, similar to the old categories available to search for watches.