How do you scrape eBay listings via API without getting blocked?

eBay result sets are not homogeneous, and code written against the first row will crash on the sixth. In our ten-result 'nintendo switch oled' search, three rows were auctions (buying_format '17 bids', '10 bids', '8 bids') and those three carried no condition, no location, no shipping and no sold_count - the keys were absent from the object entirely, not present with a null. A schema that requires condition will reject nearly a third of a normal eBay page.

Even among the fixed-price rows the optional keys move around: best_offer appeared on two of ten, catalog_rating on two, sold_count on four. There is no stable superset. This is not eBay being inconsistent for its own amusement - a seven-day auction with no completed sales genuinely has no sold count - but it does mean every field access needs a default.

The third thing is that eBay is thirteen marketplaces with thirteen sets of local conventions, and the most dangerous of those is how a decimal point is written.

Prices come as an object with three views: raw ('$184.99'), value (184.99) and currency ('USD'). One caveat we would rather state than have you discover: on the German site the numeric value is currently wrong. raw 'EUR 240,00' came back as value 24000.0, and 'EUR 169,69' as 16969.0 - the comma decimal separator is being stripped rather than parsed. It is a defect on our side, it affects non-US domains, and we are fixing it. Until then, on any domain other than com, parse raw and treat value as advisory. The US domain returns value correctly.

condition is coarser on the product page than in the result list, which is the opposite of the usual direction. Search returned 'Very Good - Refurbished' for item 267673902801; item_detail on the same id returned 'Refurbished'. Both are true, and the search string is the more useful one for grading resale inventory. item_detail adds what search cannot: brand, model, mpn, availability as a machine value ('InStock'), and full-resolution images with dimensions and, on many listings, alt-text descriptions.

shipping is a display string, not a number, and it carries three quite different meanings: '+$1.00 delivery' is a charge, 'Free International Shipping' is free, and 'Shipping not specified' means the seller has not published one. Treating the third as free is the mistake that ruins landed-cost comparisons.

sold_count is a string with two formats and it is the most useful demand signal eBay exposes: '568 sold' is exact, '69+ sold' is a floor. Parse the plus sign rather than the number alone - a '69+' and a '69' are not the same claim. location tells you where the item ships from ('Japan', 'United States'), which for used-console arbitrage is often more decision-relevant than the price.

mpn can come back as the literal string 'Does Not Apply'. That is the seller's own entry in eBay's form, not a null we introduced, and it is what distinguishes 'this seller left it blank' from 'this seller says there is no part number'. We pass it through.

Eight actions share the engine: search, sold_search, item_detail, items_batch, seller_items, seller_profile, deals and categories. sold_search - the completed-listings research surface - is returning DISABLED at the time of writing with a retry message; the others are live. items_batch takes a list of item ids in one request, and seller_items plus seller_profile together give you a competitor's whole active inventory. Search answered in about 3.4 seconds, detail in 1.2.