True story: As a doctor was driving his daughter to school one morning, he glanced into his rear-view mirror and noticed that she had picked up a stethoscope he left on the back seat and put it around her neck. He was instantly filled with pride: His daughter was pretending she was a doctor, too. Then he heard her say these words into the end of the stethoscope: "Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order?"

The point of that cute anecdote: Things aren't always what they appear to be. And so it is with online auctions. Put yourself in the buyer's shoes: If he's interested in an item you're selling, he has only your text and your photos to go on. A quality picture (or pictures) can be worth a thousand words, of course, but at the same time, it behooves you to write the most accurate, honest description you can.

Just like the words a news reporter, novelist, or insurance underwriter strings together, an auction listing should not be dashed off carelessly. The wrong word here or there can make a world of difference — and result in an unhappy customer, a refund check and sometimes a tarnished reputation. As someone who frequently browses online auction listings for all kinds of "stuff," I've learned that lesson from the buyer's side.

Let's Be Honest … Not All Auction Sellers Do the Right Thing I frequently search in online auctions for the work of photographer Ozzie Sweet, who has had more than 1,700 magazine and book covers (dating to the early 1940s) to his credit. Publications that have featured Sweet's distinctive covers range from Newsweek, Saturday Evening Post, Parents, Popular Photography, and TV Guide to Golf, Field & Stream, Boys' Life, Cosmopolitan, and Sports Illustrated. He became especially well-known in photography circles for his warm, impossibly detailed cover portraits for Sport magazine from 1948 through the mid-1960s. I'm fortunate to have collaborated with Sweet on two sports-related books, so I'm constantly trolling online auctions for his vintage magazine covers, out-of-print books, tear sheets and photographs. Sometimes, Sweet's original transparencies come up for auction. In 2000, via Sotheby's, he sold hundreds of prime examples of his classic sports portraits, and they occasionally filter into the auction marketplace (they can sell for hundreds of dollars and even four-figure prices for images featuring the Mickey Mantles and Ted Williamses of the world). All of which brings me to a recent incident involving less-than-honest wording used by an eBay seller. In February 2007, I noticed five lots of Sweet "negatives." I took a close look at seller's descriptions and found problems: Three of the five lots featured photos Sweet didn't actually take. How can I be sure? Since the late 1990s, I've had access to his archives because of our book projects, and I'd never seen the photographs in question — or anything like them. In one of them, Sweet was actually in the picture, standing next to Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Feller in 1947. The other two, featuring former football star Frank Gifford and former Yankees infielder Bobby Richardson, were the type of publicity shots that Sweet simply didn't do. (Besides… I visited Ozzie and asked him about the images!) One of the lots, a pair of black-and-white football negatives (misidentified as "Chicago Bears negatives" when they were actually two groupings of college stars from the 1940s and 1950s), were indeed Ozzie Sweet images. They weren't "originals," however; they were duplicates of 4 x 5-inch color transparencies. Sweet always used 4 x 5-inch or 2¼-inch color transparencies — never black and white film — for his portrait shoots. The other lot, a trio of black-and-white of Rocky Marciano, also featured the work Sweet shot. Again, though, the Marciano images were dupes, not the originals. Sweet executed a photo essay of the boxer in and around his home near Boston in the 1950s, and he used 35mm slides, not negatives. (These originals were part of a lot that sold in the 2000 Sotheby's auction for $2,200.) I contacted the eBay seller with this information while his auctions were still active. In a friendly, noncombative way — and in the spirit of trying to be helpful — I suggested that he change the verbiage of the three non-Sweet negatives to reflect that there's some question as to who shot them. He refused. I also suggested that, to be accurate, he delete the word "original" from all five listings. Again, he refused. To some, these points may seem like splitting hairs, but they're important. Collectors of photographs, negatives, slide and transparencies want to know such details before bidding. Claiming that a duplicate negative is an "original" is no less deceptive than describing a reproduction of a Currier & Ives print or a Woodstock poster as the real thing. Collectors will know the difference, so why try to fool them? If it's an honest mistake, that's one thing. But here's a case where a seller received accurate information about his listings and refused to budge. He got a little defensive in his responses, at one point writing, "Your e-mail leads me to believe that you consider yourself THE one and only Ozzie Sweet expert alive. I assure you the items I sell are on consignment from some of the most reputable sources in all of eBay, and the collecting hobby on the whole." He was referring to a New York sports memorabilia auction house that consigned the negatives but stood by its story, despite the detailed notes I sent. Bidders apparently knew the score: Four of the lots sold for low prices (between $10 and $35). The Marciano "originals" sold for $85. The moral: As a seller who strives for honest, accurate descriptions of your items, it's OK to admit you don't know everything. But a little research and a willingness to correct a mistake or two can go a long way in establishing a positive reputation. —Larry Canale

Example: In an attempt to add to a run of New York Yankees yearbooks I've collected, I recently bought the 1969 edition from an eBay seller. As a kid, I received a copy of that yearbook as a gift, only to discover at school one day (when looking through a friend's copy) that the gift-giver had carefully cut out a full-page, full-color photograph of Mickey Mantle. Ouch! That's like buying someone a hot fudge sundae and withholding the hot fudge. So last month, I was finally replacing my "defective" copy. The publication arrived and I opened it to view that long-missing Mantle photograph — only to find it wasn't there! All that was left was a ragged remnant of the poster stuck to a staple.

The seller's description included the word "intact," so even though it was a small purchase ($25), I requested a refund anyway. The seller delivered, and I could tell from our correspondence that his use of the word "intact" was an inadvertent mistake. But the anecdote illustrates how one word can make a major difference.

There are countless sellers who get it — who give bidders straightforward, accurate descriptions. And there are those who (to put it politely) might benefit from some pointed "description-writing" advice.

The most important trait your listing should have is honesty. That should go without saying, of course, but we'll say it anyway: Don't make untrue claims about an item (see "Let's Be Honest"*), and don't ignore flaws that might be important to a collector.

Here's a checklist of dos and don'ts to keep in mind the next time you're composing that object description, whether it's at eBay, another auction site or your own site: