That's impossible to say. If ebay are hiding non-Sponsored items, my saved search results are not going to be accurate. Looking at the Sold page for the same search sales seem down by between 30 - 50%, but a 'surprising' number of those sales seem to for higher priced items where I've seen the same item at lower prices.
To me the implication is that I might be seeing those lower priced items, but are buyers searching for them being shown all the items or just the higher priced ones with Sponsorship being paid?
TBH my trust in ebay search results is almost zero these days. They are totally addled and manipulated, the point of the listing I mentioned in post #9933 was a sort of experiment which, to me, proved this. A reasonably priced but unsponsored item had little interest over nearly 2 months before selling. But where there are several of the same item available, according to the search results I see, buyers chose the more expensive over the cheaper items in an unlikely number of sales.
It could be that they find the lower prices suspect, or it could be that now ebay 'streamlines' the results differently to suit different buyers, it shows them higher priced sponsored items and leaves out the cheaper alternatives.
I know for an absolute fact that I've seen items in the same saved search for the first time when they suddenly appear on the Sold page, but I've never seen them during an auction because they don't fit my ebay buying profile.
