A Practical Guide to Understanding Image Retention, External URL Breakage & Permanent Photo Stability
When a seller clicks Relist, they expect eBay to reuse everything: titles, descriptions, variations, and especially photos. But many sellers are surprised when image links disappear or gallery photos break after relisting. These problems don’t come from uploading mistakes or display/rendering bugs; instead, they stem from the way eBay internally manages item data, image retention windows, and external link persistence.
This article explains exactly why relisting affects images, how long eBay keeps photos from ended listings, and how to ensure your images remain permanently accessible… even across years of relists.
Inside this article
1. Why Relisting Can Wipe Image References Entirely
Relisting is not the same as editing your active listing. When you relist, eBay generates a new item ID and creates a new record based on a template from the previous listing. The key problem:
Image references are not fully duplicated when the original listing is no longer “fresh” in eBay’s storage system.
eBay stores item images in a tiered system:
- Short-term active storage for live listings
- Medium-term retention for recently ended listings
- Long-term archives with limited data retention (images not always preserved)
When the original listing ends:
- The core textual data is kept longer
- The image dataset is partially purged or archived, depending on age, category, and storage policies
So when you click Relist:
- eBay pulls whatever data still exists
- If the original photos have already been purged, the new listing has no photo references to copy
This means:
- The relisted item may appear with zero photos
- Variations may be missing their images
- Description-linked images may still work if externally hosted and still available
This is why sellers often say:
“My photos were there last time… why did a simple relist delete them?”
The answer: eBay relisting is not a perfect clone, it depends entirely on what the old listing still has stored at the moment you relist.
2. Why External Image URLs Break During Relisting
Even if you don’t rely on eBay-hosted photos, external image URLs can break in relisted items. The cause is simple:
eBay rewrites, sanitizes, or strips old external URLs when generating a new item structure.
This can happen when:
- The original listing used old or dynamic URLs
- The domain changed (CDN migration or host shutdown)
- Temporary redirects expired
- URL formats no longer meet eBay’s current sanitization rules (security, https, character encoding, etc.)
Because relisting forces eBay to re-validate your description:
- Legacy links may no longer be accepted
- URLs that worked years ago might be removed automatically
- Variation-level gallery URLs embedded in older listing templates may be silently dropped
Important: This is not the same as URL rejection during upload: it’s URL invalidation during duplication, which follows different logic.
3. How Long eBay Actually Retains Your Hosted Listing Photos
This is where confusion begins, because eBay’s behaviour is not uniform across categories or marketplaces.
But in general:
eBay-hosted listing images are only guaranteed to remain available for a limited window after a listing ends.
Typical retention logic:
- ~90 days → reliably kept
- ~90–180 days → increasingly inconsistent
- 180 days → high chance of partial or full image purge
- Years later → images almost always missing
What gets removed?
- Gallery photos
- Variation-level images
- Secondary/zoom images
- Some description-embedded assets processed through eBay Picture Services (EPS)
Even if the listing text is still available in Seller Hub:
- Photos may be gone
- Variation galleries lose all previews
- The relist action produces a new listing without any recoverable photo references
This is why sellers see:
- “Photos show on the ended listing, but relisting has none”
- “Only 3 of my 6 images survived”
- “Relisting a 2-year-old listing dropped everything”
It’s simply due to eBay’s photo retention limits, not an error.
4. Why Permanent Hosting Matters (and When eBay Isn’t Enough)
For long-tail sellers, multi-year inventory, or seasonal listings, relying on eBay’s photo retention is risky.
The biggest problems:
- Relisting old items wipes photos
- CSV templates that reference old eBay-hosted image URLs no longer work
- Description images become inconsistent over time
- Variation images quietly disappear
External hosting solves this only if:
- The URLs stay permanent
- The host provides CDN-level uptime
- Links never change during CDN migrations or domain transitions
- Images never get deleted due to retention policies
This is why many professional sellers use an image hosting platform designed specifically for marketplaces, with:
- Permanent image storage
- Unchanging URLs (no query strings, no expiring signatures)
- Stable CDN domains accepted by marketplaces for years
- Automated backups for multi-year inventory
When external URLs are stable:
- Relisting never breaks your description images
- CSV upload workflows remain consistent year after year
- Old item templates remain usable indefinitely
5. Best Practices to Ensure Permanent Image Stability Across Relists
Here is what top sellers do to avoid image disappearance forever.
1. Never rely solely on eBay’s hosted images
Use external hosting when:
- You will relist items months later
- You sell long-tail inventory (collectibles, specialty parts, seasonal items)
- You need full image control for branding
2. Use image URLs that will never change
This means:
- No dynamic links
- No expiring signatures
- No temporary CDN tokens
- No links that depend on redirects
Use direct-access URLs that point straight to the file.
3. Use a hosting provider that guarantees permanent retention
Your photos should remain accessible for as long as your business needs them, not for 90 days.
4. Keep your source images organized outside of eBay
eBay is not a long-term archive.
A dedicated hosting solution acts as your “master source”.
5. When relisting, always review image blocks before publishing
Since eBay does not copy everything:
- Confirm that gallery photos reappear
- Confirm variation photos are complete
- Confirm your description links still load
Five seconds of checking saves massive headaches.
Conclusion
Photos disappearing after relisting is not a glitch: it’s a consequence of how eBay stores, purges, rewrites, and revalidates images during the duplication process. Since eBay’s retention window is limited, sellers who rely solely on old listing data eventually lose their images.
The solution is simple:
- Keep your images externally hosted
- Use permanent, static URLs
- Maintain your own long-term archive
- Avoid dynamic/temporary image links that can’t survive relisting checks
With stable external hosting and a permanent CDN-backed URL structure, you can relist an item today, next month, or five years from now… and your images will always be there.
