When they changed my clothing categories the descriptions and photos did not delete. I had few jewelry items on recent change and descriptions were fine.
Like trinkets said, ONLY the category & specifics had to be updated.
IF these listings are less than 90 days old you can go to ebay and pull up the listing specifics and drag/drop them to proper auctiva box. You may have to add a couple that were not on old page.
IF they are over 90 days old you will have to re-do the Category and SPECIFICS only in the new category. Most of that would probably be in your listing to pull from.
Hope some of this helps and makes sense.