hi there!
i was thinking to propose you a topic in which everyone can add his suggestion to improve quality in ebay searches...
what i'd like to have is a sort of list of tips in which everyone share his knowledge and experience with all of us...

just an example: which kind of search do you perform in order to look for an early print of AD&D PHB?

i'd like to start whit some tips i usually adopt for early versions of D&D boxes: my keywords are arneson + gygax + TSR or white box + d&d...

i just add a question: how do you manage the problem that the "&" character is read by the search engine of ebay as a space?

tnx and ciao

Gus Landt wrote:I've no idea how to get around the '&'.  

I trust everyone here knows all the different things than can be done in an eBay search?  There are tons of cool things.

Here is one of my daily searches:

(Grenadier,Partha) +Monster*

The parenthesis mean "look for the word "Grenadier" OR "Partha".
The + means "it MUST contain the word "Monster"
The * is a wildcard search, so it will find anything starting with "Monster".  I usually throw those in to cover plural's, like "Monsters"

This finds me all Monster minis made by either Grenadier or Partha.  

Jeebus.  When did they add wildcards?  That'll save me some typing.  I'm still waiting for a shorthand version of "no f*cking plastic minis".  

aia wrote:just an example: which kind of search do you perform in order to look for an early print of AD&D PHB?

I don't look for that item, but I do look for miniatures and pirate-related RPGs:

Miniatures:  (custom.cast, dungeon.dwellers, fantasy.lord, fantasy.lords, grenadier, ral.partha)  (lead, metal, pewter, mini, minis, miniature, miniatures, figure, figures)  -axis  -battletech  -german  -playstation  -soviet  -star.wars

Pirates: (pirate, priate, pirates, priates, swashbuckler, swashbucklers, swashbuckling) -angelfire -booster -ccg -china.sea -china.seas -crimson.coast -dragon.queen -merp -of.davy.jones -of.the.revolution -of.the.spanish.main -pirates.revolution -star.trek -star.wars -traveller -warhammer

I didn't know that wildcards could be used for searches; wildcards would make searching simpler (fewer keywords to type for misspellings and plurals) or more specific (more wildcard keywords fitting in the same character limit).

If I find an item that someone else is bidding on, then I look at all of the other items that my competition is bidding on.  I often find that the other bidder has similar tastes.

I tried Auctionsieve but I can't get it to work on my iMac with OS 10.3.9. Apparently there's all sorts of problems with compatibility with Quicktime Updates. I tried a few things but it started to be a real timesuck & I gave up.

http://www.auctionsieve.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=173

DungeonDelver wrote:-dragonlance to -shitpile...er, -dragonla*

     

Thanks for the laugh.