eBay Tips - How to Power Search

Hi there, and thanks for checking out my auction, err um I mean, my web page. I was so used to doing auctions at work I guess. :) Anyways I wanted to share some tips and secrets for buying and selling stuff on eBay. I've been able to find good deals and hold out for even better deals, and I've sold stuff at strategic prices that yielded me some pretty good results. Not all of us have the time and patience to sell stuff, so I'm going to talk about the buying angle first, the stuff we're used to.

First off, I want to say that it seems to me that eBay is mostly about impulse purchases. Maybe that's why you'll look up and item and see a list of items at a low price, but you'll find a few where the prices hit the stratosphere. I guess the sellers think that the way the bidder types in the description will make the seller's item come up by itself, and the buyer might use the buy it now (BIN) to get it. Most of us are smarter than that though. We look through the whole list of items and go from there. However there are little differences in the way in which you type in the items you're looking for that will narrow down your results more accurately. Please note that the examples used in this will be placed on a separate line and in this color.

Ok, so where do we start? I think the original example that I learned on from eBay was about baseball cards. Quotes are the second most important thing when it comes down to accurate and detailed searches. I'd have to say that spelling is the first, but there are ways to exploit that as well which I'll go into later. When you're on eBay and you search for baseball cards, chances are you're going to find more than just baseball cards. You'll find greeting cards with baseball themes in it, among other things. Now to specifically look for baseball cards, the kind like I used to have in a shoe box until my mom threw them away, you want to put quotes around it like so:

Now that we got that settled, you can hit the search button and see a complete list of people selling baseball cards. But what if you were looking for one specific card like a rookie card? In that case you would type the following in the eBay search field:

Ok, that's better now that it's singular and not plural, but wait, maybe you know that it was made by one particular company but not the other. In that case you could change it to the following:

Hmm, maybe it was Topps, but maybe it was Fleer too. Only one way to find out and that's by using parenthesis:

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. This would both broaden and narrow the search results, but you have a more accurate listing in that you're trying to find. Putting words or sentences in parenthesis separated by commas help narrow the search down between multiple items, and this is great for sellers who misspell words or use the wrong spelling of a word. Therein lies the ability to exploit and benefit from a seller's carelessness, because now when everyone is searching for a compact disc of their favorite band, they'll simply type this as part of the search field:

Things to keep in mind: 1. By misspelling the word, you might stumble upon a seller who also misspelled the item description, and that will most likely leave out any bidders who bothered to misspell the word too, so there's less chance of being outbid on the item. 2. In this case "disc" is more commonly used for a compact disc but "disk" is used as in a floppy disk. This example is more of a variation and not a misspelling. However, a lot of other people may use the improper spelling of it as well, so you're not totally without any bidding competition on the item. The eBay structure is not dumb, but it's not idiot-proof either. Please note though: Once a bid has been placed on an item, the seller cannot edit his or her auction even to correct the spelling on an item. They can end the auction early if the item has more than 48 hours of time remaining on it. If they do that they can re list the item from scratch, bid-free with the correct spelling. So please be aware that even though there's a way to take advantage of a seller's carelessness, even the seller has a backdoor to correct mistakes.

Please note that the order in which the brand name and item appears does not make any difference. Also, capitalization of certain words and letters is not that important for most items, but it can be used if you're looking for something like the NeXT computer.

Let me show you another example, this one referencing Star Wars figures. There are several variations on figures, packaging, product lines and so fourth, and there are ways to narrow this down as well. Let me look for an Obi Wan Kenobi figure from the Power of the Jedi line. From that simple toy there are a lot of variables that can make searching difficult. For one, some eBay sellers that have been doing this a lot and usually deal with veteran eBay shoppers tend to abbreviate the words "Star Wars" to just SW. They tend to do this for Hot Wheels cars too if you're interested in looking. So now one variable is to spell out Star Wars and abbreviate it. Another variable is the name of Obi Wan Kenobi. I spell it out, but some may put Ben Kenobi either by default (which is not on the front of the action figure blister card itself), or some may put ObiWan Kenobi (no space between "Obi" and "Wan"). So there's another variable with three possibilities. Lastly the spelling out of "Power of the Jedi" is another variable. Like the example of spelling in "Star Wars" it can also be abbreviated to simply POTJ. So with all of these figures you would type in the search field:

("Star wars",SW)("Obi Wan Kenobi","Obiwan kenobi","Ben kenobi")("POTJ,"Power of the Jedi")

Again, capitalization shouldn't matter in this case, but having the parenthesis there is important. There are sellers out there who advertise multi-packs of figures, so you may type in the above example and see the Obi Wan figure along with one or two other figures. You may get a result that's too long (or you just may not feel like browsing thru every subject to make sure you're bidding on the right item), so you can narrow it down even further. Along with the above example you can tag on to the end of it something like:

or if you want to find the item still on the blister pack but it doesn't have to be in perfect condition, you can also use the minus sign to filter out what you don't want like this complete example:

("Star wars",SW)("Obi Wan Kenobi","Obiwan kenobi","Ben kenobi")("POTJ,"Power of the Jedi") -loose

Now THAT is a well-defined search. You're narrowing down that you want a Star Wars figure from the Power of the Jedi Line, that it's a figure of Obi Wan Kenobi, and that it has to be in the blister pack. Sadly there's no guarantee on this result. No, I'm not implying that the seller may be a liar, but since we're all human, humans make mistakes. The seller may forget to omit the word "Loose" on the item heading, or leaving it out may simply be a strategy so that the bidder thinks the item is still mint on card (MOC) but after opening up the auction page the bidder can further see the item would either be loose or still on the card, and not necessarily in mint condition. This is because we put the "-loose" in the equation and not "MOC" or "Mint on Card" or "mint".

Here's a search that I use frequently. I like to search for Macintosh gear, and sometimes I look for a lot of it. By a "lot" I don't mean "a whole bunch of it" but rather a "small quantity of two or more". Yes, some sellers call two items a lot. Can you decipher this one?

(apple,mac,powermac) G4 (parts,lot,broke,junk) -(powerbook,"power book","notebook","note book",imac,emac,ibook,tibook)

"OK, I don't want to put a bid on anything unless it has G4 in the name. It's gotta be branded as a Mac, Power mac, or Apple item. When these items are found, I don't want anything relating to a powerbook, notebook, power book, note book, imac, emac, ibook or tibook. Once those are filtered out, I want to only see the rest that are belonging to a lot, are junk, are broke, or are being sold for parts."

Again, order does not matter except for the items in quotes, but who puts down "book note" or "book power" when it comes to computer parts? Now let's go to a scientific breakdown for a more detailed explanation:

(apple,mac,Power mac) = Here I'm just searching for items that are categorized in the Apple family. I could go into more detail and add "power mac", but most people put the words together as Apple does.

G4 = Here's I'm looking for items in the G4 family. It could be a desktop or laptop with a G4 chip, but I narrow down what I'm looking for later on. Now if I had put in G4 inside the parenthesis along with the (apple,mac,Power mac), then I would have gotten more results as some PC manufacturers have a G4 somewhere in the name of their product, but the said product is not compatible with Apple products or may not even be a computer product at all.

(parts,lot,broke,junk) = Just variations on different items I'm searching for. Alternatively I could put in the word "working", but I want to still leave a broader selection. I could also try the original search, then try it again with the word "working" in place of the (parts,lot,broke,junk), but I find it more efficient to do it in just one search the first time.

-(powerbook,"power book","notebook","note book",imac,emac,ibook,tibook) = This is what I don't want as noted by the minus sign at the beginning. I could remove the parenthesis but that would mean that I would have to type a minus sign before every item separated by a comma. It's easier and faster to add the parenthesis and group them together.

Still not gettin' it? Let's do it backwards and assume you're looking for a fashionable men's dress hat made by one of three companies. Here's a way you might type it in the eBay search field:

("London Fog","Brand X","Hats by Harry") hat -(women,child,girl,turban,baseball,"ten gallon",banana)

There are benefits to broadening your search as well. If you do search similar to the above examples, you may be filtering out too much which won't leave you any results. What you can do is leave out some variables, and then use the eBay sidebar to narrow it down by subject, then go down the list of items and pick and choose which items interest you. You might type in "Dodge Charger", and it will result in items in real automobiles, Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, car models, automobile memorabilia, classic car parts and more. From there you can choose what subject you want and go from there. Starting wide has its advantages in that you might discover alternative spellings for an item. F'rinstance I used to search for Star Wars figures that came out in 1995 or so, but I was under the impression that they were on an orange card as shown by the orange lightsaber on the card. Doing a broad search without listing the color of the card I also found items listed under "red card". It was the same identical card, but different sellers called it different names. Who was I to argue? So I started looking under both color types.

It also applied when I was looking for a replacement motherboard. It's one of those po-TAY-toe po-TAH-to deals. I call it motherboard but other people think differently. After all, they are Apple products (cue drum roll and cymbal crash). Anyways, to make sure that I'm looking for the motherboard I want at the cheapest price I have to completely list alternative names and spellings for the product, so my search was something like this:

I could narrow it down even further by codename, but I wanted to see what current items are up for bids, so I have a bigger choice. So as you can see by doing a vague search you allow more possibilities. You get more results of course, but these results might open more windows as to what's out there aside from the item that you're looking for. With that done, the only thing left to do is bidding and winning the items. Feedback speaks for itself, but do not hesitate to ask the seller questions regarding the product and/or their feedback. If they have a recent streak of negative feedback it could be worse news. Perhaps their eBay account has been hijacked, but it still doesn't hurt to ask.

I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial. Now you should be able to do more detailed searches on eBay. If you're interested in selling as well, please check out the next page.

How to Power Search on eBay.