> On Nov 4, 2020, at 5:37 PM, Dekatron42 <[email protected]> wrote: > > Nowadays I am a little bit wary of searches that excludes words on eBay, this > as I have found stuff I've been looking for where the seller have used the > word "not" in part of their heading which then have excluded what I have been > looking for as the rest of the text matched my list of words to exclude when > the seller meant that the item was "not" the thing I had excluded.
Yes, there is no perfect solution to this problem. In some cases I have two or three searches for the same thing with different exclusions and/or sub-categories for the search. It's also a good idea to look at all of the items in the daily emails and to scroll through the other auctions on the listing you're interested in. I've scored several items that were mis-categorized and/or didn't have the word "nixie" etc. in the title. My most recent discovery was that I had "receive offers from sellers with listings you're watching" turned off. I've bought at least one item since I turned it on because the seller privately offered me a huge discount on an item that didn't have the "make offer" option. The kicker is that I've been on eBay since 1998. Who knows what I missed out on up to less than a year ago!? > Also search is broken unless you change the registered address you use for > for instance where the items should be shipped. maybe you already > knew/thought about this but I sure didn't earlier - nowadays I also just use > Google as it finds auctions that I normally can't see as I am excluded due to > where my account is registered or excluded since I am not native American (or > whatever country the auction is set up ijn). Sometimes you just can't win. There's a free app called Auction Sieve that can help with things like this. It has its own limitations but you might want to take a look at it. What it all boils down to is how much time do you have to spend searching eBay every day? When I was actively buying old Xmas lights years ago I went through pages of new listings every day. There was no point in setting up searches as many sellers were either idiots or deliberately gaming the system by putting stuff made in the '60s or even the '70s in the pre-war sub-category. I'm sure I really POd a number of collectors back then because I routinely paid fifty cents to a dollar over the market price for bubble lights. Royals were going for $4 so I bid $4.50. And now, 15~20 years later, they're going for over $10 apiece. I wasn't the clueless noob they probably assumed I was—I knew exactly what I was doing. I have no regrets. Terry Bowman, KA4HJH "The Mac Doctor" https://www.astarcloseup.com/ “The book said something astonishing, a very big thought. It said that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.”—Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/F82D5FF8-9005-4D61-ACCA-76F478FE7D32%40gmail.com.
