How do you search for eBay auctions?

CIVITAS

So let's say you were a collector of Polish coins looking for a 1990 100,000 Zlotych coin. How do you do a quick search on eBay for it?

I'm curious, because different results come up for each search and I'm wondering how the majority here searches.

theboz11

I believe that ebays search automatically allows for $ and ,

Making it no difference whether they are inserted in the search or title.

Hussulo

I would use 1990 Poland 100* and that would cover 100,000 , 100000 , 100.000 etc.. I know it would probably bring up 100 Zlotych coins but it would be more thorough.

Syracusian

Josh, you might want to add an additional option to your poll (other).

I'd use Poland, or Poland 1990, but I wouldn't add the denomination. If I already had Poland as a favourite search, I'd simply insert 1990 to the box on the left.


I've asked these questions myself at times, and I've seen that I often miss items if I put too much info on ebay's search engine.


PS: Title only.

CIVITAS

Good point, Dimitri. Added.

CIVITAS

<< <i>I believe that ebays search automatically allows for $ and ,

Making it no difference whether they are inserted in the search or title. >>



To some extent, that's true. But if you search for 100000 then items with 100,000 will not show up, and vice-versa. I was kind of surprised by that.

farthing

I would probably just search for Poland as my first attempt. Too much variation from seller to seller to start any finer. If there were waaay too many items selected (>1000) then I would try Poland 1990.

Stork

Too many words in the search lead to too many chances to encounter mis-spellings etc.

For that particular coin I would search twice, once for "Poland 1990" and once for "Polish 1990".

When I'm going through looking for medals I just run alot of individual key words through. In general there are about 10,000 listings for exonumia. I type in: baby, babies, child, dog, greyhound, deco, nouveau, yencesse, bottee, and roty. Each of these gives me at most 100 or so which are easy enough to scan through quickly. I get rid of the 'best match' and go with 'newly listed'.

For what it's worth


(I also stalk some sellers periodically)


Cathy

Hussulo

To some extent, that's true. But if you search for 100000 then items with 100,000 will not show up, and vice-versa. I was kind of surprised by that.

Yes but did you know that if you use * it will search the lists for any thing you have typed in, plus any other letters or numbers after the *.

For instance a search for 100* will bring up:

100
100,000
100000
100,000,000

etc.

or a a search for proof* will bring up:

proof
proofs
prooflike

or a search for Sov* will bring up:

Sovereign
etc..

Daltonista

And if you use parentheses and type multiple search terms inside them, separated by commas, no spaces, all possibilities will turn up, as in: (Poland,Polish)(1987,1990) . The comma serves as an "or" so the search results would include both 1987 and 1990 in this case. There's got to be a way to narrow down the category by fooling with the Coins > Europe > Poland.

I'm sure I didn't invent this, but something that's worked for me for years after I fell into it, is setting up local saves of my searches. After you've got a search drilled down to where you're happy with it, go to your toolbar and click in sequence on File > Send > Shortcut to desktop. On your desktop you can "rename" to shorten the filename and then drag it into a folder of saved searches.

Then, whenever you want to re-try your searches, just open that folder and drag the saved files (URLs, really) by their icons into the open browser window. One at a time, of course.

One that I check out a couple of times a week in UK exonumia, and then again in coins, is
(181*) silver.

Just this moment I got this one, a single result...right on your trail, Josh!
I just tried and saved "Poland 1990" (no quotes) in
"Listed in category: Coins & Paper Money > Coins: World > Europe > Poland."

Maybe you should save that search?

Best to all ~
Tom

JZrarities

Title:

(poland,polish) (zlotych,zloty) 100*

in parenthesis add common misspellings
no spaces between commas, space between parenthesis, star after 100 to get anyhing with the first three letters '100'

CIVITAS

An interesting picture of people's search habits. Maybe we'll get a few more votes.