Featured Tools You Should Be Using

That was done when it became a Featured thread.

 

I have updated this thread, see here if you haven't checked since yesterday:

Part 6: Creating and Maintaining a Want-List (Excel) FILTERING

 

Part 7: Creating and Maintaining a Want-List (Excel) CONDITIONAL FORMATTING

coming soon

 

eBay has made this a little harder, because they took away wildcards (*) and limited the length of the search strings, and removed categories that naturally separated the silver vs. clad. But you still can accomplish this in a few ways.

The first is to recognize that silver is valuable, and with a series that spans both silver and clad types, most listings will explicitly list "silver" to differentiate them.

I'll assume you only want NGC / PCGS coins, but obviously you could remove that stipulation from the search. I will assume you only want circulation strikes, but likewise customize to you specific needs.

So, for example, you could make your search really simple by just saying you want "silver" within the Washington (1932-98) category:

(ngc,pcgs) silver -(clad,proof,pr,pf) -(details,cleaned,clean,problem,genuine)

click here for live search

Or, if you really want to exclude the clad and pickup coins not listed explicitly in the title as "silver", you could do this for raw silver coins to get both proof, business strike, TPG and Raw:

-(1965,1966,1967,1968,1969,1970,1971,1972,1973,1974,1975,1976,1977,1978,1979,1980,1981,1982,1983,1984,1985,1986,1987,1988,1989,1990,1991,1992,1993,1994,1995,1996,1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015)

click here for live search

Or, the inverse, by specifying what you want to INCLUDE for years, while excluding other things such a proofs and labeled problem coins:

(ngc,pcgs) (1932,1933,1934,1935,1936,1937,1938,1939,1940,1941,1942,1943,1944,945,1946,1947,1948,1949,1950) -(clad,proof,pr,pf) -(details,cleaned,clean,problem,genuine)

click here for live search

Keep in mind, you're only going to get a so many characters, so just break the search in two, and follow them both:

(ngc,pcgs) (1951,1952,1953,1954,1955,1956,1957,1958,1959,1960,1961,1962,1963,1964) -(clad,proof,pr,pf) -(details,cleaned,clean,problem,genuine)

click here for live search

Once you learn the pattern, the searches are easy IMHO.

Now, lets say you want certain year, in certain grades, and only PCGS coins (hey, why not go wild?)

pcgs silver ms (66,67,68) -(proof,pr,pf,clad)

click here for live search

To find the coins you want, YOU need to accommodate sellers poor listing titles, so your best bet is a layered approach. Don't depend on any one search, use many searches all looking for same coins in different ways.

Once you get good at this, I highly recommend using AuctionSieve, you just wont ever want to go back to searching eBay the old way (as outlined above). You could layer 50 searches and have them automatically de-duped. So, an automated layered approach that is easy to customize on the fly.

 

@treylxapi47 I hope I answered your question, if not, let me know and I will take a second whack at it.

 

In the "old days", you could filter out by decade, which was faster, but this no longer works.

Something like this:

-(197*,198*,199*,200*,201*,1965,1966,1967,1968,1969)

 

As I said in the post about ebay searches, once you meet the max size for the search eBay has one of two behaviors (1) They warn you (2) They simply return NO results.

When you run into this, you need to either break your search into smaller parts or (better yet), stop using eBay search and start using AuctionSieve. I would chose the latter in 100 out of 100 times.

 

Also, if your list of WANT years is a shorter set than your EXCLUDE years, you should always do it that way.

With your search, I get to about year 2000 and then eBay dumps the search:

CLICK HERE

 

At your age ? You're kiddin, right ?

 

LOL !