Tips for searching coins on eBay One of the best ways to search is by the category search but remember that the seller often put there coins in the wrong place. I did a search of 2009-S NGC in the dollar section and there were 2009-S coins in the IKE section and the SBA section. Another thing is that most sellers don’t use the information block above the item description, so narrowing the search on the side will most likely not retrieve all of the coins you wanted to look at. When I do my searches I click the Coins & Paper Money and then US Coins and I don’t go any farther. You can often find deals where the seller put the coin in the wrong category. Remeber that searches are not case sensitive so it doesn't matter if you use upper or lower case letters. Quotation Marks Let say you search Silver Eagles, the search will return items that have the exact words Silver and Eagles in the title in any order. Now let’s say you search “Silver Eagles” with the quotes, the search will return items that have these two words in the title in this specific order. Asterisk This is my favorite feature. Let say you want to search NGC MS60-MS66, well if you search NGC MS*, the search will return items that have NGC and MS60 61 62....etc. This is a faster way to search instead of searching each individual grade. Parenthesis This is also another great feature. Let say you want to search both NGC and PCGS, well all you have to do is type (PCGS,NGC) no spaces inside the parenthesis and the search will return coins with PCGS or NGC in the title. I also use this when you want to search P & D coins but you don’t want S coins. So you could type 2009 (P,D) NGC and it will bring up both P and D coins but no S coins. Minus Sign Do you ever search for something and get sick of the replicas or a poor mans version. Well let’s say you search 1955 Double Die, if you type the search 1955 Double Die –poor –replica. Make sure when you use the minus sign there is a space and type the word with no space. The search will return coins with 1955 Double Die in the title but it will also remove poor and replica coins from the search. If you also put an asterisk on the end of –poor it will remove everything with poor in the word (i.e. poor, poormans, poorman’s…etc). I would also recommend using the –copy to remove those coins as well. I did a search of 1955 Double Die and got 52 hits, then I did 1955 Double Die –poor* - replica and it came back with 16 hits. I typed just replica into a search and you get 7,414 coins so just using this little trick will remove lots of coins that you don’t have to look through.
Having used these search options for years, I can attest as to how much easier you can focus on just what you want to see. Well said, and well done..:thumb:
These are indeed important tools to smartly navigating through swill online, not just eBay. The minus is the one I personally use the most. These symbols all improve and make more efficient one's searches and time spent online without compromising the quality of information you seek.
No problem guys!! I use the minus sign all of the time. I use the search -replica* -copy* -fake no sense in looking at stuff I don't care about!!
Sorry to bring up the old thread but the "Asterisk" part in OP tips is no longer relevant, as eBay disabled the * wildcard search support. First I checked Google to see what other places say about it and noticed nobody on CT mentioned this, as far as I could see. I`ve made most of my most successful purchases by finding them using asterisk, about 98% of all my searches included asterisk to cover all the spelling mistakes and variations. Ever since this option was disabled, I hardly spend time on eBay (used to be daily) and did not purchase 1 item since then... This user from eBay Boards covers exactly what I think about this: (http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=5200116095&rw=true&anticache=1352752035542) I have no doubt eBay does whats best for eBay, not the buyers or sellers, but for me this is a huge inconvenience and I just can't think of a reason for eBay to do something like this. Its like if Google disabled all their search operators and you could only use 1 word instead of longer phrases when you search.
I agree. ebay does only what's best for eBay and their profit margin. I had a number of saved searches using wildcard that have now been disabled. I, too, am baffled as to why they would eliminate a common and effective search tool
The funniest part was eBay sent me an email telling me that in 3 days, most of the searches I had developed over years would no longer work (because I was using the * in them). When I called to ask what I was supposed to do to replace the *, they tried to tell me the email they had sent me was spam because they had no record of it ever being send. Idiots!
I have no idea on how to set up a search in a specific "category" such as "Half Dollars/Kennedy/1965-1970" I see that it can be done, I just don;t know how to do it as the ONY option I get for category is "COINS & PAPER MONEY" How do you get into the sub categories of COINS & PAPAER MONEY ?
