The online auction site eBay can be a great tool for locating and obtaining genealogical items. For instance, there are regularly family bibles for sale. Imagine a family bible belonging to one of your relatives being sold without you knowing of its availability! Don’t let that happen to you. Watch this video, Finding Genealogy Items on eBay, in which I take you step-by-step through these common genealogy item searches on eBay:
- Family Names
- Place Names (including city directories)
- Companies
- Book Titles
Finally, here is a tip I didn’t mention in the video: Only use the word “and” in a search if the search phrase actually includes it (the same goes for the word “or”). eBay’s search isn’t as feature rich as most of the online search tools we are accustomed to as genealogists. It doesn’t have the ability to do and/or queries.
In the next screencast in this series I’ll show you how to automate these searches so you don’t have to run them yourself. If you like this video topic, you’ll be interested to know that the bonus screencast available exclusively in the MacGenealogist Archives, demonstrates a little known way to win eBay auctions at lower prices.
Ben,
Even thought I use eBay frequently, this screencast was really helpful! I'm looking forward to more eBay search idea screencasts. Thanks for putting this together!
You're welcome! Thanks for the feedback. It's helpful in planning what to cover in future articles and videos.
—-Ben
I've started running into space restrictions so I had to change the way videos are served to avoid moving to a web host that costs ten to twenty times as much money per month.
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Ben, I’m really loving your website–so many practical suggestions. Just ran across this video–I used to sell on eBay and it never occurred to me to save searches for genealogy materials. Thanks for the tip.