Advanced eBay searches...

[tmac1956]

All:

I'll bet most of you already know about advanced web search techniques, but here's the syntax for ebay (using the NOT operator) that will filter out most of the junk comming from China, etc. Now don't get me wrong, I bought a lathe motor made in China and I love it! However, when you just want to look for the vintage tools, it helps to filter out some of the cheap junk that gets returned from a general query. Here's an example that will filter these out. (you can change this however you want) The query below basically shows all watchmaker tools excluding items who's description includes text in the exclusion list.

watchmaker tools -(china, taiwan, hong kong)

Again... I'm not bashing the imports. Sometimes they are very good and cheap. Often (and sadly),they are the only place to get some things.

Thanks!
Tom

[willofiam]

Thanks Tom, I am with you, there are items that I would buy from anywhere because of price BUT when I am looking for something specific like higher quality vintage tools it can be laborious thumbing thru pages and pages of "stuff", your advice gives me ideas when searching for other items for the household. thanks for all you do, William