Ebay tips
 

Hey guys, love the forum. A great resource for me. I notice a lot of you use ebay for frames, parts, and accessories. Is there a way to filter vintage style bikes? I am a newb at using ebay. Any tips on finding things better?

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You are awesome, thank you!

Note, there is a very helpful left search bar. If it disappears, click on the arrow to get it back.

There is a sub category on E-Bay: "Vintage Cycling".
Vintage Cycling | eBay

I don't like it since there is a lot of overlap between new and vintage bikes, parts, and frames.

For frames, for example, there are sub-categories for frames.
Bicycle Frames | eBay
Vintage Bicycle Frames | eBay

Once in the sub-category, you can specify features like frame materials or sizes.

I tend to do a lot of searching. The trick is to pick out your favorite search terms.

Basic E-Bay LOGIC:

• For "AND", simply list things items on a line with spaces, or use parentheses.
  
  steel Raleigh
  (steel Raleigh)
• For "OR", add commas between search terms, generally in a parenthesis.
  
  (Peugeot,Raleigh,Mercier)
• For "NOT", put a space followed by a minus.
  
  campagnolo record -carbon -ergo -ergopower
• You can combine features using a combination of parenthesis and spaces and commas.
  This should get you Shimano or Suntour Road Shifters that are not carbon, and not brake levers or "brifters"
  (shimano,suntour) road shifter -carbon -brifter -brake

It should be obvious there is a certain amount of voodoo in E-Bay searching. Make your search too inclusive, and you're wading through a lot of unnecessary trash.
Make it too restrictive, and you miss the super deals.

I like the "similar items" which often pick out items that my searches would otherwise have missed, or I would have overlooked.

I frequently sort search results by price.

If you're picking out something like a bike light and getting a lot of clutter, you can also restrict to either "Auctions" or "Buy-It-Now", depending on whether it is something that you might expect lots of fixed price items.

Knowing How To Find Vintage Bicycles is one thing and it can cause problems, unless you understand Vintage Bicycle Quality and How To Buy A Vintage Bicycle On-line.

I once got a great deal on a Cannondale touring bike because the poster really mangled the spelling (I think he called it a Canondell). I'm fairly certain that's why it sold so cheap ($250 some 15 years ago).

I don't filter much....I simply search key words.

The problem is that a lot of sellers don't use proper descriptors so it forces buyers or searchers to use broad search terms.

I haven't taken advantage of this in a while, but if you're looking for something potentially pricey or in demand and you want to avoid bidding wars with some excitable idiot somewhere out in the world, try searching for common misspellings of words...you'll find stuff that you can get for relatively little, simply because nobody else is seeing the auction because a brand name is misspelled. For example, I was looking for a 17T Sturmey Archer cog recently, which seems to be kind of hard to find, compared to the other sizes...I found relatively inexpensive cogs from the Netherlands (not an auction, rather Buy It Now) listed under "Stermey Archer".

What he said, I've found Raileighs, Ralieghs, road bikes under mountain bikes and the most recent rescue wasn't even listed in the general bike category.

I rarely search vintage cycling because it's tons of stuff that doesn't interest me (think 1990 Huffy kickstand, apologies to Huffy aficionados). I typically search under cycling for brands, i.e "Merckx" or a misspelling of brand. If it gets thousands of returns, then I filter out new stuff. I sometimes look through vintage bikes or frames but filter racing and touring bikes.