This is the first, short introduction to searching for lenses on eBay. I can (and will) go into a lot more detail later, but it is important to start with the basics.
First, and foremost, I’ve found that manipulating search text is the best way to search. Yes, there are a lot of other features for searching on eBay, such as searching categories and things like that, but there are many sellers that do not use categories correctly and often you’ll miss some listings that way. The best way to get focused results is with a focused search string. And the best way to get a focused search string is to figure out eBay’s logic, which isn’t that simple!
Of course, the best way to learn how to use search strings is to experiment. So, go ahead and open up a window (or tab) to eBay. Or, feel free to use the Search Page I created at UCDB to provide a fast way to experiment with searches (and to make it easier for me to show you the searches).
To give an example, let’s suppose we are looking for the original Canon EF 50mm f/1.8. Specifically, that is version I, the one with the metal mount that goes for a higher price. Typically, you should start off with a minimal search, since anything you list in the search space MUST be matched in the search results. This means, if you specify a word that isn’t included in the listing you want, you’ll never see that listing!. For the 50mm 1.8 the name is already pretty minimal, but you can quickly get into trouble searching for the Tamron AF18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di-II LD Asph. (IF) using the full text!
Let me say that point again, because it is important:
AND: The default for an eBay search is to match all the keywords you specify, an AND operation. Order doesn’t usually matter though.
So, let’s start with just searching for ‘canon 50mm’. It will return a ton of results (799 in my case), but that is ok — we didn’t specify the aperture. And again, we’d rather see too many results than miss a good deal, so start small. Also, note that ‘lens’ was omitted from the search. Some people won’t put it in the title, so we’ll miss those listings. Many people misspell ‘lens’ as ‘lense’, but believe it or not eBay catches that and converts it in the search! (try it — both return the exact same results!)
The next step is to adjust the search to add the aperture, or search with ‘canon 50mm f/1.8′. This knocks the results down to a more manageable 193 items, but we’re actually missing some. I’ll go into more details on how eBay parses the search string in a future post, but the main thing is that eBay treats ‘f/1.8′ as essentially two keywords: ‘f’ and ‘1.8′, and only match items with both in the name. But, it will not catch people who list the aperture as ‘1:1.8′, ‘f1.8′, etc. Most sellers are savvy enough to include multiple keywords, but some are not. That’s actually really good for us though, because if we spot listings no one else does, then we can sometimes save some money. But how can we do an OR operation? After all, we want to find the listings that use ‘f/1.8′ or ‘f1.8′ or ‘1.8′?
eBay’s construction for an OR operation is parenthesis. Anything included between parenthesis and separated with commas is treated as an OR operation — at least one of those search keys must be included for a listing to be returned. In this case, we can increase the number of hits (in a high quality way — we’ll never see the 50 f/1.4 or 50 f/1.0) by adding an OR on the aperture and focus specifiers to get ‘canon (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8)’, resulting in 363 hits. Yes, adding in coverage of other formats for aperture (and focus — did you catch what we did and why?) can almost double the number of auctions found. In fact, we might get listings that many other buyers do not see, which can actually save us money!
OR: Specify an OR operation by using a comma separated list of keywords inside parentheses.
But, you’ll notice that many of the hits are not relevant for us. They’ll be on hoods for the 50mm f/1.8, or the FD version of the lens. Some of that we can alleviate by being more specific, i.e. adding the mount, EF, as in ‘canon EF (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8)’ (167 listings) or better yet ‘canon (EF, EOS) (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8)’ (171 listings). But the real problem is that we’re matching many titles we do not want to match, such as FD lenses or lens hoods. Well, eBay has an option to exclude items with certain keywords too: a simple hyphen, or minus sign.
EXCLUDE: Any keyword preceeded by a minus sign (‘-’) will cause listings with that keyword to not be returned.
For example, to get rid of the pesky hood listings, use ‘canon (EF, EOS) (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8) -hood’ (100 listings). Of course, that still has a bunch of stuff, including a lot of version II lenses, so my final search term is ‘canon (EF, EOS) (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8) -fd -ii -mkii -hood’. See if you can identify why I excluded each item. The end result is a search that returns 31 very focused listings. Sure, some of them may be mislabeled, but at least the number is manageable and we know that we haven’t missed and relevant listings.
Again, the power of a well-tuned search cannot be understated. It can help you see the listings you want to see and avoid dealing with the listings you don’t need to see. And, the best way to learn is… Experiment!
And remember — the Lens Database currently has over 200 Canon EOS lenses, each with tuned searches. Feel free to steal our search strings as a starting point!