The casino grouping on eBay has gotten so big that I have decided I can't reasonably look at all the listings any more. Too many common, recent chips, and too many items of the type I don't collect. Also, eBay has added some features to the search facility that make things easier now.

What I do is BROWSE the Casino category and search within that category for key words and exclude key words that describe areas of no interest to me.

The search string I use is:

-machine -ss -strike (chip,token,casino,poker,vegas,reno,lv)

which looks for chip or token, or casino, or poker, or vegas, or reno, or lv,
and excludes all the slot machines and silver strikes that I don't want to see. The search currently returns about 5000 auctions, 100 per page, but they are in reverse date sort so you can look at only a day's worth of auctions if you check in every day.

Here is the URL for the search string that results:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&query=%2Dmachine+%2Dss+%2Dstrike+%28chip%2Ctoken%2Ccasino%2Cpoker%2Cvegas%2Creno%2Clv%29+&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&ebaytag1=ebayreg&ebaytag1code=0&ht=1&maxRecordsPerPage=100&category1=898&st=2

It's also in the link below so you can try it out. Of course, you can customize it by putting in different key words to look for or ignore.

One other recent enhancement at eBay is to include the small pictures (Gallery photos, they call them) in the listings of lots if you ask for it. The sample below has that feature enabled. If you haven't seen it, try the link. Only a few of the sellers have chosen to pay the 25c to show their picture, but I believe there will be more as time goes on. This may also give you an incentive to put the Gallary photos in your lots to help out other searchers.

If you have found an interesting search string variation, or found an eBay facility you'd like to share, why not post it here?

DonL