The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

It is really a pity that Ebay doesn't format its cylinder and disc record offerings in such a way that, if you know what you want and perhaps even know the record number , you could enter that and come up with all the listings for that recording.
I have missed elusive records because of a sellers cute way of listing things that, even if you have a saved search, Ebay totally passes you by and you are never aware that there is a listing and someone else, perhaps accidentally, gets your record

Not sure if this would help in your situation, but in my saved searches I list all the words that I think they might use, then exclude all the words I don't want so that I don't get bombarded with too many listings.

For example, if I wanted to create a search for a victor machine, but didn't want all the records adverts and gadgets my search would be something like

Victor Victrola Gramophone Phonograph, -record -ad -needle -part


It still doesn't weed out everything, but I play around with it quite a bit, add and remove words until I fine tune the results the way I like them, then I save it.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that.
Any ideas for records?

billybob62 wrote: I have missed elusive records because of a sellers cute way of listing things that, even if you have a saved search, Ebay totally passes you by and you are never aware that there is a listing and someone else, perhaps accidentally, gets your record

Can you give an example of their cute ways? or are they basically just generic quick postings that should've been described better?

I mean, there are deals to be had for things that are posted in wrong categories, described terribly, etc. I just picked up an Edison Triumph off of the goodwill site that was listed in Computers & Electronics > Vintage Electronics and titled as "Vintage Tubular Record Player", and a search for Edison, or Triumph, or phonograph didn't return the posting.

How about listing a blue amberol as "Edison blue Amberol #1893 Pinafore Airs" instead of comic opera...cylinder ....for a start.

I have missed some good records as well, but I don't think that there are enough record aficionados to make eBay categorize them... It's just random chance for rare titles that no one has spotted and that makes the search more interesting, since you might find a bargain.