Tips for Finding and Buying Sports Memorabilia On eBay

By John Buonaguidi & George Keniston

To search for a particular type of sports memorabilia on eBay, you can use the categories to narrow your search. From the Home page you can select the Sports Memorabilia category and then choose a subcategory. Or, even better, you can search for key words to find specific items that interest you. For example, you can type in the word "Bradman" to take a look at what Don Bradman memorabilia is for sale. Or you can get more specific and enter "Bradman photographs" for example, if you are just looking for his photograph. You can easily try different creative approaches when trying to find a very specific item. Suppose you wanted a1948 Invincibles signed team photograph. You could try "Invincibles" or "1948", and so on. Once you’ve spent a little time on eBay, it will become easier and easier.

When you’ve found an item you want to bid on, read the description of the item carefully. Check the feedback of the seller to see what other people’s experiences with that person have been. If you have further questions, you may email the person who has listed the item, and they should respond to your inquiry. To decide how much you want to bid, you can also do a search of completed eBay auctions for similar items to see what people have paid in the past.

Bidding on eBay is simple. You simply need to determine what the absolute highest price you would be willing to pay for a given item is, and then enter that bid amount. You may be lucky and get the piece for a lot less than your maximum bid. eBay will automatically bid up to your highest amount BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE OUTBID. This means you do not need to keep checking the other bids, which is a great time saver!

When the auction is completed, eBay will contact both the seller and the high bidder to notify them of the winning situation. The seller then contacts the winning bidder with information as to where to send payment, transport costs, and so on.

One final word of advice; be patient when using eBay. It’s a great system and you can buy and sell in a very easy manner, but like anything that’s new, it takes time to get acquainted with all the features the system provides.

The preceding material was written by John Buonaguidi and George Keniston. These are the opinions of the author, not the opinions of eBay, and therefore eBay does not validate the accuracy of or endorse these opinions.