Recently I was chatting with some members of my genealogical society, and I was surprised that not everyone thought of using eBay to locate items of genealogical value. Not only do I sometimes find books there, but my mom once purchased early 19th century letters written by our Stanwood relatives of yesteryear. This morning, however, I awoke to an email alerting me to a new item added for a saved or “followed” search. This is handy when the item you are looking for isn’t on eBay, but you want to receive notification if someone posts it online for sale or for bidding. Such is the case with this rare book I wanted – The History and Genealogy of Chester, Maine (which I snagged after receiving this email notification this morning!)

I also used saved searches for geographic areas. For example, I’m interested in just about anything pertaining to Ipswich, Massachusetts, where John Day resided. So I do not have to search manually when sellers add items, I have set this as a followed search. To do this, simply click the “Follow this search” link that is show to the right of your search criteria:

So what items have YOU found on eBay lately?