[alldaveallen]

Would anyone here on this fine forum have l337 eBay search skills? This is a totally selfish request, by the way. Basically, every week or so, I go on eBay and search under "mac game." And usually I get about 1200 hits or so, but it seriously seems like half of them are some Carmen Sandiego iteration or "Zoombinis." I'd love it if someone could help me set up a Boolean search that filters out all the kids' games and general dross.

You're probably saying right now "Why don't you just search for the specific game you're looking for, dumbass?" Which is a totally reasonable question. But, really, I'm not searching for a specific game. I just like to know what I'm missing, and sometimes I stumble across a title I've never heard of, because I kind of stopped gaming for a few years so there are some big gaps in my game lore. Sometimes it's something that can only be played on older Macs, but that's fine, because I've got an older laptop I can use.

Anyway, any insight would be much appreciated.

[Janichsan]

There are this nifty "Narrow your Results" options on the right side... just a few clicks and you are down to roughly 100 hits.

[Matt Diamond]

Good tip from Janichsan. Also, read the online help for advanced search syntax. For example, you can ask it to exclude items that match a certain word:

Mac Game -Sandiego -Zoombini

You can use wildcards for partial matches, but only at the end of words:

Mac* Baldur*

If you aren't sure how someone spelled something (Mac vs Macintosh) you can specify alternatives.

Mac* (Balder, Baldur)
Mac* (Aspyr, Macsoft, Blizzard) -Macplay

On the Advanced Search page you can combine these techniques with each other and with limits on the particular category, limit it to people selling in the same country, who accept Paypal, and so on. When you come up with a good search, save it as a Favorite Search so you can run it again.

I once snagged a book at a low price because I included some common misspellings of the author's last name in my search. When someone spelled it incorrectly in their listing, not as many people saw the auction so there weren't many bids.

[alldaveallen]

Great tips, guys. Thanks to Matt particularly for steering me through the eBay syntax, that's exactly what I'm looking for... If I didn't already own the BG games I'd buy 'em from you out of sheer gratitude.

I have a feeling I'll end up with a search for "Mac Game -(something) -(something else)" and the chain of Minuses will keep growing... That is, until my daughter is old enough to start playing, and then I'll rue the day I didn't snap up a 99-cent copy of "Zoombinis".

[Matt Diamond]

Glad to help.

[alldaveallen]

plzsayomg, on March 7th 2008, 09:41 AM, said:

Do all of you guys have Ebay accounts??

Wow, there's just no good reason to ask or answer that question.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

alldaveallen, on March 7th 2008, 01:44 PM, said:

Wow, there's just no good reason to ask or answer that question.

Not unless you're feigning conversation in the hope that someone might click on the link in your signature.

[the Battle Cat]

Thanks to QuantaCat, this was the last thing the spammer saw before waking up at a dining table with 300 hungry Spartans, too bad the only thing on the menu was spam, but that's why they call it hell.

[QuantaCat]

Glad it helped. Speaking of 300, I am looking forward to that parody with Kevin Sorbo.