eBay saved searches

I’m obsessed with dental microscopes. There. I said it. I’m still a beginner user even though I’ve had one for more than 2 years. I’ve been obsessed with the concept for probably 8 years or more. I do better dentistry because of magnification and the microscope is really the pinnacle. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

What I really want to talk about is a cool way to use eBay. I’ve been trying to find my “sweet spot” for my microscope’s objective lens (the distance from the bottom of the scope lens to the patient) and I didn’t want to pay thousands of dollars to figure it out. Global Surgical microscopes use an objective lens that’s pretty common amongst medical operating microscope manufacturers. And eBay has a ton of them. But let’s say you’ve got better things to do than search eBay every day for microscope objective lenses. What do you do? You make a “saved search.”

This feature may have been there forever, but I never noticed it. I think it’s particularly cool for dentists, though. Every dentist has that shelf in the strorage closet where the amazing and practice changing technologies they’ve purchased that didn’t work out sit. You can sell this stuff on eBay to dentists that could use it. And if there’s stuff you’re interested in, you can create a saved search so eBay will let you know when someone has something on their shelf that you might be interested in!

How does it work? After you enter a search for an item on eBay a button will appear on the right side of the search box that says “Save” and with a little star next to it. When you click on this button it defaults to “email me daily when new items match my search.” This means, it will send you an email when something that fits the search is listed on eBay. You can opt out of the email option, but you’ll still need to check eBay regularly.

So, give it a try! You might be helping some other poor dentist clear their “shelf of shame” of stuff that’s useful to you!