eBay in their infinite wisdom (and probably to save space and search engine time) only goes back 30 days. Also searches no longer look at the text of the sale, but only the Title of the auction.

If you search for "Elko Casino" as I often do, once an auction has closed, if the Elko word was in the text of the auction, it won't appear in a search anymore.

Since the titles are limited in size, there's often information in the text that helps you find something, in the search when it's a live auction.

Result? You won't find as many closed / completed items to use as a price comparison, as you could in 2003, without alot more digging and work.

Past sales are an indicator of future prices, except if someone keeps track and watches, eventually, all the buyers are gone and you can usually get something for much less, by paying attention.

If someone has a "Bill and Dan's" $1 from Elko and sells one a month for $XX, soon you will see the number of people interested has dropped to $x dollars and finally, at the starting bid, or half the previous sale prices, no one is biding at all.

The seller has 100 chips (totally hypothetical) sells 20 at the premium price and now has 80 sitting on the shelf, because there were only 20 people interested.

Often you will next see someone else with the same chips. Because seller "A" has sold as many as he can at the premium price, and sold the rest off to seller "B".

When the same seller has the same chip, every 40 days, I start to watch until the people buying it have been satisfied, or all the interested bidders figure out that this "scarce" or "rare" chip is really not so unusual.

Rule #5 track items you are interested in and see how often they come up for sale. Take notes...