The question is why search for asbestos on eBay. The answer is for product liability cases, professional interests, research into the over 3,000 asbestos usages or the desire to collect something that has proven to be a unique physical paradox.

As a buyer I use two approaches. The first approach is what I consider to be the shotgun approach and that is to go to the Advanced Search page and in the keyword section type in the word asbestos check the search title and description box and then click Search. The search should be performed in All Categories but that is already selected for you. 1,000 to 2,000 items should return with the items closing soon or ending soonest listed first.

If you use this approach on a daily or every-other-day search then the easiest thing to is just search the first page or two of ending soonest to make sure that you did not miss an item. Some of those 3-day or 5-day listings can sneak past you. After you are comfortable with the items that are closing soon then I would change the search to list the newly listed and scan the items and stop when you reach an item that you have seen from your previous days search.  

The problem with the shotgun effect is that you have hundreds of listings that do not pertain to the purpose of your search, historical asbestos products or product literarture. Items such as brake pads (as either asbestos or non-asbestos containing and inlcuding those on radio controlled cars) and water filters (ones that filter out asbestos). So you may want to customize your search options by typing in the exclude these words section 'pad' and/or 'filter'. The down side to this is that any historical product information that has the word pad, such as ironing pad or table pad, may be missed or asbestos disc filters used in the laboratory.

I still use the shotgun approach. What I have done different is to use the favorites search for other key items and get the daily notifications for these items. I do not use 'asbestos' because then I would receive hundreds of new listings. The terms I use are: Johns-Manville, chrysotile or amiante (more on that one later). Then I get several daily updates of one to ten items that were just listed.

Those are the two approaches to hunt for asbestos products and product literature using the word asbestos and related topics. You can expand on that by searching with words that are related to asbestos. I mentioned Johns Manville, you may also search numerous other manufacturers such as Flintkote or Keasbey & Mattison. You may also search by product such as 85% magnesia or galbestos. Maybe there is an asbestos mineral type you are specifically looking for so search by the mineral class, serpentine or amphibole, or the specific mineral such as amosite, crocidolite, actinolite, anthophyllite, tremolite and of course chrysotile. Lastly, this is an international search so you should try searches for asbestos by another language such as; amiante, amiantos, asbest or azbest (even amianthus) or by local name such as; mountain flax, mountain leather, or cotton stone. You may try spelling variations such as asbestus. 

Remember the seller may not know that the term asbestos is a key search word and therefore they may not have it anywhere in the listing. Search by other related terms such as transite, fiber-cement, plaster, pipe insulation, etc. 

Another option I use on really slow days at the office that may help snag an item or two with little competitive bidding is type in the search box the word 'asbe' followed by an asterisk (*), ex. asbe*, then either type '-asbestos' or use the exclude word option. This catches all the typos such as asbetos, asbestor, asbestoes, etc. Have fun and move the asterisk around you may catch asbestonos or if nothing else it is good for a cheap chuckle.

A*BESTOS =

A less frequent means of searching but one as a seller of asbestos historical products and literature I hope you use is to add a seller to your favorites. My goal as a seller is to keep my listings interesting and varied enough to keep eBayers coming back to look and hopefully this makes your search all that much easier.

Finally, if eBaying was a video game I would call this the cheat section. The last resort to searching and perhaps the lazy way is to keep track of the eBayer bidders that bid on similar asbestos-related things that you do and then when at the Advanced Search use the search by bidder to see what they are bidding on. It could be something that you overlooked or it maybe just something they are getting their daughters for Christmas.