I love to search eBay and have found many wonderful items. My favorite was found just a couple of months ago -- a 1970's poster of my father when he modeled for a CBS Record promotion. It was an amazing find and I still can't believe that I found it.
In 2000, I was contacted by a thrift store in Albuquerque, New Mexico because an old bible had been anonymously donated, and the names in it matched a query I had posted to a genealogy forum just a few weeks before. The bible was from 1829 and had belonged to my 3rd great-grandfather's brother who died in 1859. It was the only resource for most of the information it contained. Along with the bible were also some tintype photographs some of which I have been able to identify.
I have several boxes of fabulous eBay finds that support my family history work. While I have yet to locate anything that directly references my ancestors, I have found plenty of 19th century postcards with photos of where they lived, photos of local events that I know they witnessed, etc. My most treasured find was a multi-page handwritten letter from 1888 that describes in detail a severe blizzard that many of my ancestors endured. Since these materials are fragile, I'm keeping them in archival quality boxes in a dry location.
TIP: Googling a deceased family members name (full name is a plus) is what might open up a door for you. That is how I found a circa 1910 photo on eBay.
My paternal grandmother died shortly after giving birth to her only child, my father, in 1928. I was able to find her 1919 college yearbook, with her picture in it. I also found a physics textbook written by her cousin, a Jesuit priest at Boston College that helped instruct members of the military that ended up working in Los Alamos during WW2. He would answer their questions, without knowing what they were working on. After the H Bomb was developed, he suffered a crisis of and he left the field of science and switched to the law for the remainder of his time at the college. This textbook was written for undergrad physics, and included wonderful illustrations for each experiment. Found on eBay.
You mention books in passing, but I've bought family history/genealogy books on several sections of my tree. The old ones do have their issues, but they also give you information on people that you have not found yet. Some of the reprints are surprisingly affordable. I've bought books on Howe, Platt, Rice, Holyoke and Peck. All of them cover ancestors to either my tree, or my wife's. And I don't think I've paid more than 25 dollars for any of them.
Just bought my dad's high school yearbook! While I've seen some of the photos on Ancestry, having it to peruse, will be amazing. I've now set up 3 searches. Thanks for this video!
I found a 1911 photo of my second great grand uncle’s grandchildren on eBay today. I “know” the uncle well because we went to the Iowa State Penitentiary in 1909. The grandkids were awesome, but the best would be getting his MUGSHOT in crisp black and white. 😉 A restoration group is working on that as we speak.
At the historical society we are always scanning ebay for items of local interest. We would rather people donate, but there are times we need to purchase somethings. This is also a benefit of a website and blog as people have found us with something to sell by searching for our village name and history. We appear to be in a time period where a generation is passing and their stuff is getting sold off (or given away.) It appears to be estate purchasers who are finding and selling.
Great idea for historical societies. Sadly, archives and libraries are getting to the point where they can't take a lot of stuff unless it is digitized.
What a great idea! I'd never even thought of eBay for family history research. I stopped this video long enough to take a look and there are quite a few things of interest for the county I'm working in right now. It always pays to do price comparisons. I have found some of the books from the eBay search are much cheaper on Amazon and/or Abe Books. eBay will have things that no one else has, so it is definitely worth the search. Thanks! How awesome that Scott found those yearbooks with his dad's signature in them, and the band videos, too! That is very touching and gives me hope. All of our high school yearbooks were stolen years ago when our storage building (yes, the entire building and its contents!) were stolen from my late daddy's property. Maybe our yearbooks will turn up somewhere, too. Thank you again.
I have found loads of postcards from places my family lived. But the closest thing I have found to my family on eBay is a letter to my great grandmother from her cousin when they were kids.
I also discovered my grandfathers yearbooks. His senior year next to the photo it had red something and I had to go look up the definition too. Turns out that if the person attended a different school any time in their high school career, it listed the previous school next to their photo. Nobody in my family had known that my grandfather had Attended a different school in a different state. And nobody had seen his senior picture before. I donated all of the yearbooks that I bought to Ancestry so I could share those with everyone. Before I did, of course, I used the Photomyne app and scanned the important pages. I am now on a mission, the high school that my mom and grandma went to well it’s actually K-12 school. There are no yearbooks online at ancestry for the school. So I have been begging everyone I know that lives in that area it when they’re yard sales or thrift stores to look out for them and I would buy them. I even called the school and I have a cousin that works at the school and nobody knows what happened to the yearbook. So I keep looking on eBay hoping to find them.
Great idea! I have found many items related to my family's business on ebay, including things they manufactured as well as company publications (mass transit vehicle related). When the company went out of business, hundreds of documents (like minutes of meetings!) were tossed in a dumpster. They were saved by transit fans and so made their way into the possession of various individuals who have since died, with these materials given to relevant historical societies, friends, interested parties, or sold on ebay or elsewhere.
This was very interesting as I sell a lot of ephemera on ebay including many items that have been separated from their families. I've also reunited things back to people when they seemed too important to list. It's nice to hear from someone who is looking for their family history on ebay.
I love listening to his podcast as well! It took me a few times of listening to the eBay one to actually go on eBay. And my first time around I didn’t find anything. However, I guess I could say I hit paydirt when I was looking for your books. My grandma was adopted but has memories of her biological father before he went to work. So it took me a while to discover what we’re going to the military he was in and then worked unit he was with etc. When I found out where he was stationed out there, which fort, I found they had yearbooks. And I found one not listed his unit. I wanted to throw up in my mouth a little when I discovered that they wanted to sell it for $300. I wasn’t going to do it originally. I did ask the person to look in the book to make sure that my relative was in there. He assured me that he was. I guess that’s when you say you cannot put a price on certain things. I bought the yearbook and my grandma was able to see a picture of her biological father for the first time and cheese in her 80s. The yearbook is still under copyright I believe because it’s from World War II. That is why some of the records haven’t been published yet.
Books on a family line is a good source too. I found a small two volume set that covered 3 lines. 1 small book that had some verifying information in it for one line.
I've been successful as well. My great-grandfather wrote two books on gymnastics and the body/bones, etc. He was the head coach of the boys gymnastics team at Iowa State back in the 40's. I found both books on Ebay.
This was a great show - thank you! I listen to Scott’s podcast often and love it. I noticed the name Al Sherman on the sheet music - I believe that was the father of the Sherman brothers (Robert and Richard).
Great videos with loads of info. I especially like the Census info to Excel. Anyway I am from England and just been watching this vid with great interest. Another ebay tip that came useful for me reguarding searching was spelling words incorrectly...I live in the county of Yorkshire in England and I went on ebay and I accidently put in the search Yorkshire Geneolgy (I spelt Genealogy incorrectly on purpose just to see what would appear) and I found a cd full of pdf files with copies of 1800s parish records from around the county of Yorkshire and some have helped with to find ancestors. Basically typing in words incorrectly can be a good way of finding items
I didn't find anything family related on eBay but I did in Googlebooks. I came across a mention of my (rather unique) maiden name in a young adult book there. I purchased the book from Amazon (I originally typed Ancestry - you know what I have on the brain!) to discover the character in the book with the surname was a junior high school teacher. I wrote the author on her website and it took her nine months to write me back. Turns out my dad made such an impression on her as her homeroom teacher she decided to name a character after him! Oh, and I also discovered we are DNA cousins through my mom. :)
I did a Google search one day for my grandfather. I found a link for an old letter labeled by my grandfather's name. But, it turned out to be a letter that my dad wrote when he was 9 years old to a ventriloquist company asking for free lessons. My dad has held on to a photo of him holding a ventriloquist dummy at the age of 9, and he told me about how he was fascinated by them and owned a couple. So to find that old letter from his childhood he wrote, with the date on the timestamp confirming he would have been 9 years old, just made my day! I bought it and showed it to him. He was a little weirded out that the company he wrote to saved his letter and it ended up for sale on Ebay. I agree it's a little odd. Lol! But I'm glad it happened.
Thanks for reminding me to get back on eBay and look for things that might match my family. I started doing that a few years back but wasn't successful.
If you don’t want to use your regular email to receive notifications from EBay or any commercial site, you can just create a separate email account on gmail or some other free service that you dedicate to that purpose. Then you can look at it when you have the time or inclination to do so. My friend does this for all sorts of subjects to ensure both his privacy and that he knows where things are coming from so he has a better grip on whether they are bona fide or not.
That is a great tip to add! I almost did not view this video because I had already done the ebay thing. Just shows you can always learn something NEW! Even the host said she had never thought of his idea about saving the searches to get emails on new items. *** I would add that in my case I use it to find the history of towns of my ancestors that I or my descendants may never visit...so I use the information and add a screenshot of something rather than buying it. I then add it to the family genealogy document I created that coalesce with census records, family photos etc.
I have a 2nd Great Grand Uncle who was an early photographer starting from 1870 in Galva, Illinois. I have purchased several of his photographs on EBay. I often wonder if any are relatives. Thrilled to have them.
I’ve purchased thousands of items on EBay. If it is a Buy Now, I always make an offer. I can’t remember a seller not wanting to negotiate especially if it is an item that will appeal to a limited number of people. An example of something like this I purchased was the book made for the 25th reunion of the Class of 1963 from West Point I purchased for my husband. He took my first offer.
My first cousin 3x removed was the owner of the H.S. Denison Co. The sign to look at, and you may remember seeing around: Redman Apples - Wenatchee District, Washington - H.S. Denison & Co. Also, another cousin, was on the U.S.S. Arizona when it went down in the attack or Pearl Harbor.
I found a catalog for the Drew Carrier Company, my great-grandfather's company, and a postcard with a photo of the INSIDE of the Catholic Church for which my grandmother was the organist for 40 years. In one or both instances, the item was taken off auction before I had a chance to get them, and I was able to contact the seller and buy them. My dad and I constantly look for two specific years of my mom's high school yearbook because my dad accidentally threw hers out many years ago.
So as I'm listening to the beginning of this, I look up my great gp's town on ebay. Lo and behold, first item is a postcard of the trainstation in that town in 1910 ADDRESSED TO MY 2G Gf!!!! Unbelieveable. Only they want $75 for it! Too bad, but so fun!
I have hoteliers who were also mineral water makers so have bottles bearing their name, photographers who took studio and wedding images, many in postcard format though early portraits are CDV's and also dozens of indentures all from auction sites. The really frustrating part is indentures and documents where the seller doesn't list names, the real gems are often those where the name is spelled incorrectly, I've found several of those over the years including an indenture from the 1770's. If you find a seller who seems to have a knack for locating items relating to your family or the area they come from it's worth building up a relationship as they often spot things that may be of interest. I've purchased around 90 postcards by my photographer relative from just one seller and as he knows I'm probably the only person who will buy them I get a really decent price on them.
A person from the USA found my family tree, they decided it looked similar to theirs so after changing a few names, adding some new people in and totally trashing my COREECT tree left it a wreck. I came to the conclusion that people in the USA have difficulty realising that a name in the USA may be unusual or rare, it quite often is not in the original country. Stop messing with your Genealogy and do PROPER research
Great video. I’m still trying to get past that brick wall with my GG grandfather’s father from St. Lawrence county Ny. 1830 time frame. Know anyone who does research up in that area ? It’s been far to long I’ve been stuck and ancestry is way to expensive. Thanks art
I'd look at the NY State Library www.nysl.nysed.gov/scandocs/ Also if you're looking for a professional genealogist in the area, go to APGEN www.apgen.org/cpages/home
I love to search eBay and have found many wonderful items. My favorite was found just a couple of months ago -- a 1970's poster of my father when he modeled for a CBS Record promotion. It was an amazing find and I still can't believe that I found it.
In 2000, I was contacted by a thrift store in Albuquerque, New Mexico because an old bible had been anonymously donated, and the names in it matched a query I had posted to a genealogy forum just a few weeks before. The bible was from 1829 and had belonged to my 3rd great-grandfather's brother who died in 1859. It was the only resource for most of the information it contained. Along with the bible were also some tintype photographs some of which I have been able to identify.
You are one lucky person to find that bible.
I have several boxes of fabulous eBay finds that support my family history work. While I have yet to locate anything that directly references my ancestors, I have found plenty of 19th century postcards with photos of where they lived, photos of local events that I know they witnessed, etc. My most treasured find was a multi-page handwritten letter from 1888 that describes in detail a severe blizzard that many of my ancestors endured. Since these materials are fragile, I'm keeping them in archival quality boxes in a dry location.
That's really cool.
Smart, keeping them in archival boxes.
I was able to recently buy a milk bottle from Grand View Dairy in Corona, California which my grandfather owned. My dad was the milkman there
Love it. Great idea getting the milk bottle.
TIP: Googling a deceased family members name (full name is a plus) is what might open up a door for you. That is how I found a circa 1910 photo on eBay.
My paternal grandmother died shortly after giving birth to her only child, my father, in 1928. I was able to find her 1919 college yearbook, with her picture in it. I also found a physics textbook written by her cousin, a Jesuit priest at Boston College that helped instruct members of the military that ended up working in Los Alamos during WW2. He would answer their questions, without knowing what they were working on. After the H Bomb was developed, he suffered a crisis of and he left the field of science and switched to the law for the remainder of his time at the college.
This textbook was written for undergrad physics, and included wonderful illustrations for each experiment. Found on eBay.
Fantastic John.
Wow, just tried this and found a post card from the church my Grandfather was buired from in Pine Grove, Pa. How cool is this.
Yes it is! Very cool.
You mention books in passing, but I've bought family history/genealogy books on several sections of my tree. The old ones do have their issues, but they also give you information on people that you have not found yet. Some of the reprints are surprisingly affordable. I've bought books on Howe, Platt, Rice, Holyoke and Peck. All of them cover ancestors to either my tree, or my wife's. And I don't think I've paid more than 25 dollars for any of them.
Nice!
Just bought my dad's high school yearbook! While I've seen some of the photos on Ancestry, having it to peruse, will be amazing. I've now set up 3 searches. Thanks for this video!
Yay!
I found a 1911 photo of my second great grand uncle’s grandchildren on eBay today. I “know” the uncle well because we went to the Iowa State Penitentiary in 1909. The grandkids were awesome, but the best would be getting his MUGSHOT in crisp black and white. 😉 A restoration group is working on that as we speak.
At the historical society we are always scanning ebay for items of local interest. We would rather people donate, but there are times we need to purchase somethings. This is also a benefit of a website and blog as people have found us with something to sell by searching for our village name and history. We appear to be in a time period where a generation is passing and their stuff is getting sold off (or given away.) It appears to be estate purchasers who are finding and selling.
Great idea for historical societies. Sadly, archives and libraries are getting to the point where they can't take a lot of stuff unless it is digitized.
What a great idea! I'd never even thought of eBay for family history research. I stopped this video long enough to take a look and there are quite a few things of interest for the county I'm working in right now. It always pays to do price comparisons. I have found some of the books from the eBay search are much cheaper on Amazon and/or Abe Books. eBay will have things that no one else has, so it is definitely worth the search. Thanks!
How awesome that Scott found those yearbooks with his dad's signature in them, and the band videos, too! That is very touching and gives me hope. All of our high school yearbooks were stolen years ago when our storage building (yes, the entire building and its contents!) were stolen from my late daddy's property. Maybe our yearbooks will turn up somewhere, too. Thank you again.
Wow what a great video and never thought in my wild imagination that eBay would be a source for family history. Definitely will check it out for sure.
I have found loads of postcards from places my family lived. But the closest thing I have found to my family on eBay is a letter to my great grandmother from her cousin when they were kids.
A gal I use to work with found "tin type" pictures of her great-great-grandparents on eBay.
Wow... now that's a find.
I also discovered my grandfathers yearbooks. His senior year next to the photo it had red something and I had to go look up the definition too. Turns out that if the person attended a different school any time in their high school career, it listed the previous school next to their photo. Nobody in my family had known that my grandfather had Attended a different school in a different state. And nobody had seen his senior picture before. I donated all of the yearbooks that I bought to Ancestry so I could share those with everyone. Before I did, of course, I used the Photomyne app and scanned the important pages. I am now on a mission, the high school that my mom and grandma went to well it’s actually K-12 school. There are no yearbooks online at ancestry for the school. So I have been begging everyone I know that lives in that area it when they’re yard sales or thrift stores to look out for them and I would buy them. I even called the school and I have a cousin that works at the school and nobody knows what happened to the yearbook. So I keep looking on eBay hoping to find them.
Great idea! I have found many items related to my family's business on ebay, including things they manufactured as well as company publications (mass transit vehicle related). When the company went out of business, hundreds of documents (like minutes of meetings!) were tossed in a dumpster. They were saved by transit fans and so made their way into the possession of various individuals who have since died, with these materials given to relevant historical societies, friends, interested parties, or sold on ebay or elsewhere.
This was very interesting as I sell a lot of ephemera on ebay including many items that have been separated from their families. I've also reunited things back to people when they seemed too important to list. It's nice to hear from someone who is looking for their family history on ebay.
This is awesome! I'm going to try and search for my great grandfather on my dad's side that had a pharmacy in the UK!
I love listening to his podcast as well! It took me a few times of listening to the eBay one to actually go on eBay. And my first time around I didn’t find anything. However, I guess I could say I hit paydirt when I was looking for your books. My grandma was adopted but has memories of her biological father before he went to work. So it took me a while to discover what we’re going to the military he was in and then worked unit he was with etc. When I found out where he was stationed out there, which fort, I found they had yearbooks. And I found one not listed his unit. I wanted to throw up in my mouth a little when I discovered that they wanted to sell it for $300. I wasn’t going to do it originally. I did ask the person to look in the book to make sure that my relative was in there. He assured me that he was. I guess that’s when you say you cannot put a price on certain things. I bought the yearbook and my grandma was able to see a picture of her biological father for the first time and cheese in her 80s. The yearbook is still under copyright I believe because it’s from World War II. That is why some of the records haven’t been published yet.
Estate sales, auctions/personal/public, rummage sales. Etc.
Books on a family line is a good source too. I found a small two volume set that covered 3 lines. 1 small book that had some verifying information in it for one line.
Really great source for maps and home town histories.
I've been successful as well. My great-grandfather wrote two books on gymnastics and the body/bones, etc. He was the head coach of the boys gymnastics team at Iowa State back in the 40's. I found both books on Ebay.
Yay!
This was a great show - thank you! I listen to Scott’s podcast often and love it. I noticed the name Al Sherman on the sheet music - I believe that was the father of the Sherman brothers (Robert and Richard).
Really? Interesting.
Great videos with loads of info. I especially like the Census info to Excel. Anyway I am from England and just been watching this vid with great interest. Another ebay tip that came useful for me reguarding searching was spelling words incorrectly...I live in the county of Yorkshire in England and I went on ebay and I accidently put in the search Yorkshire Geneolgy (I spelt Genealogy incorrectly on purpose just to see what would appear) and I found a cd full of pdf files with copies of 1800s parish records from around the county of Yorkshire and some have helped with to find ancestors.
Basically typing in words incorrectly can be a good way of finding items
I didn't find anything family related on eBay but I did in Googlebooks. I came across a mention of my (rather unique) maiden name in a young adult book there. I purchased the book from Amazon (I originally typed Ancestry - you know what I have on the brain!) to discover the character in the book with the surname was a junior high school teacher. I wrote the author on her website and it took her nine months to write me back. Turns out my dad made such an impression on her as her homeroom teacher she decided to name a character after him!
Oh, and I also discovered we are DNA cousins through my mom. :)
Great story.
Thank you Connie for all of your episodes! I've learned lots of great tips from you AND from Scott Fisher's podcasts! Keep 'em coming!! Ü
Thank you! Will do!
I did a Google search one day for my grandfather. I found a link for an old letter labeled by my grandfather's name. But, it turned out to be a letter that my dad wrote when he was 9 years old to a ventriloquist company asking for free lessons. My dad has held on to a photo of him holding a ventriloquist dummy at the age of 9, and he told me about how he was fascinated by them and owned a couple. So to find that old letter from his childhood he wrote, with the date on the timestamp confirming he would have been 9 years old, just made my day! I bought it and showed it to him. He was a little weirded out that the company he wrote to saved his letter and it ended up for sale on Ebay. I agree it's a little odd. Lol! But I'm glad it happened.
Wow. Great story.
A couple years ago I found a photo of one of the people (as a child) in the cemetery I am restoring. Very nice find on eBay.
It never occurred to me to look at eBay. Just purchased 2 of my dad's high school yearbooks.
I have found several family related items on eBay. Great episode.
thanks
Thanks for reminding me to get back on eBay and look for things that might match my family. I started doing that a few years back but wasn't successful.
If you don’t want to use your regular email to receive notifications from EBay or any commercial site, you can just create a separate email account on gmail or some other free service that you dedicate to that purpose. Then you can look at it when you have the time or inclination to do so. My friend does this for all sorts of subjects to ensure both his privacy and that he knows where things are coming from so he has a better grip on whether they are bona fide or not.
That is a great tip to add! I almost did not view this video because I had already done the ebay thing. Just shows you can always learn something NEW! Even the host said she had never thought of his idea about saving the searches to get emails on new items. *** I would add that in my case I use it to find the history of towns of my ancestors that I or my descendants may never visit...so I use the information and add a screenshot of something rather than buying it. I then add it to the family genealogy document I created that coalesce with census records, family photos etc.
@@jgar9827 Thank you. I’m glad you found it helpful.
I have a 2nd Great Grand Uncle who was an early photographer starting from 1870 in Galva, Illinois. I have purchased several of his photographs on EBay. I often wonder if any are relatives. Thrilled to have them.
I’ve purchased thousands of items on EBay. If it is a Buy Now, I always make an offer. I can’t remember a seller not wanting to negotiate especially if it is an item that will appeal to a limited number of people. An example of something like this I purchased was the book made for the 25th reunion of the Class of 1963 from West Point I purchased for my husband. He took my first offer.
Great idea.
My first cousin 3x removed was the owner of the H.S. Denison Co. The sign to look at, and you may remember seeing around: Redman Apples - Wenatchee District, Washington - H.S. Denison & Co. Also, another cousin, was on the U.S.S. Arizona when it went down in the attack or Pearl Harbor.
Wow!
I found a catalog for the Drew Carrier Company, my great-grandfather's company, and a postcard with a photo of the INSIDE of the Catholic Church for which my grandmother was the organist for 40 years. In one or both instances, the item was taken off auction before I had a chance to get them, and I was able to contact the seller and buy them. My dad and I constantly look for two specific years of my mom's high school yearbook because my dad accidentally threw hers out many years ago.
So as I'm listening to the beginning of this, I look up my great gp's town on ebay. Lo and behold, first item is a postcard of the trainstation in that town in 1910 ADDRESSED TO MY 2G Gf!!!! Unbelieveable. Only they want $75 for it! Too bad, but so fun!
Wow
I have hoteliers who were also mineral water makers so have bottles bearing their name, photographers who took studio and wedding images, many in postcard format though early portraits are CDV's and also dozens of indentures all from auction sites. The really frustrating part is indentures and documents where the seller doesn't list names, the real gems are often those where the name is spelled incorrectly, I've found several of those over the years including an indenture from the 1770's.
If you find a seller who seems to have a knack for locating items relating to your family or the area they come from it's worth building up a relationship as they often spot things that may be of interest. I've purchased around 90 postcards by my photographer relative from just one seller and as he knows I'm probably the only person who will buy them I get a really decent price on them.
Thanks bunches
A person from the USA found my family tree, they decided it looked similar to theirs so after changing a few names, adding some new people in and totally trashing my COREECT tree left it a wreck. I came to the conclusion that people in the USA have difficulty realising that a name in the USA may be unusual or rare, it quite often is not in the original country. Stop messing with your Genealogy and do PROPER research
This is why my tree is on Ancestry, so no one can change it.
@@GenealogyTV You think?
Great video. I’m still trying to get past that brick wall with my GG grandfather’s father from St. Lawrence county Ny. 1830 time frame. Know anyone who does research up in that area ? It’s been far to long I’ve been stuck and ancestry is way to expensive. Thanks art
I'd look at the NY State Library www.nysl.nysed.gov/scandocs/ Also if you're looking for a professional genealogist in the area, go to APGEN www.apgen.org/cpages/home
Thanks Connie for the advice , dosent seem to have any info on him enough to pin him down in over 25 yrs. my goal is to find him in 2023