An interesting eBay behavior I didn’t know about until I literally stumbled across it is that applicable items you search for may not display in your search results if they are for sale in an eBay store. To elaborate, if there are more than 30 results returned, items for sale in an eBay store will not be shown… even if they are cheaper than other items listed in the results.

A simple explanation by example:

Suppose you are looking for “cpu fan” and there are 500 results. These results will not include any CPU fan’s for sale in eBay stores. However, if you search “cpu fan pentium 3″ and there are 25 results, these will include items for sale in an eBay store (since there are under 30).

So when you search for a very broad item, be sure to search the eBay Stores as well. Searching here could end up saving you money as well as the time of the auction.