This methodology seems to be an important advance for those who love books. It’s giving me a remarkable control over what I collect. It’s allowing me to turn on the flow as I learn to understand and use it. It’s efficient and inexpensive and intellectually challenging. Few book collectors can walk past a garage sale and this is one that is open every day and has as many sellers as there are seats in Yankee Stadium. And who knows, maybe you’ll turn out to be the Babe Ruth of book collectors. It’s a lovely and inexpensive way to collect books and ephemera.

Here is how you convert your lunch money into a ringside seat. If you are already an Æ Octavo member, but haven’t yet entered keywords, sign in and go to MatchMaker which you’ll find under Facilities on the toolbar as well as in the right hand column of the main AE home page and your personal home page. If you aren’t yet a member you can sign up for an annual subscription or subscribe month-to-month and cancel at any time. Sign-up links are provided at the end of this article.

Once in MatchMaker the control panel is always on the left. Click on “Add Keywords” and then put only one word in each box. Usually a single term is best but you may want to put George and Washington together because Washington is very, very common. Also beware of entering a descriptive term that isn’t usually present. Kingston is a small city in the Hudson Valley of New York State but if I put in Kingston and New York it will miss almost every early Kingston item. By using only Kingston I’m going to see unrelated Kingston items but I just delete them. It’s easy. For those signing up and entering keywords today (8:00 pm PST daily cut-off) your matches are going to be posted late tonight and every night thereafter. If you are a book person you’ll be checking your matches early tomorrow morning and I’m sure you aren’t going to be disappointed. Currently, with 19 keywords, I have on average about 160 live auction lots every day.

Not all eBayauctions run the same amount of time. The seller has latitude so you will want to look every day. Most are seven or ten days. A few are five or even three days. They come without warning. They are there and then they are gone. Amazing, surprising material, like rain in the desert, is there only briefly. We list the matching lots in order of their closing date and time but you also see lots come up for briefer auctions so you need to read your full list of matches every day or so. The quicker auctions are going to appear on your inside pages. Once you begin to have matches you can identify material of interest and move it to the top of your list because you are going to see plenty of matches. With 19 keywords I have 160+ matches currently alive and I have bids in on several more items.