I've written a book about the early history of the board game Monopoly, and eBay has been very useful as a place to buy various old board games and related artifacts. This is true even in those situations where the seller doesn't know what they have or even photograph it well. Sometimes, the best history is found in the item you've purchased. To sidestep camera history for a moment, there are all sorts of things I have learned, and other researchers have learned, by buying old board games. New things are discovered all the time, and sometimes you can put various bits of evidence together to form a narrative. In addition, there's ephemera, photographs, letters and other artifacts for sale on eBay that can help a researcher. The "eBay effect" on the board game market has not always been to increase prices; in some cases, things have turned out to be more common than we thought and prices came down. Previously, if someone had a rare board game for sale, you had to pay their price, or you were out of luck. Where you get your information is not always as important as that you do get information. The researcher needs to use all the tools in the toolbox, and eBay and the Internet in generally are increasingly important tools. One thing that definitely helps is looking at the frequency certain items come up for sale. If one wants to know how many Nikon 500mm f5 mirror lenses were made, you can watch the auctions as they come up for sale. You can ask the seller for the serial number if you can't see it in the picture. eBay has brought a lot of stuff out of the woodwork. --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list