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> Never mind, I took out the hyphen and voila! Up came 265 items. One problem with searching for Penn Central is key word spam, i.e. the
inclusion of terms unrelated to the item for sale just to fool searches. If you
report this abuse to eBay they will sometimes stop the auction, especially if
the seller has caused problems before.
A while back there was a seller who had a lot of new Conrail giveaways and
promotional items (hats, pencils, cups, etc.) for sale. Each item's description
contained to thumbnail description of railroading on the east coast for the last
century.
An example of this abuse would be:
"Conrail hat for sale. Conrail was formed from several Northeastern
railroads such as Erie Lackawanna and Penn Central. The Penn Central was formed
from the New York Central, Pennsylvania and New Haven. Conrail was recently
spilt and taken over by Norfolk Southern and CSX. Norfolk Southern was formed
from the Southern and Norfolk and Western. N&W merged such railroads a
Virginian, Wabash and Nickel Plate. CSX was formed from....."
You get the idea. The spammer I referred to before would even list
locomotives types such as GG1 and Niagra in his descriptions!
It's hit or miss to get eBay to stop a spam auction, but once a seller gets
burned enough he will give up and behave. A couple of years ago there was a
slide seller who, after his description, included "I have slides for..." and
listed what seemed like every railroad that was ever photographed with
Kodachrome. eBay stopped some of his auctions but he never got the message and
quit until the time he had some Virginian slides for sale and the
auction was ended by eBay just before the bidding hit $300 for the few
slides.
On another note, Penn Central bonds and stocks show up frequently. You're
in for a treat if you buy a document from the dealer Scott Winslow. They
will start sending you auction catalogs with some truly interesting documents
and certificates for sale. I may not be able to buy autographs of obscure Civil
War generals or stock certificates issued to the Vanderbilts but the catalogs
are great reading. If you are looking for memorabilia from very obscure
railroads, such as antebellum stocks this is the dealer.
Bryan Turner W8LN
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