Find Old Photos of Your House on eBay

Looking for old photos of your house? eBay can be great place to start. There is an active old photo market with thousands of photos on eBay.

At the turn of the 20th century it was popular to find photos of houses on both stereographic photos and “real photo” postcards. You might find your house on either type.

You can find these photos on eBay by searching in specific categories on eBay such as Collectible Stereoviews & Stereocopes or Collectible Postcards & Supplies. The collectible postcards section will allow you to narrow down by state.

The eBay photo section can be a pretty dodgy place to browse with lots of explicit photos so your best bet other than using those two categories would be to search for the “photo + town, state.” For example search for “photo Wilbraham, MA.” Here’s an example of what you will see.

Another way to locate photos on eBay is to set up an eBay alert which will send you emails whenever a photo from your town is for sale on eBay. To set up an eBay alert you will have to have an eBay account.

Setting up an eBay alert

After you’ve created an account you can set up your first eBay alert. To do this use the search box to search for photos. In this case I have used the search term “photo Glen, NY.”

Next you will see the results for that search. Just above the first photo you will see the option to “Save this search.” Click that to save the search.

Next a pop box will appear saying “We’ll send you an email when there’s something new.” There’s nothing more to do. The alert is automatically setup. If you change your mind and don’t want to receive alerts then select the “Turn off email alerts” link.

Good luck! I hope you have great success finding old photos of your house!