Advanced Auction Arms Searching Made Easy



If an item is listed with us, you can easily find it with the Auction Arms Search Engine. You can search for auctions:

Finding ALL your search terms...

Unless otherwise specified, the word AND is assumed where two or more search terms are present. Search results are returned where those terms are found in any order. Shorthand for AND is simply a space or comma between search terms. So: COLT 1911 COMMANDER is equivalent to the phrase COLT AND 1911 AND COMMANDER. COMMANDER 1911 AND COLT is equivalent to the phrase COMMANDER AND 1911 AND COLT.

Finding at least one of your terms...

If you'd like to find any auction that contains at least one of your terms, separate each term with an OR. There is no shorthand for OR So: COLT OR 1911 OR COMMANDER will contain all the auctions that have at least one (and maybe more) of COLT and 1911 and COMMANDER.

Finding a specific phrase...

If you'd like to find an exact phrase, quotes can be placed around search terms. For example: “STAINLESS .270 WIN” returns titles containing that exact phrase, but not those containing “.270 WIN STAINLESS”. You'll notice that order of the terms is important when searching for an exact phrase.

Excluding a search term...

Excluding a search term can be important if you're trying to cut down on the number of returning auctions. Searching for the word RUSTY returns auctions containing both NOT RUSTY and RUSTY. However, NOT RUSTY CHEAP PITTED is equivalent to (NOT RUSTY) AND (NOT CHEAP) AND (NOT PITTED), as well as (RUSTY,PITTED, CHEAP), and NOT RUSTY, CHEAP, PITTED. In other words, any search phrase following the word NOT will be omitted from the search result. Shorthand for the word NOT is a hyphen placed directly for the search term. So the phrase WINCHESTER MODEL 70 -SPORTER is the same as entering WINCHESTER AND MODEL AND 70 NOT SPORTER. In other words, "show all Winchester Model 70s that are not sporters".

Many search tools make use of wildcard characters like % and * to find word parts. The Auction Arms search engine also uses these wildcard characters. ERMA or *ERMA* or %ERMA% will return the words GERMAN, SHERMAN, etc. If this isn't the result you desire, we recommend you specify search terms with quotes. “ERMA” will return only those results with the word ERMA, not THERMAL or GERMAN. GERMA will return results with words like GERMAN but not like SHERMAN or THERMA.

With other search engines, your results set is sometimes automatically expanded to include items based on what the developer thinks you might be looking for. We don't do this. We're not in the business of mind reading.

Search commands are not case sensitive. Whether or not you use capital letters, your results will be the same. The rest of the search fields are filters, and that should be fairly self explanatory. If you think there is something we left out, feel free to contact us.