With regards to the
eBay search function, this is probably common knowledge, but you can eliminate things easily by enclosing relevant keywords in parentheses preceded by a minus sign
(and then saving the search).
To show how stupid things have gotten, here's an example of what I needed to add over time to one of my searches for a baseball card set
(yes, a BASEBALL CARD set) just to eliminate the detritus and 'only' have cards I'm looking for appear:
-(dean, sheffield, calender, usaf, losers, pottery, nasa, china, buick, saucer, rosemary, rainbow, caron, granada, baby, relish, salt, billy jack, steel, license plate)
No joke.
Note: The "dean" is in all of my searches to avoid Mr. Extortion himself.