A night passed, and when I woke up I had an email from the AE Daily Alert letting me know that I had matches for my wants! Since I made more than a few, I had a lot of matches, about 300! That number quickly shrank, though, as I went through and perused my first matches. I noticed my searches had picked up a wide variety of items. These are just a few of what I looked at: an original pamphlet of Sioux Bible Hymns circa 1880 up for $1,500; about a dozen or so postcards from the first half of the 20th century related to Falmouth; a book on the history of Falmouth printed in 1930 for $16.99; and an original newspaper from the day Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn was announced for $245. A majority of my matches were also contemporary books and reprints. I also noticed some of my matches were attributed to a single seller on eBay, and none of them was anything I was interested in. MatchMaker has a solution for this problem so that you don't see that seller's inventory ever again. It's called the Kiss of Death, and it allows MatchMaker users to type an eBay seller's username in and blacklist it permanently! So I went ahead and gave my first blackball out.

I ended up buying the history of Falmouth from 1930. There's clearly more interest and a market for Native American items over an unknown little town like Falmouth, so the prices are marked up accordingly. I'm thinking I'll actually read this first book, though, and hold on to it as a keepsake. I do plan on collecting what I can of Native Americans.

MatchMaker's pace has slowed since the first night of matches. It found everything available the first night, and now only updates newly added lots. Ebay so far is seeing more activity than Abe, which makes sense because of the ever-expiring auctions.

I don't think I'd have time to collect if it weren't for this service. After the initial setup and review of your wants, it takes literally two to five minutes to review your new matches (today I had seven). I currently work two jobs, go to school part-time, have a girlfriend, and thoroughly enjoy video games. Yet I find that brief window each day, or every other, to check my matches. And it's a cinch.

This is a work in progress and I'll update again next month.