Here’s a little search engine that frequent eBay buyers might find useful. Just punch in your zip code and what you are searching for and Flippity spits back the eBay results in a much more user friend format than eBay itself returns them in.

Once there, you have the option to refine your search with parameters like distance, buy it now only and by category. Here’s a sample search I did for a book I wanted to get for my Mom, Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris. You will need to click it to see it in greater detail.

When you mouse over any listing, it shows you exactly where the item will be coming from on the map. It works great, the interface is slick and I like how it displays results better than the actual eBay search results.

The only problem is that I cannot see this actually being useful. It only sorts the listings by where the seller is, not whether the seller is offering local pick-up or not. Unless you really care about an item shipping from a local location, I don’t really see the point in sorting by local listings. But I’ve never shopped eBay locally, always on a Global scale, so maybe this fills a need others have.

Either way, it’s a slick little bit of code I wanted to point out to you in case you’d find it useful.