How To Find The Hidden Left Handed Guitars on eBay

Stop! Did you know that you might be missing out on potentially hundreds of left handed guitars on eBay? Lefty guitars aren’t exactly unicorns on the site—they’re out there in decent numbers. The problem is, a lot of them are hiding in plain sight and are easy to miss!

There’s a goldmine of lefty guitars waiting to be found if you know how to search smarter. That’s where this post comes in. I’m going to walk you through how to use clever search queries, filters, and a few sneaky tricks to uncover those hidden gems that most buyers scroll right past.

Whether you’re chasing your dream Jazzmaster or just looking for a deal on a fixer-upper, the lefty treasure is out there. You just need the right map.

Quick eBay Cheat Codes

I have detailed below exactly how to use eBay to discover all of the hidden lefties. But, in case you’re a little impatient, here are a few links to get you going.

These will work perfectly for browsing left handed guitars in general. For a specific brand or model, simply add the name after the last bracket.

Disclosure: These are affiliate links and may earn me a small commission if you make a purchase. Thanks!

Quick Tips

• Use the minimum price filter to eliminate unwanted accessories and parts
• Try not to use too many filters (reasons explained below)
• Do not use the left-handed filter!

The Problem With eBay Listings

Listing Title Keywords

Imagine a scenario where I fancy adding a Strat to my collection. I head over to the electric guitar section on eBay and type in ‘left handed Fender Stratocaster‘ into the trusty search box.

I’m rewarded with 340 results (at the time of writing). Nice!

The problem is, there are actually 438 left handed Fender Strats currently listed. We are missing almost one hundred guitars!

Why? Because not everyone is going to describe their listing in the exact same way. Instead of ‘left handed‘ you might have ‘lefty‘,‘LH, or ‘southpaw‘ etc. Furthermore, a Stratocaster could be listed as a ‘Strat‘, or misstyped as a ‘Start‘. There are 15 lefty ‘Fender Starts’ currently on eBay…

Improper Categorisation

But, so what if the listing titles are all over the place? You may be thinking that you can just use the ‘left-handed’ filter, right? Well unfortunately, that is also an unreliable method of searching!

As I already mentioned above, there are 340 results if we type in ‘left handed Fender Stratocaster’ into the search bar.

However, if we look at the ‘handedness’ filter we have 267 categorised as left-handed, 42 as right-handed, and 31 that haven’t been categorised at all.

Therefore, if you had clicked on the left-handed filter, you would have missed a further 73 guitars!

It is a similar story when using almost any of the sidebar filters. People just don’t take the time to properly categorise their listings, so by using these filters, you are just eliminating guitars that may interest you.

Long story short, it’s probably a good idea to use as few filters as possible. We need a more reliable way to find all of the lefty guitars…

How to Find Left Handed Guitars on eBay

So, how do we fix this? We make use of clever search terms and only select filters to make sure that we don’t miss anything.

My Personal Search Queries

Here is the search enquiry that I personally use to ensure that I find all of the best deals on eBay.  Surf over to the guitar and bass section on your country’s eBay website and enter (left,lefty,lh,l/h,southpaw).

What this is basically saying to eBay is ‘show me all of the listings which have ANY of these terms in their title description’. So in this case any auction which has any of ‘left‘, ‘lefty‘, ‘lh‘, ‘l/h‘ or ‘southpaw‘ in their title.

Putting any terms within brackets and separated by commas will achieve the same function. So for example, (Strat,Stratocaster,Start) would search for listings with either “Strat’ or ‘Stratocaster‘ or ‘Start‘ in the title.

Handily, we can combine both of these searches to uncover a ton of lefty Strats. Type in (left,lefty,lh,l/h,southpaw) (Strat,Stratocaster,Start) and we will get all of the listings that contain any of the lefty terms AND any of the Stratocaster variants. Nice!

We’re almost there with solving the problem we had at the start of the article. Now, all we need to do is add the brand, and we’re done. So, the final search query will be:

(left,lefty,lh,l/h,southpaw) (Strat,Stratocaster,Start) Fender

Excluding Results

We can further refine our results by eliminating certain unwanted keywords. This is done by adding ‘-keyword’ to the search query.

So, for example (left,lefty,lh,l/h,southpaw) (Strat,Stratocaster,Start) Fender -Squier would exclude any Squier listings that might cheekily include ‘Squier by Fender’ in the title. You could also add –Squire to exclude misspelled titles.

Using Filters

Depending on how common the guitar you are looking for is, you may also like to use a few of the sidebar filters to really hone in on the results. However, as I’ve already mentioned above, many people do not correctly categorise their listings. So, be wary of using too many of these.

Starting off in the top level ‘Guitars & Basses” category may cast your net a little too wide as you will also get a ton of accessories and parts appearing. If you’re getting too many results, move into the relevant sub-category, e.g. Electric Guitars.

If you’re clever, you could always stay in the main Guitar & Basses category and use the minus operator to exclude things like scratchplates, necks, and bodies.

You can also enter your top budget in the max price box to ensure you aren’t looking at guitars you cannot afford or have no interest in.

Finally, you can utilise the condition filters to further cut down unwanted results. For example, if you’re searching for a now discontinued guitar you can definitely tick the used checkbox.

Bookmark Your Results

My final top tip is to bookmark your results after you have crafted the perfect search query. This way, it’s just one quick click to check in and see if anything that tickles your fancy has been added. I’ve created an entire folder of eBay bookmarks that I check daily for pre-owned lefty gems.

Before you bookmark the page, it would probably be a good idea to sort the results by Time: Newly Listed. This way, the freshest listings will be at the top, letting you quickly see if anything new has been added. Or, sort by Time: Ending Soonest to sniff out bargain auctions that are about to end.

Alternatively, eBay does offer an option to ‘Save This Search‘ at the top of the results page. If you click this link, the site will send you a handy email whenever an item that matches your criteria is added. This would be useful if you’re searching for something really rare that only comes up once in a blue moon.

I hope you will use this information to make your next southpaw guitar purchase a good one! Now that you know how to find the guitars, take a look at my guide on How to Get the Best Prices on eBay Guitars.