E-Bay

E-bay is a great source for old house parts. Metal hardware, light fixtures, even stained glass windows are regularly listed and can sometimes be had for modest sums. Search keywords like vintage, antique, or Victorian, will regularly generate items, and many old housenicks run a battery of searches weekly. One enthusiast enters six different iterations of the keyword Handel, including misspellings.

If you bid regularly, or focus narrowly, you may develop an e-bay rivalry. One neighbor's pursuit of Carnival glass shades wrought frequent bidding wars with a username Gottahaveit43.
I routinely face a battery of rivals in my pursuit of Victorian sanitary magnificence including Plumbher, Vintageplumbing, and Sinkorswim.

Many frequent bidders use Auction Sniper, a service whereby a predetermined bid is entered seconds shy. There's a vigorish of course, typically 1% of the winning total.

Dodgy types lurk, so many buyers deal only with those sellers who've high feedback totals. In one supposed case, a bogus dealer posted photos of deluxe items taken on a house tour.

Getting outbid on one-of-a-kind articles can be a slight bummer, but nothing compared to the conferee of damaged goods. No matter the insulating properties of cardboard, stryafoam peanuts, or bubble wrap, the sickly rattle of inadequately swaddled glass, pulverized terra cotta, or severed porcelain quills, is insuperable.

Sometimes I feel a bit like a looter, raiding depressed steel towns, divesting the Piedmont South, and the architectural carcass of everyslum USA. Once, guiltily, I asked a seller in Detroit, from whence an item had come. "Palo Alto," he responded, "I had a dotcom venture in the late '90's."

Of course there's also Craig's List.......