eBay says your watchlist holds 1,000. Another eBay page says 300.

How many items can you watch on eBay?

Up to 1,000, going by the help page eBay wrote about the watchlist itself. That's the number to plan around. A second eBay help page, the one about using search, describes the same watchlist as a place to keep track of up to 300 items. Both pages are live on eBay's site, and eBay hasn't said which one is current.

If you watch fewer than 300 things, the gap never reaches you, because both pages say you've got room. Between 300 and 1,000 it gets murky, because one page says you've still got room and the other says you're already over. Past 1,000, the two pages agree you're over the line, and the useful question becomes what you're willing to delete.

Counting your list is a little harder than it sounds. eBay shows active and ended listings together by default, so your list includes things you can't buy anymore. The watchlist page says you can use the dropdown beside Status to show active listings on their own, so you can see what's still live. What eBay doesn't say is whether the ended ones count toward the limit while they're still sitting there. If eBay tells you your watchlist is full and the number looks too low, deleting ended listings is the cheapest thing to try. eBay doesn't promise it'll help, but those entries are for things you can't buy anyway.

Two eBay help pages, two different limits

We go with 1,000 because that page is about the watchlist and nothing else. The 300 turns up in a one-line description of the watchlist page, in the related-articles list at the bottom of a page about search. That makes the 1,000 page the better bet. It doesn't prove which number eBay's system actually enforces, and eBay hasn't published a reason for the difference.

If you're past 300 and the ceiling matters to you, your own account is the only thing that can settle it. Keep adding items past 300 and see whether eBay takes them. Neither help page says what eBay shows you when it turns an item away, so watch for the item not appearing on your list as well as for an error message. It's tedious, and it's still better evidence than either help page.

When eBay takes items off your list

eBay's watchlist page describes one case where eBay removes an item for you:

If an item added to your Watchlist is ended by the seller and not relisted after 60 days, it will be removed from your list to ensure that you are shown available and up to date listings.

It only covers listings a seller ended and didn't put back up. It isn't a timer on your whole list, and the sentence doesn't mention items that sold.

eBay also doesn't say when the 60 days starts counting. Expect the entry to disappear about two months after the seller ends the listing, but don't count on an exact date.

So an old watchlist slowly fills up with entries for things you can't buy. Listings end or sell, and the entry you saved can hang around long after there's nothing left to buy. If you've been watching things for a year without clearing any out, a real share of your list may not be for sale anymore. That's one more reason to switch the Status filter to active listings before you count.

FindersKeepers, the deal-finding tool we make, has its own watchlist, and it deals with dead entries through a setting. Once a day we check watched items against eBay and mark the ones we can't find anymore as no longer available. A dropdown in your profile decides what happens to them next: never remove them, or remove them after 7, 30 or 90 days. It's set to 30 unless you change it. If you pick Never, the item stays on your list until you delete it yourself.

The one alert eBay's watchlist page describes

eBay's watchlist help page says you'll get notifications about watched items by default, and the example it gives is an alert when a listing you're watching is ending soon. The email setting it points you to is a checkbox called Auction item ending soon, under Buying activity in your communication preferences. It's the only watchlist alert that page describes.

People also expect an alert when a watched item drops in price, and one when it sells or ends. eBay's watchlist page doesn't mention either one. If emails like that turn up in your inbox, treat them as a bonus, because the page doesn't promise them.

You'll feel the difference on the day one of them stops. If the ending-soon emails dry up, you've got a page to point at and a checkbox to look for. If the price-drop emails stop, there's no setting you know to check and nobody you can hold to it. Saved search emails can go quiet the same way, and our post on saved search emails that stop covers the usual causes.

People also assume a watchlist does a few things it doesn't. Watching an item doesn't reserve it, and eBay's page says so: other members can still buy the items you're watching. It doesn't bid for you, so a watched auction that ends while you're asleep ends without you in it. And it doesn't tell the seller who you are. Sellers see how many people are watching and never their names, and on a lot of listings that count is public. Our post on what an eBay watcher count can tell you covers what that number is good for.

Finding new listings and following a price

A watchlist keeps track of listings you've already found. It can't watch for a listing that hasn't been posted yet, and it can't show you where a price has been.

For the listing that doesn't exist yet, you want a saved search. eBay's saved searches page says, "We'll send you email alerts when new items matching your search are listed," and your saved searches also show up in your feed when you're signed in. If you're weighing that against other alert tools, here's how eBay's saved searches compare with ours.

For where a price has been, your watchlist only shows you the price the listing has now. For why eBay has no price chart at all, see how eBay price history differs from Amazon's.

When you add an item to a FindersKeepers watchlist, we check its price every six hours and save what comes back, so the item has a price record from the day you added it.

Once an hour we also go through your watched items and email you about the ones worth a look. That means auctions in their last 24 hours, fixed price listings that have dropped at least 5 percent since the last price we recorded, and auctions where the bid has gone up at least 10 percent. An auction in its last day shows up in each hourly email until it ends. Everything for that hour comes in one email, and an hour with nothing to report sends nothing.

Every price in that record is an asking price, the number the seller had on the listing when we looked. It shows how the listing has been priced over time. It can't tell you what anyone paid.

The record only starts once an item is on the list, so it's worth adding something while you're still making up your mind about it. By the day you decide to buy, you'll have a run of prices to compare against today's instead of a single number.