About 80% of my images and leads on obscure artists/performers come from eBay. I have half a dozen automatic searches set for erotic and risque materials, though many of the eBay finds are felicitous -- looking for one thing and finding something quite different, and then just chasing it down (e.g., I did a show on risque calendars from the 1930s and 1940s on my blog today after one popped up in a search for old ads last week). Once I have a search term (say the name of a 1950s stripper or 70s porn store) I hit google, wiki, etc. etc. The rest I find through more typical blog resources -- newsclippers, Google and Yahoo image searches, blogs, and tips from readers. But eBay is my favorite source because it's all so ephemeral and random. Sometimes the only glimpse we'll ever get of these materials are the few days they spend on eBay before going from one private collector to the next.

In my next life, I'm coming back as artificial intelligence :)