Leadlight windows

This guide is written to help the novice buyer who is in search of leadlight windows on Ebay.In order to find windows in leadlight, as opposed to leadlight lamps and furniture, I search under leadlight, lead light, and stained glass in both the title and description, under ALL CATEGORIES.This will bring up leadlight lamps also (there are soooo many), so filter through the selections by using the categories listed in the left margin. The windows appear in three categories, under Building Materials there are 2 categories, the most useful category is blinds, curtains, windows, however they also appear in the windows section. The windows also appear in the Antiques section under Architectural fittings.Once you have found your window, there are a few questions to ask the buyer. The first question I ask is to find out the colours of the glass. This is because the colours can sometimes be very subtle, and depending on the conditions under which the photo was taken, they can be difficult to ascertain. (Recently I bought a set of windows on Ebay that were photographed against a fence, without any light coming from behind. I could only make out a few small sections that seemed light green, so imagine my surprise when they arrived by courier and had green, red, blue and amber glass highlights! I am still working out what to do with them, you may see them up for auction in the near future!).Some other questions I have learned to ask are the condition of the lead, and if there are any breaks or scratches in the glass. Regarding the condition of the lead, sometimes there are wobbles in the panels, which can be quite unstable. Also, sometimes the glass panels can be bowed in/out, but the unit itself can still be structurally very stable. This is not so much of a problem, as long as you can live with it! I have found out that the glass can sometimes move if it was put together too tightly, and a repair of this sort would require hours of recutting.Broken glass pieces are fairly easily repaired, the problem is whether or not you can match the glass. A good repairer will have their own stash of antique glass, so I haven't yet had any problems matching glass. As a guide to costs of repair, I recently had panel repaired with two12 cm clear glass sections, and a thin rectangular section in antique bubble glass and it cost $80. Even factoring in the cost of repairs, buying leadlight windows on Ebay definately beats buying from a salvage yard where you will be lucky to have change from $800.