Lego: How to discover LEGO sets in used Lego on eBay? - Part 1 - By brick pattern

As a seasoned treasure hunter, I absolutely love set identification part. Looking at the photo and hundreds of bricks can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning but a little bit of patience and you should have a list of sets that should be there. Let's analyse auction I have won recently:

Lego Mixed Lot Bundle - Bricks - Over 9kg

Select a picture that has the best quality. 

At a first glance, it's very hard to identify any sets. Especially that eBay picture is kind of small. Pictures send by sellers are usually bigger but eBay fits it to the screen size. So in order to open it up in a new tab, you need to wait for a white bar with thumbnails to disappear and right click the image and select "open it in a new tab". 

So now we have a clear view of the full frame and we can zoom in in search of sets. To start the search look for any parts with printing and stickers on it.

This assembly has 3 printed or stickered pieces and is in desired color (StarWars!). There are a tile and two wedges. Counting studs we can conclude that the wedge is 10 or 12 studs long and 2-3 studs wide. Let's go to Bricklink and search for "12x3 wedge pattern"!

Here are the results

Now we need to scroll the list (since Bricklink thumbnails are very small it is better to zoom in your browser window). 

And we have found our part and our first set - 7675!

Let's find another one! There's one more pattern piece visible:

This is a window piece (most likely) 2 studs wide and probably 1 stud long and 2 or 3 standard Lego brick high. So let's try "1x2x2 window pattern". This time no luck! Same with 1x2x3 window pattern. Let's look at "1x2x2 pattern orange" as there's usually a description of the pattern. 

It has been used in 4 sets:

And it looks as it is from SpongeBob The Bikini Bottom Express 3830 set! 

Now since there are no more pattern pieces visible here we should move to more demanding Part 2 where identification is based on nonpatterned pieces.

This is a part of Guide to buying used LEGO lots on eBay.