eBay has been filtering the "Price plus shipping: lowest first" sort for quite a while, but for a long time the filtering was relatively minor, and there was a link to "see all results" at the top whenever the results were being filtered. It is only in the last year or so that the filtering has gotten really out of hand with many keyword searches being affected.
Lately the "Best match" sort order is showing signs of the opposite problem -- finding many more results of marginal relation to the original search compared to other sort orders.
Here is my boilerplate response on the "lowest first" sort issue:
The "Price plus shipping: lowest first" sort order provides filtered results -- often drastically filtered. And the option to "see more results" may not always be shown as it should. The filtering may vary depending on the keywords used.
If you encounter a drastically filtered result for a keyword search using a desktop browser, you should be able to use the "Feedback" link in the lower right corner of the search results to provide feedback on your search to eBay developers. The more users provide info, the more likely something is to be done about the over-filtration problem.
You can avoid that problem entirely by using a different sort order.
If you have few results, try sorting by "highest first", then starting at the end of the results, scroll up instead of down. This also avoids the problem of variation listings with low-cost variations appearing at the top of the lowest-first sort.
If you have a bookmarked or saved lowest-first search that you use a lot, you can avoid the filtration by adding the following to the end of the search URL, then saving the resulting search:
&_blrs=recall_filtering
