Don't Cite Unsold eBay Listing Prices(blog.danlew.net)
blog.danlew.net
Don't Cite Unsold eBay Listing Prices
https://blog.danlew.net/2026/01/17/dont-cite-unsold-ebay-listing-prices/
9 comments
This is a classic problem when people try to find "the current price" of something. A typical error is to take an average of the current rentals currently on the market and describe that as the average rental cost somewhere. Usually the book is so thin that a few places being taken off the market will shift the price a lot while most people can be paying something like half of that and every rental that lists for less than the clearing price is acquired so rapidly that any sampling method will reliably miss it.
Ha this summarizes marketplace problems in one sentence. All items that are still available for sale are typically priced too high. The slices of market that actually moves a minuscule 1-5% of items and they don’t hang out for long
If items are comparable the lowest unsold item should be an upper bound on price, no?
Could have been helpful for the article to include a tutorial:
In the filters, there’s one for “completed” and “sold,” you want both checked.
In the filters, there’s one for “completed” and “sold,” you want both checked.
Why would you want "Completed" if you want to know how much an item sells for? This would be telling you how much it didn't sell for.
If both are checked it only displays “sold” items. For some reason the eBay UI used to auto-check “completed” whenever “sold” was selected.
Even better are people who sell a used piece of equipment for a higher price than a new one.
Does this mean my Beanie Babies are not worth $250 each? Asking for a friend... /s
Additionally, you have to factor in free shipping. A rough way to do it is to multiply the % times the average shipping price and deduct that from the average sales price (so the "real" average sales price for the totes is closer to $14 or so)