Anyone who uses ebay frequently has used their completed item feature to help determine the potential value of an item of interest. This is limited however to only about the last 3 months of sales. This can be a problem when selling rare items or in determining the value of an item you have do to lack of comparable items.
I propose a service that would archive the top 100 sales in every category. This would provide a long term track of the most valuable examples of a particular type of item to act as a research and valuation database for rare and hard to evaluate items.
This would also be valuable for collectors to aid them in identification of rare items in their collections.-- jhomrighaus, Jul 02 2007 eBay does this... for a price http://developer.eb...rograms/marketdata/Notice there are no prices to be found on the site. If you have to ask... [craigts, Jul 03 2007] More Data http://www.dataunison.com/ebay_data/This company appears to be offering data from 2004-present. Obviously you'd have to run your own scripts to analyze the raw data. [craigts, Jul 03 2007] An example of an auction to be archived. http://cgi.ebay.com...QrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem [jhomrighaus, Jul 03 2007] Hmm. Wouldn't help me much as nothing I ever buy or sell is likely to have appeared in the 100 most valuable items in its category.
I don't want to know what made the most, I want to know what stuff just like mine made so I'd prefer if they just archived everything for twelve months instead.-- wagster, Jul 02 2007 I suppose it would be pretty easy to set up a data mining protocol to look for keywords that appear a certain number of times within common categories allowing for greater detail within a category, or for very frequent Keywords to store representative versions of the different ranges that show up(for say the Differential between new and used or open and unopened items)-- jhomrighaus, Jul 02 2007 Why not just keep all of it?-- jutta, Jul 03 2007 what [jutta] said - I don't understand why eBay don't let you search across all completed items - they can afford it.-- hippo, Jul 03 2007 Or they could just spend the cash on a massive TV ad campaign. That would be much better...-- wagster, Jul 03 2007 [craigts] Ebay provides some information but it is limited to the last 90 days of information any older data does not include selling price, or a copy of the original post with photos and such. You will find this out if you review the market data area fully. Bottom line is ebay does not provide what i am proposing here.
An example of what I am looking for is sales of TVR 2500ms which only come up for sale rarely due to the fact that there are less than 1000 of the cars ever made so there are no 90 day comparables. (and by default no details in ebays market research area either) Having a longer data base would allow me to evaluate not only the pricing but also the car itself to establish an idea of comparability and what is affecting the value of the cars.-- jhomrighaus, Jul 03 2007 Absolutely. However a record of the top 100 sales in the classic car category would probably not contain this particular TVR - even if it did, you are looking for as many examples as you can get. Archiving and access to *all* sales data would be invaluable information to lots of people and the sooner ebay realises this, the sooner they'll figure out how to make more money out of it...-- wagster, Jul 03 2007 I think the key difference here is not only do i want the pricing info I also want to be able to See the pictures and read the descriptions. Review the questions and answers etc. This is the information that is truly valuable to a collector beyond just knowing what they sell for. That is why I proposed the top 100 but I thing that some kind of Keyword structure might serve better. IE in the classic car category subdivide by keywords that appear more than say 3 times and also a submenu for all other unique keywords.(such as TVR or Chevy Corvette as opposed to Stanly Steamer or Horsch)-- jhomrighaus, Jul 03 2007 Hmm. I think you are proposing something I still don't understand. Let's start with this: what information do you *not* require archived?-- wagster, Jul 03 2007 See the link above for an example of the auction I am reffering to.
What I want to archive is everything you see on the page, the pictures, description, location pricing, bid history etc.
What the services provide is obviously far less informative(see other links provided above)
What I don't feel is needed is to archive every single Chevy Cavalier that has ever sold on ebay(thousands and thousands) but to see the top sellers of that model might be beneficial. The utility of this information is obviously more pertinent to the more collectable items out there.-- jhomrighaus, Jul 03 2007 I'm with Ian here. I can see no point in excluding things that aren't at the top end of their sales bracket. This might suit you now, but what if you were looking for a rotten old TVR for a rebuild project? Then what you need is info on the lowest sellers. Everything should be archived, and if they don't have enough space (unlikely) then they should ditch the photos, which take the most room and provide the least info.-- wagster, Jul 04 2007 Then Provide a weighted distribution The Highest 25 lowest 25 and the 30% and 60%range(25 closest to the 30 and 60 means based on the current highest and lowest)-- jhomrighaus, Jul 04 2007 random, halfbakery