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New eBay sales charts!
Starting today, every "buy" page will feature a chart with historical eBay sales data. These charts currently go back about 6 months but will eventually cover a full year as time goes on. A program checks for new sales once per week and automatically updates the charts so you'll always have access to the most current data.
There is a forum topic up on the new chart if you have any questions or comments,
What the chart can help you do
You'll be able to easily see the average price any book sold for on eBay in a given month
You can see whether the price has been headed, down, or holding steady
You can see how frequently a specific book is sold on eBay
If you're thinking of selling your book on eBay, you'll see what other people have actually got for the same book
If you're looking to buy from eBay you can see if the current auction you're looking at is below or above the "average" historical sell price
Limitations of the chart
Info is pulled from only the title of an auction. If a person misspelled a book or otherwise mislabelled their title it won't be included
You can't see the number of sales each month that made up the average
You can't see each individual sale price that made up the average. (Example further down)
You can't see auction details that made up the sales. This is simply a data dump so you don't know details like
Reputation of the seller
Condition of the item
Shipping costs
How many bidders
If it was an auction style or buy-it-now
Any other auction details
This tool should be incredibly useful to anyone that buys or sells books. Heading over to check the chart before a purchase or sale to see actual mined data from eBay for an entire year is going to give you an excellent picture of where that lower value range of a book is.
I get e-mails all the time asking how much a person can expect to sell a book for, now you'll see it. If you want to post a book on the buy/sell forums you can now let people know what the book has been selling for on eBay
Because the data only tracks books that actually sold, you'll easily be able to see when there were no sales. This can be very useful when determining whether to keep hunting around on eBay every day or buy an in-stock book from a bookstore.
There are plenty of other ways the chart can help you, I"m sure you'll find the benefits quickly once you start using the charts on a regular basis.
Let's take a look at an example!
Here's the chart from the Talisman buy page. I've put comments and arrows here, rest assured the actual graph looks a bit less cluttered :) So what info can I see from here?
I can easily see that in February the average sale price for the limited edition was $620.86, and the gift edition sold for $120. (You could get a pop up with the gift edition price by hovering your mouse over the yellow bar, but it's not shown here)
I can also see that the gift edition has been selling every month and I can see the price peaked in December and has held pretty steady but has been trending down over the last 3 months. if I go to the actual live page, I see that the lowest abebook price is $200 which is almost a 70% premium over the eBay price. For a book that's showing up all the time, eBay it probably the way to go this month.
For the limited edition, I can see that there was a 5 month gap between sales, this let's me know that I may have to spend a lot of time keeping en eye on eBay for this book to pop up again at a decent price. if I go to the actual live page, I'll see that ABEBooks has the copy available right now starting at $550 which is less then it's been selling for on eBay That means it's a no brainer to go with ABE on this, instead of eBay
I'll also point out that if I was interested in the limited edition of the book, seeing that this isn't common on eBay I'd probably wind up buying from a bookstore even at a higher price (assuming it wasn't outrageously more expensive) because I don't want to go hunting on eBay for months before eventually finding a listing that I might not win anyway.
One last thing....
I haven't mentioned it before, but all features on the site, including the charts are fully compatible with the iphone and ipad, (it looks especially great on the ipad) enjoy guys!
Want to be notified about the latest news and updates?
New eBay sales charts!
Starting today, every "buy" page will feature a chart with historical eBay sales data. These charts currently go back about 6 months but will eventually cover a full year as time goes on. A program checks for new sales once per week and automatically updates the charts so you'll always have access to the most current data.
There is a forum topic up on the new chart if you have any questions or comments,
What the chart can help you do
You'll be able to easily see the average price any book sold for on eBay in a given month
You can see whether the price has been headed, down, or holding steady
You can see how frequently a specific book is sold on eBay
If you're thinking of selling your book on eBay, you'll see what other people have actually got for the same book
If you're looking to buy from eBay you can see if the current auction you're looking at is below or above the "average" historical sell price
Limitations of the chart
Info is pulled from only the title of an auction. If a person misspelled a book or otherwise mislabelled their title it won't be included
You can't see the number of sales each month that made up the average
You can't see each individual sale price that made up the average. (Example further down)
You can't see auction details that made up the sales. This is simply a data dump so you don't know details like
Reputation of the seller
Condition of the item
Shipping costs
How many bidders
If it was an auction style or buy-it-now
Any other auction details
This tool should be incredibly useful to anyone that buys or sells books. Heading over to check the chart before a purchase or sale to see actual mined data from eBay for an entire year is going to give you an excellent picture of where that lower value range of a book is.
I get e-mails all the time asking how much a person can expect to sell a book for, now you'll see it. If you want to post a book on the buy/sell forums you can now let people know what the book has been selling for on eBay
Because the data only tracks books that actually sold, you'll easily be able to see when there were no sales. This can be very useful when determining whether to keep hunting around on eBay every day or buy an in-stock book from a bookstore.
There are plenty of other ways the chart can help you, I"m sure you'll find the benefits quickly once you start using the charts on a regular basis.
Let's take a look at an example!
Here's the chart from the Talisman buy page. I've put comments and arrows here, rest assured the actual graph looks a bit less cluttered :) So what info can I see from here?
I can easily see that in February the average sale price for the limited edition was $620.86, and the gift edition sold for $120. (You could get a pop up with the gift edition price by hovering your mouse over the yellow bar, but it's not shown here)
I can also see that the gift edition has been selling every month and I can see the price peaked in December and has held pretty steady but has been trending down over the last 3 months. if I go to the actual live page, I see that the lowest abebook price is $200 which is almost a 70% premium over the eBay price. For a book that's showing up all the time, eBay it probably the way to go this month.
For the limited edition, I can see that there was a 5 month gap between sales, this let's me know that I may have to spend a lot of time keeping en eye on eBay for this book to pop up again at a decent price. if I go to the actual live page, I'll see that ABEBooks has the copy available right now starting at $550 which is less then it's been selling for on eBay That means it's a no brainer to go with ABE on this, instead of eBay
I'll also point out that if I was interested in the limited edition of the book, seeing that this isn't common on eBay I'd probably wind up buying from a bookstore even at a higher price (assuming it wasn't outrageously more expensive) because I don't want to go hunting on eBay for months before eventually finding a listing that I might not win anyway.
One last thing....
I haven't mentioned it before, but all features on the site, including the charts are fully compatible with the iphone and ipad, (it looks especially great on the ipad) enjoy guys!
