Price Guide inconsistencies

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ZufallX
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Price Guide inconsistencies

Post by ZufallX »

I noticed a few of the accumulated eBay listings that are contributing to the average value of an item are not what they say they are. The listing may say "complete" and it is in fact, not which throws the average values off. Example is the first listing for the GI Joe Darklon's Evader. Claims to be complete, but doesn't have the figures gun, which is the 2nd most sought after/expensive piece of the set.

Which brings me around to my question... Is there any way to flag those listings that aren't right and shouldn't be included?

And yes, it is under the "no package, complete" category, rather than being in the "figure only/incomplete" category, which really aught to be "No package, Incomplete", but hey, it's not my website :wink:

Might I recommend:

Sealed
Complete with package
Complete without package
Incomplete without package
I'm old enough to know that "Act your age" is only said by people who wish they didn't have to
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trance
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Re: Price Guide inconsistencies

Post by trance »

Hmmm....
i'm looking here

https://www.transformerland.com/price/G ... %20Darklon

but i don't see any listed as 'incomplete', and the chart only shows a black line ('complete').
Further, for clarity this price guide has nothing to do with eBay, it is solely showing sales of items priced by Transformerland.com that we have already shipped out.

Anyhow let me know and we'll see if we can go from there!
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ZufallX
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Re: Price Guide inconsistencies

Post by ZufallX »

trance wrote: Mon Nov 01, 2021 1:45 pm Hmmm....
i'm looking here

https://www.transformerland.com/price/G ... %20Darklon

but i don't see any listed as 'incomplete', and the chart only shows a black line ('complete').
Further, for clarity this price guide has nothing to do with eBay, it is solely showing sales of items priced by Transformerland.com that we have already shipped out.

Anyhow let me know and we'll see if we can go from there!
It isn't listed as incomplete but it clearly is, yet it's tallied in the complete category
I'm old enough to know that "Act your age" is only said by people who wish they didn't have to
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Time Traveller
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Re: Price Guide inconsistencies

Post by Time Traveller »

I see what you're saying. This is kind of an artifact of where our data on a for-sale figure is stored. The "toy type" (sealed,packaged complete, loose complete, figure only) is stored as a sort of primary key in our database, but the description is just stored as a text blob. We have chosen not to have a separate PK for "incomplete" for a few reasons.
1) "Incomplete" could still generate a bimodal price graph. I'm guessing you're a Joe guy, so I'll make a Joe example. A Mauler MBT missing Heavy-Metal's microphone is incomplete, and worth, let's say, $200. That same Mauler with the mic but missing a mudflap is incomplete but worth $500, cus you could probably pick up the mudflap for $5.
2) Even if we separate out all the incompletes, complete prices can still look somewhat bimodal. This doesn't happen nearly as often with GI Joe, but G1 Transformers vary by up to a factor of 2 in some cases: We recently sold a c8 Devastator complete for $145. Two weeks prior, we sold a near mint one with unused papers for $250.

In the end, I think the bigger source of inaccuracies are rapid price growth of 1980s toys in the last two years (check out this graph!), and low sample size (Darklon's Evader). I don't see an Evader in our sales history missing his rifle, so the one you see on ebay might be someone else's. Our price charts only show items we have sold on the website or our ebay store.

Either way, thank you for your astute observation. We do try to course correct based on user input like yours, but in this case, we had previously considered which way to handle this and decided to deal with the flaws of lumping "complete minus one part" into the same pricing average. Now you know a little more about the machinery of the site, and hopefully that will make our price charts more useful to you :D
Lastly, I am far less experience with GI Joe than with Transformers and robots, so if you ever see an item I've listed as "complete" is missing something, feel free to yell at me :wink:
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