GPA Analysis and Past eBay Sales No Longer Accurate, Warning! 4 4

[WoWitHurts]

3 hours ago, Woooooo! said:

This does not happen.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIANT-SIZE-X-MEN-1-8-0-1ST-NEW-X-MEN-CREAM-TO-WHITE-PAGES-1975-/371821286126?hash=item56924692ee%3Ag%3AsB4AAOSw241YXFTm&nma=true&si=s3eXH0XHr9EMGoHdM%2F5UtgS%2Bpw8%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

 

I know this is six months old but I pulled it from a conversation I had with George.  At the time it took about 5 minutes to find an example of a book with no CGC mentioned in the title. Definitely a book people are interested in stats for.

[comicquant]

22 hours ago, Tony S said:

Well, as someone that pays $119 a year for a subscription to GPA, I find this information both new and unsettling. I thought that on BIN's and offers, GPA ultimately recorded the actual sale price as reported to them by eBay.  I don't want pricing data that is skewed on the high side by recording BIN prices never actually achieved.  

I maintain that paying customers of GPA are better served by a smaller data set of sales that consists of high quality data than a larger data set that is of lower quality data.  GPA should exclude sales where they cannot be confident that was in fact the price paid.  As a paying subscriber, I''ll be emailing them my concerns. 

The developers at GPA have the ability to pull the net price from eBay's developer API.  They need to update their process.  Actually they need to update their entire site.  

[Squad008]

15 minutes ago, comicquant said:

The developers at GPA have the ability to pull the net price from eBay's developer API.  They need to update their process.  Actually they need to update their entire site.  

If that is true, not only do they need to update the software but the software upgrade would make a GPA subscription a must so buyers know the actual sales prices on BIN sales. ebay clearly has no interest in disclosing this information.

[Capt.Stubing]

25 minutes ago, Squad008 said:

If that is true, not only do they need to update the software but the software upgrade would make a GPA subscription a must so buyers know the actual sales prices on BIN sales. ebay clearly has no interest in disclosing this information.

Doesn't watchcount show you actual prices on BINs?

[comicwiz]

If what is being described here is accurate and I'm understanding the issue here correctly, a call to eBay's API under GetBestOffer reference guide would not produce the hidden accepted offer price because eBay's site is treating it like a data field that only the seller and winning bidder should know. This is the problem, not any site interfacing with eBay's API. The motivation and reason for eBay to do this is far more compelling to me, and requires some explanation from eBay as it would knowingly be allowing calls to it's API to return false information.

Edited August 22, 2017 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

3 minutes ago, Capt.Stubing said:

Doesn't watchcount show you actual prices on BINs?

Not on items which have been processed through eBay's best offer feature - i.e. a lower offer than the posted BIN is accepted, but only the original BIN price is shown.

[Capt.Stubing]

2 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

Not on items which have been processed through eBay's best offer feature - i.e. a lower offer than the posted BIN is accepted, but only the original BIN price is shown.

Huh. I thought the whole point of Watchcount was that it shows the actual price paid when a BO is accepted?

Edited August 22, 2017 by Capt.Stubing

[comicquant]

Its not shown to users but their developer API gives the devs the ability to capture that data.  It may be in the newest version of the API.  I'll have to find it.  Its in here I just need to sift through the available filters.  

https://developer.ebay.com/Devzone/finding/CallRef/fieldindex.html#FieldIn

Edited August 22, 2017 by comicquant

[comicwiz]

10 minutes ago, Capt.Stubing said:

Huh. I thought the whole point of Watchcount was that it shows the actual price paid when a BO is accepted?

PKJ posted earlier in this thread about an ASM 3 he purchased that is not indicative of the BIN price being reported, and watchcount only shows the BIN/full asking on this auction. See below:

On 21/08/2017 at 9:20 AM, PKJ said:

I won this book last month. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amazing-Spider-Man-3-CGC-5-5-OW-W-1963-Doctor-Octopus-Origin-first-appearance/222589211764?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

$1399 was the BIN, you can see it on GPA and I did not pay 1399 for it for sure.

The watchcount result shows $1399

Edited August 22, 2017 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

11 minutes ago, comicquant said:

Its only shown to users but their developer API gives the devs the ability to capture that data.  It may be in the newest version of the API.  I'll have to find it.  Its in here I just need to sift through the available filters.  

https://developer.ebay.com/Devzone/finding/CallRef/fieldindex.html#FieldIndex

This may be so, and I'd have to look into this further myself to confirm. However eBay always had a backdoor method of retrieving this data without the need for the API. Now you can't seem to make the call through either method.

It might be watchcount was doing it sans API and that's why it has been so inconsistent for as long as I've been noticing, but I don't see it being a result eBay is producing at all if it's showing BIN/full asking rather than an accepted offer, and the only people privy to this info are the buyers/sellers.

[comicquant]

Just now, comicwiz said:

PKJ posted earlier in this thread that an ASM he purchased that is not indicative of the BIN, and watchcount only shows the BIN/full asking on this auction. See below:

The watchcount result shows $1399

I'm talking about something completely different than just data available to everyday users.  The API makes this data available...  GPA's devs need to update their process to pull the net sales price as opposed to the BIN price.  So what I'm trying to point out is that GPA can make this right.  

[comicquant]

1 minute ago, comicwiz said:

This may be so, and I'd have to look into this further myself to confirm. However eBay always had a backdoor method of retrieving this data without the need for the API. Now you can't seem to make the call through either method.

It might be watchcount was doing it sans API and that's why it has been so inconsistent for as long as I've been noticing, but I don't see it being a result eBay is producing at all if it's showing BIN/full asking rather than an accepted offer, and the only people privy to this info are the buyers/sellers.

I think watchcount is probably pulling the wrong info as well.  A lot of these shops that have been around for awhile just do persisted search scrapes which won't give any of the underlying data.

[Capt.Stubing]

7 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

PKJ posted earlier in this thread that an ASM he purchased that is not indicative of the BIN, and watchcount only shows the BIN/full asking on this auction. See below:

The watchcount result shows $1399

Was PKJ's book a BIN that offered BO? That completed auction page doesn't look right to me. Did they do this deal through private messages and the dealer just ended the auction??

Edited August 22, 2017 by Capt.Stubing

[comicwiz]

Just now, comicquant said:

I think watchcount is probably pulling the wrong info as well.  A lot of these shops that have been around for awhile just do persisted search scrapes which won't give any of the underlying data.

Yes, the only thing worth noting is watchcount did have a method of retrieving data from the purchase history, which I believe was only retrieved through eBay's API. It's not to say it couldn't be done through scraping, but there was a layer of consistency with this as a form of redundancy when eBay's site wasn't properly reporting the best offer price, and showed full asking/BIN.

That feature no longer producing the correct results through watchcount either, and only reiterating what non-winning bidder or non-user referencing the auction listing would see.

[comicwiz]

5 minutes ago, Capt.Stubing said:

Was PKJ's book a BIN that offered BO? That completed auction page doesn't look right to me. Did they do this deal through private messages and the dealer just ended the auction??

I'm not sure about the transactional details, but if an auction is ended early or a deal is taken off eBay, it wouldn't display the Sold for: field with the price. Before this discovery, that Sold for: field, according to eBay's GetBestOffer reference, would have a method of calling the best offer/accepted offer, and now it is only showing the BIN price.

Edited August 22, 2017 by comicwiz

[comicwiz]

Here's something I noticed. There's a site called picclick.ca that aggregates results based on keywords. It's a decent tool to quickly research comparables, and I noticed when I ran two separate searches on ASM 3, the insight matrix (which is a feature that charts past sales) excluded the ASM 3 sale PKJ reported. That listing for the ASM 3 CGC 5.5 ended July 21st and is around the 30-day period, so it's not like it would have excluded it because it's too old, so I wonder if they are omiting/excluding results based on a specific call they've refined to eliminate reporting issues on final values they know about and/or other eBay data reliability issues.

[PKJ]

27 minutes ago, Capt.Stubing said:

Was PKJ's book a BIN that offered BO? That completed auction page doesn't look right to me. Did they do this deal through private messages and the dealer just ended the auction??

It was a Best offer book. 

[ComicConnoisseur]

This is a very informative thread. I would imagine this data also affects all collectibles(starwars action figures,lego,video games, etc...) on Ebay and not just comic books.

Edited August 22, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[thirdgreenham]

16 hours ago, Tony S said:

Once again, Comicwiz lives up to his name.  

We can't really do anything about eBay's behavior,  but paying customers ought to have some influence with GPA.  I'm repeating myself, but GPA customers will be much better served by a small high quality data set of comic sales than a larger - maybe much larger - data set that is has much lower quality data.  If there is no way to be certain that data captured out of eBay BIN sales is accurate,  better to just exclude it.

eBay is a HUGE source of data, due to the volume alone, so I wouldn't dare think of excluding it.

If GPA is in danger of losing customers due to this new practice of eBay's, I would think it's in @gpanalysis (George's) best interest to reach out to eBay regarding this problem.

[VintageComics]

On 8/21/2017 at 8:18 AM, WoWitHurts said:

GPA has never been the Gospel and I can go find inaccuracies at any time. GPA is a good tool but you as a buyer/seller need to do your own due diligence and buy/sale at what you think is fair.  One seller I know ties their for sale books to GPA but regularly ask 30% more of last 90 day average. So I imagine they are using other sources also to set price (or just gouging lol).

What you point out is just another reason not to accept GPA as gospel. It is a good starting point though.

This is very different than GPA being Gospel.

It's now recording erroneous prices which skew data even worse than anything previous.

And I've noticed that several sellers are specifically looking for GPA highs on their goods, making it even more difficult to buy books at reasonable prices.

This is not good.