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"Pre-auction guesses" on ComicArtTracker
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32 posts in this topic

Pre-auction guesses have been a hot topic these days, so I thought ComicArtTracker would be a good place for all of us to do this...

I've implemented an unofficial feature that everybody can play easily. The whole game is in 3 steps:

  1. Up to 2 days before the auction closes, anybody (logged in to ComicArtTracker) can place guesses on one or several items. These guesses are private... no one else can see them. But everyone can see how many guesses have been made on each listing, including yours.
  2. Guesses are locked 2 days before the auction closes.
  3. After the auction closes, as soon as results are available, the 3 closest guesses for each item are disclosed with the winners' username. A top ranking table also displays the best guessers on the whole auction (with each user given a score.)

If you want to play, I propose that we start on these two Heritage auctions (and I can also make sure everything is working smoothly!) --
http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-24/guess
http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-25/guess

So, let the guessing games begin! Good luck!  

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The first try did not really attract crowds of players , but technically it works :)

Results are here, best overall guesser is NSNArt: http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-24/guess

 

Let's try again on the next 12/31 Heritage auction, ending in 4 days 1/2 (which means that we have 3 days 1/2 to add our guesses - I changed the page to lock 24h before the auction ends and not 48h anymore) : 

http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-31/guess

 

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1 hour ago, NicoV said:

The first try did not really attract crowds of players , but technically it works :)

Results are here, best overall guesser is NSNArt: http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-24/guess

 

Let's try again on the next 12/31 Heritage auction, ending in 4 days 1/2 (which means that we have 3 days 1/2 to add our guesses - I changed the page to lock 24h before the auction ends and not 48h anymore) : 

http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-31/guess

 

Perhaps too advanced (rather requiring too much 'free' effort on your part) but maybe you could add a handicapping feature? Say, anybody can place guesses 4 days out, but after that each day closer (and thus with more information to educate one's guess) 1/3 is taken away as a penalty? This would encourage earlier participation and eliminate some of the second-guessing that comes in as one "feels" a certain way but the pre-auction bidding is contrary (already at/near/higher than one's "feel") and thus skews one's pure white box guess? Just a thought... :) 

Anyway, super cool NicoV. You already know I'm a big fan (and user) and now I'm an even bigger fan.

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I just put in a guess for 3 or 4 lots. I looked at the previous results and whoa, there was a whole lot of under- and over-guessing...sometimes by the thousands of dollars. I made estimates for art that I kind of follow because of my interests, but there aren't a whole lot of recent comps for. Take for example that Texeira He-Man comic page. I would've estimated the hammer price at $250, but it's already at $225. Something like that is anyone's guess.

Anyway, is there a simple way to explain the points system for right and wrong guesses?

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6 hours ago, vodou said:

Perhaps too advanced (rather requiring too much 'free' effort on your part) but maybe you could add a handicapping feature? Say, anybody can place guesses 4 days out, but after that each day closer (and thus with more information to educate one's guess) 1/3 is taken away as a penalty? This would encourage earlier participation and eliminate some of the second-guessing that comes in as one "feels" a certain way but the pre-auction bidding is contrary (already at/near/higher than one's "feel") and thus skews one's pure white box guess? Just a thought... :) 

I could do that, but I don't want to frighten any potential player with complex "rules". The simpler the better. Or as we say in French: "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien". 

 

3 hours ago, Jay Olie Espy said:

Anyway, is there a simple way to explain the points system for right and wrong guesses?

Technically speaking, it's a root-mean-square deviation. For each of your guesses, I calculate the error as a percentage of the real final price. If the final price is 1000 and your guess was 900 or 1100, in both cases your error is 10%. If you made several guesses, I calculate an "average error" using a root-mean-square deviation formula which is slightly more complex than a basic average (sum of your errors divided by number of guesses). This formula gives a higher weight to bigger errors. Then, as a score of 0.10 or 0.20 is not really appealing, I just reverse it (1000/x) to have scores around 100-1000. I think we can consider 1000 as a really good score, it means that your average error is less than 10% ... 

Hope I did not lose too many potential players with my explanations. And if you did not understand them, no worries, let's consider it as a magical formula :bigsmile:

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13 hours ago, NicoV said:

The first try did not really attract crowds of players , but technically it works :)

Results are here, best overall guesser is NSNArt: http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-24/guess

 It wasn't guessing, Sir  :sumo:

 

 

 

 

:jokealert:

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Anybody know what the requested format is for the numbers? I've tried multiple times to save my guesses, but I keep getting a "match requested format" message. I've tried with & without dollar sign, with and without decimal. Using Safari, if that means anything.

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1 hour ago, drdroom said:

Anybody know what the requested format is for the numbers? I've tried multiple times to save my guesses, but I keep getting a "match requested format" message. I've tried with & without dollar sign, with and without decimal. Using Safari, if that means anything.

Hmm. I just typed in "350", etc. Also using Safari. 

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2 hours ago, drdroom said:

Anybody know what the requested format is for the numbers? I've tried multiple times to save my guesses, but I keep getting a "match requested format" message. I've tried with & without dollar sign, with and without decimal. Using Safari, if that means anything.

Just numbers. The currency will be the auction currency, and I did not consider decimals as really useful. No thousands separator.

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On 12/27/2017 at 12:21 PM, NicoV said:

I could do that, but I don't want to frighten any potential player with complex "rules". The simpler the better. Or as we say in French: "le mieux est l'ennemi du bien". 

 

Technically speaking, it's a root-mean-square deviation. For each of your guesses, I calculate the error as a percentage of the real final price. If the final price is 1000 and your guess was 900 or 1100, in both cases your error is 10%. If you made several guesses, I calculate an "average error" using a root-mean-square deviation formula which is slightly more complex than a basic average (sum of your errors divided by number of guesses). This formula gives a higher weight to bigger errors. Then, as a score of 0.10 or 0.20 is not really appealing, I just reverse it (1000/x) to have scores around 100-1000. I think we can consider 1000 as a really good score, it means that your average error is less than 10% ... 

Hope I did not lose too many potential players with my explanations. And if you did not understand them, no worries, let's consider it as a magical formula :bigsmile:

I think it'll take some time for this to pick up some traction. Right now it's the holidays and most people have an extra distraction or two. I don't see why this wouldn't be popular during the "Featured" auctions. What I like about this is that I can see my guesses be quantified, which is like giving me a grade, or batting average, for the intuition I have for the market. And just to say it, what I like about @Lee B. preauction estimates are his analysis and links to comps. :headbang:

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13 hours ago, NicoV said:

Just numbers. The currency will be the auction currency, and I did not consider decimals as really useful. No thousands separator.

I thought I tried that, but I guess not! Guesses entered. I resisted the temptation to run up a huge score by only guessing on items no one else had bothered with:angel:

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19 hours ago, drdroom said:

I thought I tried that, but I guess not! Guesses entered. I resisted the temptation to run up a huge score by only guessing on items no one else had bothered with:angel:

If you guess on items no one else had, you'll be 1st for each of them... but it won't change anything to the top ranking, which is solely based on the differences between your guesses and the final prices. :nyah:

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On 12/29/2017 at 9:48 AM, NicoV said:

If you guess on items no one else had, you'll be 1st for each of them... but it won't change anything to the top ranking, which is solely based on the differences between your guesses and the final prices. :nyah:

Ah, you've outsmarted me already...

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Happy New Year to all of you!

Results are available for this end-of-year Heritage auction: 

http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2017-12-31/guess

lbjefferies wins (with only 1 guess... when there will be more players, I'll probably restrict the global ranking table to people with at least 3 contributions). We were all completely out for the most expensive lots. Does it mean that it was a quite strong auction for sellers? hm

Don't know if we should play on each auction, or only on big ones, but bets are open for the next Heritage auction:

http://comicarttracker.com/en/heritage-auctions/2018-01-07/guess

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I got killed in this go-round. I went conservative on these New Year's Eve auctions but it turns out that the holiday didn't have a negative effect. Maybe too many people bored at home waiting, killing time until festivities? I also certainly won't be guessing until close to deadline too. Well, here's Mr. Excuses doing some Monday Morning Quarterbacking:

Transformers #29, p. 18: My guess, $400; Hammer: $657.25. My guess that having a Transformer on every panel brought a premium.

MOTU: He-Man Meets Ram-Man: My guess, $525; Hammer: $896.25. Considering that a Texeira He-Man cover just recently sold for about $1800, I consider this a strong price for a panel page. I don't see many of these pages pop-up, so that might have been it, and perhaps nostalgia and possibly a "first appearance" page.

Dennis the Menace daily: My guess, $375; Hammer: $1,015.75. I thought Ketcham art cooled down so I took that into consideration plus the holiday. There were two other guesses and none came close. I account the strong price to it being a funny gag plus it's a clean page. The Ketchams I've seen lately have had some bad toning and unappealing inscriptions.

Marvel Fanfare #4, p. 3 (Michael Golden and Deathlok): My guess, $450; Hammer: $1015.25. I know nothing about the Michael Golden market so I had no business guessing. I'm sure this brought my average down.

 

Well, I look forward to next week as I'll be guessing on the plethora of Curt Swan pages.

 

 

 

 

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I put in my guesses for all the Curt Swans and the He-Man promo. That Swan is a tough nut to crack with all the different inkers. That Superman 267 page sold in November for $2,035 and yet it's sitting right now at $195. Gulp.

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