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How do I figure out what something's worth on eBay?I've been trying to sell some stuff on eBay and always seem to price things too high, I guess. At least, I rarely get a bid on my sale items. Is there some technique for figuring out how much something is commonly selling for on eBay? There are actually two ways that you can use eBay to figure out the going price for something: the average "Buy It Now" price on auctions still running (people who use those are usually pretty confident that they've pegged either the going market price or just a wee bit lower than the going rate) or looking at just completed auctions. Let's check out the Edirol R-1, a nice little Mp3 recorder that I'm interested in selling on eBay myself. A quick search for Edirol R-1 reveals that there are just a couple for sale: ![]() As you can see the first one is current bid up to $304 and the second has a Buy It Now of $349.99, so it's a reasonably safe first guess that about $350 is the going price for this item. On the left side, however, there are additional search options that are well worth checking out: ![]() As you can see, I've checked "Completed listings". That's all there is to digging up auctions that have already finished up on eBay. Just click "Show Items" to do the completed items search, and we find: ![]() This is darn useful: the average completed item sale price was about $250, though the price varied dramatically with a low of $254 and a high of $438 (which included a spare 1GB card). That last one is worth examining closely because in fact a 1GB Compact Flash card at Amazon.com is only $29.95, so if adding a $29.95 item can result in the auction closing for over $100 more than the typical value of the device, I'd say it's a smart step to add it! At this point, I like to actually review the items that had the highest sale prices, to see what categories they used, note the key words in the title, and even examine the picture. Whatever they've done, that's what you should do too to maximize your sale value! Finally, to come around to your original question, you can see that if the average item closes for a certain price, you want to have your opening bid for your own item below that point. In this case, if the opening bid were $350, say, we'd be pretty unlikely to get any bids and the auction would likely close without a winner. You might also consider starting your auction quite a bit lower than what you believe is the going price, trusting that the auction process itself will bid the price up to the going rate in the marketplace. Indeed, when you're looking at a completed auction, you can see the bidding history by clicking on "XX bids" in the top section, like the "28 bids" in this auction: ![]() Here's just a small subset of the entire bid history: ![]() Notice the opening bid? $1.00. And this auction ended at $307.00. Kinda makes me think of Dirty Harry: "D'ya feel lucky, seller? Do ya?" This interesting article was original written by Chuck Eglinton, contributing editor to AskDaveTaylor. Thanks for your help, Chuck!
Categorized:
Auctions and Online Shopping
(Article 6849,
Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: auction strategies, ebay, edirol mp3 recorder, online auctions Previous: How do I copy YouTube videos from other bloggers? Next: Where can I get my broken Sony PSP fixed? Subscribe!
I have a set of Starbucks To Go Cup Ornaments from Starbucks. One of the cups has the logo printed backwords, any idea what I should list it for on ebay? Posted by: Shaine at November 29, 2006 9:55 AMI'm afraid I have no idea about that, Shaine. I'd just try digging around with Google to see if you can find any mention of these misprinted ornaments and hopefully you can get a sense of their worth. Good luck! Posted by: Dave Taylor at November 29, 2006 10:08 AMI was wondering if you have any idea what several There is another way, you can go to a site like www.pricicle.com and just type in what it is you are thinking of selling. They store all of the sold prices from recent months on all kinds of eBay items then present you with the top price and average price of that item. It's free too. Posted by: Andy at May 21, 2008 7:24 AMI have silver dollars and ben franklin half dollars. How can I find out what they are worth before I sell them ? Posted by: Dick at December 30, 2008 1:43 PMThere is a site out there called www.ValueJockey.com. You can post something up and other members will tell you what it is worth. You may also get some good selling tips. Posted by: Mark at April 29, 2009 7:35 AMI have a original Nashville Predators Jersey (1998) with all the team signatures on it and have no clue what it is worth. Can you help? Rhonda, what I did was go to eBay and search for "Nashville Predators Jersey signed", just to find six listings that match, each with a buy-it-now price of about $175. That doesn't mean that's what it's worth, however, so what you should do from there is check the "closed auctions" and see what these *sold for* rather than just were listed. You could also check with a sports memorabilia store too, if you have any in your area. Try the phone book or (of course) Google. Good luck! Posted by: Dave Taylor at June 10, 2009 8:06 AMHi I have a 1978 Indian Moped (4 Stroke) I would like to know its value. Can you please help. Just a rough estimate of what the top dollar it would run for. Its in great condition, runs great, is battery and gas powered and also has the pedal option too. I have it for a long time and decided to dig it out of the garage and start askin a few questions about whats its vaule is...thanks for whatever help you can offer me! have 6 pokemon gold balls from burger king in origional packaging want know what they would be worth on ebay. Posted by: shelly morehouse at July 14, 2011 7:28 AMI have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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