Searching Closed eBay Auctions

The cheapest (but not necessarily the easiest) way to research auction pricing is to do it yourself, using eBay's search feature. The downside to this method is that it's labor intensive; you'll have to perform a number of manual searches and then crunch all the numbers yourself. The upside is that the only cost is your time.

Performing the Search

Extracting sales data from eBay is very much a manual process. You have to use eBay's search pages and then comb the results for the information you need. Here's how to do it.

Note

You can limit your search to specific product categories by making a selection from the Category list.

Start by clicking the Advanced Search link at the top of any eBay page. (You don't want to use the standard Search box; it won't provide the fine-tuned results you need.) When the Find Items page appears, as shown in Figure 2.1, enter one or more keywords into the Enter Keyword or Item Number box. Thenand this is the important partcheck the Completed Listings Only option. When you click the Search button at the bottom of the page, eBay will display your results on a separate search results page.

Figure 2.1. Use eBay's Find Items page to list auctions of specific merchandise.

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The key point here is to search for completed auctions only. You don't want to search in-process auctions because you don't know what the final selling prices will be until the auction closes. When you search completed auctions, you'll have all the information you needincluding the final selling price.

Extracting the Data

When the search results page appears, it's time to get your fingers dirty. You'll need to click through each of the auctions listed and write down the following:

Starting price
Final selling price
Number of bids

Note

Make sure you include only those auctions that closely match the type of item you want to sell. For example, if you're selling new merchandise, don't include auctions for used items; if you're selling in lots of 10, don't include single-item auctions.

It's best to enter this information into an Excel spreadsheet, with one row for each completed auction and a column for each of the parameters. If the auction ended without a sale, enter "0" for both the final selling price and number of bids.

Analyzing the Data

Once you've gathered your data, it's time to analyze it. Here are some things to look at:

Total the number of items listed within the given time period.
Calculate the percentage of successful auctions by manually counting the number of auctions that had a winning bid and dividing by the total number of auctions.
Look at the range of prices by sorting the list in order of highest selling price.
Add a new column to calculate the ratio of final selling to starting price; fill the column by dividing the final selling price column by the starting price column.
Calculate an average selling price for those items that closed successfully.

Fun, eh? Well, it gets better. The search you just did captures only auctions that closed in the past 15 days or so. (That's the longest eBay keeps this information for public consumption.) You'll want to supplement this data with more recent auctions, so you should repeat this search on a weekly basis. This way you can capture any pricing trends over time.

Using the Data

After you've assembled your analysis of these auction results, you can use your analysis to determine whether a given category is a good one or not. Skip to the "Determining Your Business Model" section, later in this chapter, to learn more.

Searching Closed eBay Auctions