eBay Listings - Rarity Rating
Summary: mr_lincoln suggested adding a Rarity Rating to eBay listings to help buyers find unique items faster, using factors like the number of listings and historical sales data. shire123 questioned how to objectively determine rarity and expressed skepticism about a consensus being reached, pointing out the difficulty in verifying the number of items produced. vietcoinscollection highlighted the misuse of "rare" in listings with an eBay search result comparison. gurlcat supported the idea, noting other sites use rarity metrics successfully. tobaccocardyahoo mentioned selling rare items outside of eBay to avoid fees and achieve better valuations.
The idea of a Rarity Rating on eBay listings stems from seeing the NEW listing tag on eBay listings. It might be beneficial for certain categories and items to have a Rarity Rating on them or a RARE tag. The Advanced filtering system could have a filter for this too similar to "newly listed". This system could consider factors such as the number of similar listings available, item age, and historical sales data. The idea is to allow potential Buyers who are really interested in rare, unique or one-of-a-kind items to find them more quickly which could potentially enhance both the Selling and Buying experience.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 month agoThe rarest and most valuable items I acquire for resale are not offered on Ebay. I pick up my telephone, and call a collector or dealer I believe will be interested. No fees. No hassle.
Many of these items have never appeared on Ebay, and are not in terapeak. Or if they are, are highly undervalued because the they were missing either a knowledgeable seller or a knowledgeable buyer.
I think many of us who can find the truly rare items, have other ways to sell them. And do not trust the wide variations in Ebay auction results.
gurlcat
·1 month agoI like this idea and it IS doable. A couple of other collectible sites already have a rarity metric:
Discogs for records/CD's, etc.
Numista for coins
eBay could do it with its' own in-house research tool, which goes back 3 years. Would it be perfect? No. Would it be mostly right and pretty cool? I think so!
mr_lincoln
OP1 month ago · Edited@gurlcat
That's good information, I just learned something new, thank you!
When I am shopping for new inventory I always keep an eye out for stuff I know is rare or unique and if I can get it for a good price to resell it is always worth it.
vietcoinscollection
·1 month agoI did a search for "rare" on eBay and there are 22 million + items.
I did a search for "not rare" and there are 191 items.
It seems that not rare items are much rarer than rare items on eBay.
mr_lincoln
OP1 month ago@vietcoinscollection
Wow, I just did a "rare" search and 16 million items came up. Hmmm, can there be that many rare items or are Sellers using the word to drive traffic? It makes me wonder.
shire123
·1 month agoBut how do you determine rarity? That seems to be largely an opinion.
mr_lincoln
OP1 month ago@shire123
Any suggestions on that would be great to hear, in general and as perhaps as a staring point, " ... This system could consider factors such as the number of similar listings available, item age, and historical sales data. ..."
shire123
·1 month agoTo be truly rare there needs to be OBJECTIVE data out there to determine rarity. And there needs to be an agreement as to a number for rarity. 10 in existence. 100 in existence, etc. I seriously doubt any consensus can be reached on that. I
I have an art glass item that was an edition of only 10. I think that would qualify as rare. But a limited edition of 1000 of an item probably would not.
And you can't use "listings" to determine rarity. ebay isn't the only place on the planet that an item could be for sale.
I do laugh when I see the word, rare, in a title.
mr_lincoln
OP1 month ago@shire123
Excellent points. I actually use the word "RARE" in titles when I see that very few if any are 1) listed for sale on eBay or 2) have sold in the last 90 days. Granted that may be a little subjective basing my use of RARE just off 90 days of eBay sales history and who has them to sell as part of the criteria but that is what I do.
You hit on a good point about the KNOWN number of an item's manufactured. In my categories that is virtually impossible to find or know. Occasionally I query that info but it seldom pans out to any tangible data.