When we originally figured out (many years ago) that items sold to offers sent by sellers did not show the strike through on the price, that was a new option and there were basically only two options for selling with an offer. Now, there are a lot of nuances to selling with offers, and we don't really know how all the new variables in offer-sales are shown. So it may be that there are a lot of items being sold with offers now, but only a few are being sold in the way that is displayed with a strike-through.
I wanted to find out if the strike-through is NEVER appearing now, and that turns out not to be true. I ran a keyword search that I expected would give a large number of sold results (corningware cornflower, with best offer; 1400+ sold items) and in the first page of results, I found 2 sales with a strike-through, Best offer accepted (out of 60 total). They were both sold yesterday (Dec 10, 2024) so they are very recent.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=corningware+cornflower&LH_BO=1&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1
However, as I was investigating this and grabbing screenshots, I found out something new: the strike-through DOES NOT ALWAYS SHOW UP. It depends on how you search, or more technically on the codes in the URL, after the keywords.
The search above was for sold and completed items, with best offer, and the strike-through is shown.
This search below, was for sold items, with best offer, and the strike-through is NOT shown.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=corningware+cornflower&LH_BO=1&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1
Conclusions
- It does appear that eBay may have changed how the search results for items sold to an offer are shown. Items that are listed with best offer, may not always show the strike-through on the price even if they are sold to a best offer.
- In addition, the strike-through sometimes appears and sometimes does not, on the same listings, depending on how the sold items are searched for.
- There may be other things as well, that affect whether the strike-through appears or does not. I found one search factor, but I don't know that there aren't more.
- The presence or absence of a strike-through on the price in a sold-items search is not a reliable guide to whether an item sold to an offer or not (this has been true for quite a while).
This is not that unusual, though. eBay often makes unannounced changes to the site, and rarely explains or acknowledges the changes even when they are noticed by users.
eBay has never (to my knowledge) explained why some offer-sales show the strike-through, and some do not. Users have speculated that it is so that buyers will not come to expect that sellers will always accept less than the asking price. Or, to make the sold prices appear higher.
P.S. When I kept on looking through the results, I found several more "Best offer accepted" items with the strike-through, one on Dec. 7 and one on Nov 28, 2024. So that was 4 out of 480 or 0.83%, and it wasn't only high-priced items. For what that's worth.
...
I was able to confirm that the strike-through on the price can be seen on a search-by-seller (at least sometimes). I went to do a completed items search, with best offer, by the seller of the last item with a strike-through shown above, and was able to see that they have a fair number of items sold recently that show the strike-through. This is just a few of them, that fit into one screenshot.
