Understanding eBay Sold Items Prices

[mountainmommie]

I sold one item of several I had available last week. When I lowered the price of the remaining available, it changed the price of my sold item to that same adjusted number. It isn't an accurate representation of what the item sold for. Does anybody know what eBay is trying to do by representing this sold price rather than the higher actual sold price? I considered the idea that since they share an ID#, the sold price would adjust as the current price, but upon future revisions of the available items, the sold price has not shifted with it.

Thanks, 

Jackie

[iamalwaysright]

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@mountainmommie wrote:

When I lowered the price of the remaining available, it changed the price of my sold item to that same adjusted number.

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Where? I'm assuming this is a multi-quantity listing. Where is the price of your sold item being displayed that you are referring to? In your Seller Hub "all orders" page?

[mountainmommie]

Yes, it was (I ended the listing until I can get a better understanding of this) a multi-quantity listing.

The correct sold price is in my SH but incorrect in search sold.

[iamalwaysright]

Are you referring to the keyword search with the "sold" filter on?

If so, I believe that ebay just shows the most recent (or current if the listing is still live) listed price on those results and not what price it sold for.

Take this listing for example (random listing, not one of mine)

You can see the prices shown on the results is 11.69 to 16.19. When you look at the listing itself below you'll see that it's selling shirts priced from 11.69 to 16.19. That isn't an indication that they sold shirts at those prices today, it's just the current price.

You see this here in the purchase history of it that they didn't sell anything 16.19 today. There's a 12.59 in there though.

Regardless, what ebay is doing here isn't really affecting your listings. If you're worried about it I guess you can always end the listing before you change the price so it'll show the actual sold price in the keyword search results. You'll have difficulty doing this if you have multi variation listings with different priced variations though.

[mountainmommie]

First, thanks for the great info. I get what you're saying. I don't think I realized that sold item prices are really reflections of what is "currently available" prices. Kinda defeats the purpose of sold prices, but okay.

My example is the Rubbermaid sink mat that shows sold at $19.99 but really sold for $26. I was already the lowest price available at the time. It affects my listings only to the extent that anyone who searches for 'ended recently' prices now has the expectation of the mat being priced at or below $19.99. Guess I just realized I'm in a race against myself ... to the bottom. That's not good. 😱

Thank you.

[iamalwaysright · Accepted solution]

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@mountainmommie wrote:

Kinda defeats the purpose of sold prices, but okay. Yea, that's true if you look at it that way.

My example is the Rubbermaid sink mat that shows sold at $19.99 but really sold for $26. I was already the lowest price available at the time. It affects my listings only to the extent that anyone who searches for 'ended recently' prices now has the expectation of the mat being priced at or below $19.99. Guess I just realized I'm in a race against myself ... to the bottom. That's not good. 😱 Yup. Everything on ebay is a race to the bottom.

Thank you.

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[richard1rst]

It was always my understanding that the Items Sold column was to help potential sellers see what the market price is. If you sold, for example, more than one item only one item would show, not all of the sales. Again, I understood it was to show current pricing not an actual list of all sales. So when you discounted the price it may have automatically changed the sales price because now you are saying that the new lower price is the "current" retail price.

But, admittedly, this is just a guess.

[mountainmommie]

I think it was and still is ... kinda.  It was particularly painful for me because I was the lowest price in the market and then by lowering the price beyond that, I unknowingly set a new lower expectation. Naughty GenXer.

[jg.mason]

I thought the sold listings were showing you recently sold items and what they sold for. If they're showing some average of active listed and recently sold items what's the point, that sold price becomes worthless information.

I'm going to have to make note of this and see what happens to the sold price when I relist something I have multiples of. Problem is I usually up my price if the first one sells relatively quick.

[deosil111]

Probably cuz a lot of people including me check sold prices to determine how to price their exact or similar item. Now that eBay charges $ for researching sold prices, they have to confuse people who previously used free sold or completed prices to price their item so they don’t give away something for free that they’re trying to get you to pay for. Greedy huh?

[m*and*l*sales]

eBay is charging to search "SOLD" and "COMPLETED" prices now?  When did that start?  I've been doing it all along, but not for the past several days, or maybe nearly a week. 

[slippinjimmy]

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@deosil111 wrote:

Probably cuz a lot of people including me check sold prices to determine how to price their exact or similar item. Now that eBay charges $ for researching sold prices, they have to confuse people who previously used free sold or completed prices to price their item so they don’t give away something for free that they’re trying to get you to pay for. Greedy huh?

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They DO NOT, I have no idea where you got the idea that they do.

@mountainmommie 

The best way to research sold prices is to use the tool designed for that purpose:

https://www.ebay.com/sh/research

[jg.mason]

The best way to research sold prices is to use the tool designed for that purpose:

https://www.ebay.com/sh/research

I don't know about that. I just went there and searched an item it came back with 23 sold results in the last 90 days.

I then searched the same item from the search bar and used the sold items filter, it came back with a total 900+ results, I counted 11 results just for today.

[slippinjimmy]

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@jg.mason wrote:

The best way to research sold prices is to use the tool designed for that purpose:

https://www.ebay.com/sh/research

I don't know about that. I just went there and searched an item it came back with 23 sold results in the last 90 days.

I then searched the same item from the search bar and used the sold items filter, it came back with a total 900+ results, I counted 11 results just for today.

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Did you have the filters set correctly?

The default might only be for 30 days (can be set for up to 3 years) and also it likely defaulted to listings placed on .com which would exclude listings sold to US buyers but originally listed on a different eBay site.

While neither the regular Sold Listings or Product Research are perfect the major issues with looking at the usual sold listings is that they are limited to 90 days, shows listing that were never paid for and doesn't show the correct pricing if an offer was involved.

[jg.mason]

I do see one reason to use product research tough. If I was listing an item that had no active listings and no sold listings in the last 90 days then I could use product research to look back beyond 90 days and possibly find a price.

The vast majority of the time I'm listing something that other people are selling so I'm going to base my price on the active listings so the only research I need to do is skim over the active listings.

I did set product research to 90 days. I can't figure out why sold listings is coming up with 900 and product research is only coming up with 23. I might be missing something, maybe not a specific enough search. I used "corelle golden butterfly"