eBay's Trending Price

[savanna.dance]

Can someone tell me how eBay figures the trending price? Is it based on averaging sold prices or on current asking prices?

If sold prices, does that mean completed transactions or just listings that have been "bought" either through BIN or auction.

Thanks in advance 🙂

[swenson8781]

I wouldn't dare try to guess how they figure anything out!!  Let alone what the 'trending price' for an item is.  

I haven't seen that pop up in awhile though.  I think it used to come up as a bubble just above the price box, would drive me crazy as it was always super low.  Which leads me to believe their method might be ineffective anyways 😉 

[ted_200]

In theory, it should only include actual sales (not listing prices), and should include auctions and BIN.

I have found their "Trending Prices" to be wildly ridiculous, usually because they rely on their "finding" technology to identify the sales of the items.  That means... just like with search... their Trending Price will include a bunch of items that aren't actually the same as the item in question, and will not include many other sales of the same item if those listings did not use the Product Page, the same Product Page, or the right keywords.

In the attached example, they calculated an average sales price.  I have no idea how.  The coin in question, the price will vary wildly based on the grade.  The price they showed, that's like 1/6 of scrap metal value (at the time).  The only way they came up with that number is if they included all the Chinese made replicas that sold in the calculation - which they no doubt did.

That's not the Trending Price feature, but it no doubt used the same sort of algorithm.

[slippinjimmy]

Yet another thing that Structered Data would go a long way toward fixing.

[*eponymous*]

What does the "Trending on eBay" price mean? http://pages.ebay.com/buy/popup/pricing.html

This is the median price based on sales of this product, taking into consideration item condition, from all sellers on eBay.com in the past 14 days, or if there are an insufficient number of listings for a meaningful calculation, the past 90 days.

[augustmack]

Years ago if you bought an item at an estate and didn't know anything about it you might start the bidding very low or even have a really low Buy It Now price because you had no idea the worth of an item.   Great for buyers.   Now we jump to today.  Seller gets a widget at an estate sale and has no idea what it is and thinks it should sell for $9.99.   Ebay will show that seller the "trending price" of $200 so now the seller will up their $10 price to maybe $150?   Overinflating trending prices is good for EBAY (fees).   

[dtexley3]

It involves a blindfold, a dartboard and a significant amount of liquor.

[ted_200]

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@*eponymous* wrote:

What does the "Trending on eBay" price mean? http://pages.ebay.com/buy/popup/pricing.html

This is the median price based on sales of this product, taking into consideration item condition, from all sellers on eBay.com in the past 14 days, or if there are an insufficient number of listings for a meaningful calculation, the past 90 days.

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Well... since someone else dredged up this ancient topic...

The answer in post #8 was actually a lot better than the eBay answer.

The example I posted back in post #3... that coin hasn't sold - even once, never mind "median price" - for that price since about 1975.

Of course "that product" and "a Chinese counterfeit of that product" aren't the same product.  If you can't deal with that, then no "meaningful calculation" is possible.  Not in 2016, and not in 2018.