[RESOLVED]Appraisal Data to include shipping

[HighPrime]

I'm the one who requested the shipping field.  To track the TOTAL I spent on the item, not to value its worth.  However, I stopped using it because the site doesn't add the two fields into the blue bar at the top, heh.  I believe we talked about that over IM a while ago and that request never took off.

Anyway, the values of HIGH, AVERAGE, and LOW are a guide.  You will never get them exact.. and consider that ebay pretty much ham-fists sellers to sell with shipping included.. and a large portion of these values come from eBay; it makes no difference if you use or don't use, like or don't like, include or not include the value of shipping, tax, gas, etc. to the price.  Values are flowing in from eBay that have shipping included in the price.  I for one almost sell exclusively with shipping included, international not-withstanding.

The field(s) [for me] are to keep track of how much I spend on an item.  I find the appraisal completely uninteresting.  If I want to know how much something goes for when I sell it, I'll check 'completed items' on eBay and go from there.   Values are point in time... especially for Transformers.

[HighPrime]

This is all way too much for my poor over-worked little brain to follow, but it sounds to me like Wajo is getting the notion of "expense" conflated with "value". Yes, it's possible to fly to Mexico for lunch and spend $3000 on a taco, but that taco is still worth $1. Your expense was considerably larger, and if you're collecting receipts to be reimbursed later, then by all means hang onto that ticket stub. But it's still a $1 taco, and if I were running a website dedicated to informing other hungry folks what they can expect to pay for a similar taco, the $1 is what I would show.

So maybe what we should really be talking about is how to better track expenses. I added "shipping paid" by request some time back, because someone wanted to track it independently, and it seemed like a natural way to let users track their expense without artificially inflating the value. As Antron says, this is the way it's been done since the first retailer rose out of the primordial ooze--the price, shipping, and tax are always itemized separately (the first person that asks me to start tracking tax will be destroyed). But my implementation is a bit crude, and there is surely room for improvement. I think we're already showing price paid and shipping paid in the "blue bar", but I could also show it on the view collection page. I could also show a cumulative expenses tally in the "fun facts" so you can compare what you paid to what we figure your collection is worth, giving you some idea of what the delta would be if you were to liquidate your whole collection.

My brain hurts. I talk too much.

Maybe take a second look when your headache subsides. That's not really what I'm talking about. Your example, is similar to what Antron007 was giving - where someone can just pick up a taco at their local store. Of course any extra costs would be based on the buyer's pure spending habits. I am discussing our unique situation where most of these products are not sold at retail anymore. You have to think of our products like a coin collection or a stamp collection, where initial value (MSRP) does not play any role in the value. We are also assuming the common buyer will always decide the purchasing path which will end up with him paying the cheapest. Therefore, for a non-retail figure, if he has a choice of paying $85+$15 shipping or $95 shipped, which one do you think he should do and how do you think your appraisal system will handle that data? According to shmax.com, he should do $85+$15 shipping because he is getting the item at a cheaper value - and that is the value the website will record. We don't want the poor guy to look like he overpaid with the $95 shipped, do we? We don't want him to be the laughed out of town for taking the more expensive item. But in reality, he shouldn't care how the breakdown "expense" is done - all he cares about is the total out of pocket.

What my last post should have conveyed, was that for items that are no longer on the shelf, their MSRP value is no longer the value of the item. The only way to recalculate their value is by how much people pay for them out of pocket. Breaking it up is just adding a lot of noise to the calculations.

See my fortress maximus example from above. This is another example of an item which is theoretically new with a MSRP, but a foreign item so the only way to get it is to have it shipped. So by not including the shipping value, you already have a large discrepancy between TFSource, which includes the shipping cost in the price of the item, and BBTS, which does not.

Another example is the first auction search I just did... AM-25:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=AM-25&_sacat=83732&_odkw=nemesis+breakdown&_sop=15&_osacat=83732&_from=R2&_dmd=1&_pcats=246%2C220&_armrs=1

Look at how varying their itemized prices are - $55, $59, $65, $58, $50, $57... etc

However, if you add their requested shipping to these prices you'll see all of the cheap ones are actually the same price $65. If everyone bought from these auctions and entered it into shmax.com, you'll see data points all over the place. However, if shipping was included, you'll see a much nicer plot line that truly tells the world that the going value for this product sealed, within the US is $65. Because no matter which scenario you choose, you can't go get this 'taco' for less than $65. As you mentioned above, we want to correctly inform the populace what they can expect to pay for this 'taco'. If you say $50, they'll sit and wait in front of their monitors at eBay every day while prices go up and never get what they wanted because we gave them a false value.

^^This.

[Antron007]

If I want to know how much something goes for when I sell it, I'll check 'completed items' on eBay and go from there.   Values are point in time... especially for Transformers.

I may be mistaken but I thought that the graph pulled its info from 'completed items' .

I'm currently building a small inventory to make a little extra cash off of ebay so I am a bargain shopper. I often look at that graph (because I thought the info came from completed listings) to determine weather or not I will make any money off an item. I consider shipping and packaging materials when doing this as well as ebay's 8%-9%. If I can make $0.50 or more by offering SMRP+shipping I buy it. If not I pass.

I enjoy the hunt and am shopping for my collection anyway, so that part in and of itself isn't putting me out so I'm not in it to take advantage of people. I really want to be a 'For Collectors by a Collector' kind of situation. I want people to be able to have  and love these items because I have and love them. It's not the next big e business by any means but I often seem to be able to find my items at 40% off MSRP or more so buy buying them at that price now, I can sell them at MSRP-ish and make a small profit. (I say -ish because deluxes used to be $10 now they are $15 so i'd make some coin on that alone.)
 
For example, I've seen some good prices on Generations Kup and Warpath but they don't seem to be selling that well or for enough on ebay for me to pick them up so I've passed on them. (Which honestly surprises me because I personally love them toys) But I check every time I'm out so if I see the trend changing, I'll pick them up for more of a quick flip. (BTW if anyone needs one of those PM me and I may be able to work something out if you're willing to cover shipping costs.) (Side note. My Gen Kup's head is really loose so I can't guarantee that won't be the case with a NOC one.) 

There are a few things I've picked up that I won't even try selling for a while because I know they seem to be hard to find as well as seem quite popular. So in 6m-1y or more, when it's even harder to find them on  ebay, I'll sell them for a small markup, just because at that point they become more of a collectible than a retail product. But most I plan on putting up in a few weeks or a month. Right about the time they seem to be hard to find at retail.

Then there are some items that will almost certainly be highly collectible down the line. I plan on making this a supplemental hobby along side my personal collecting.

  Like any investment you have to keep your eye on the market. 

When I'm ready to start listing I'll start a thread. I will also set my links up so that they will appear to come from this site so shmax.com will get a cut of any of my items not found directly on ebay. So I'll be helping the site out as well. It doesn't come out of my profits so why not? :-)

[HighPrime]

If I want to know how much something goes for when I sell it, I'll check 'completed items' on eBay and go from there.   Values are point in time... especially for Transformers.

I may be mistaken but I thought that the graph pulled its info from 'completed items' .

I believe it does, but it doesn't look at JUST the most recent items.  You just need to see 3 or 4 recent sales to see how to price when you're ready to sell.  Plus you'll see what figures won't sell at.  Again.. just need to see a few transactions around recent dates.

Main point for me is the appraisal system is a guide.. a nice to have to ballpark your collection.  I don't use it as a selling or buying reference, however.

[Wajo357]

It is nice to see how different people plan on using the appraisal system. For me, eBay is VERY limited. Most of my items are no longer sold on eBay and eBay doesn't keep 'closed' items for that long (I think 3 months). Having shmax, will enable us to capture a Transformer market larger than ebay with data that will hopefully never disappear. This type of data should give us a better understanding of the true value of the item. And hopefully I can use that value to give to my insurance company whenever I get around to switching to a company that has a decent rider to their home owners insurance.

[Antron007]

So, where are you peddling your warez these days Wajo?

[Wajo357]

So, where are you peddling your warez these days Wajo?

I don't have much time to do selling, although I do have a list. I live in NJ, your welcome to stop by if you are local.

[Antron007]

I'm afraid I live in  the OH/MI area my friend. I've plans to be on the east coast a few times in the summer. If my adventures in skimboarding take me down that far south I'll fire a warning shot. It could happen. NJ does seem to have a bit a skim scene and there are some recommended spots in your state. I'm lucky to have a woman that don't mind traveling. She's the one that forced the 3 times rule this summer.

[Wajo357]

I'm afraid I live in  the OH/MI area my friend. I've plans to be on the east coast a few times in the summer. If my adventures in skimboarding take me down that far south I'll fire a warning shot. It could happen. NJ does seem to have a bit a skim scene and there are some recommended spots in your state. I'm lucky to have a woman that don't mind traveling. She's the one that forced the 3 times rule this summer.

no problem. I'm 10 minutes from Manhattan. The last time I was on a real vacation was Botcon 2010 . It is hard with kids...

[shmax]

As long as I'm digging back through old bug reports, and at the risk of rekindling this discussion, I figured I'd share a few thoughts. To summarize the debate: Wajo thinks that I should include shipping when appraising items, and I was against it because what is expensive shipping for one person is n/a for a different person. Wajo made the argument that some items become valuable by necessity, because of their remoteness and the fact that the only real way to get said items is to pay the shipping.

I think I've figured out the solution. The key is to let the secondary market decide what something is worth. If a $2 item really costs $100 (new) in every case to ship to fans, then yes, assuming no depreciation/appreciation, we would indeed expect to see approx. $102, on the secondary market. Know what I mean? So Johnny buys one new, gets tired of it, and sells it to Jimmy for $102. We now have a valid, legitimate "price paid" value of $102 for the item in the system, without including shipping.

If we look at it from that perspecitve, the only problem with the shmax appraisal system is that I am including retail 'price paid' data along with the secondary market data points, which in the case of the $2/$100 (s/h) item, would be unnaturally skewing the true "value" of the item.

It would be easy enough for me exclude the retail price paid data from the appraisal system. Should I?

[Antron007]

I vote to keep MSRP because it is what would be called Base Price. The starting point for determining weather value has increased or decreased. I don't think you could get rid of MSPR and have an accurate number because as, I said, I see it as the base price and very first price point a record should have. MSRP is one piece of data I think should definitely be included. That's just my logic behind it.

Tell me if this is correct.
Value= average of Users price paid, MSPR and completed eBay listings.  Is there more or less that goes into that formula?