anyone want to scrape UPC #s?

[Chaotic Descent]

I found a website that seems to archive UPC #'s that might be useful for here.
itemdb.com
I don't know how to code something to scrape the data and send it here, but they do provide the means on their end to do so, 100 entries a day for free. I'm sure there are ways to get around that, although I'd worry that exploiting that might eliminate the free service completely.
It looks like they in turn have been scraped from other stores and auctions (as their product names sometimes have odd words like "loose" chosen as the 1st result out of many) and they don't have ALL Transformer products, but they do have a surprising amount of old and obscure stuff that might not be here.

[shmax]

As a matter of fact, we are looking for some kind of free product lookup for doing UPC research. The one you linked to appears to have gone the way of the dodo, but I did manage to find an alternative. Thank you!

[Chaotic Descent]

Sorry, I think the URL got chopped off somehow. Is this the same site you found?
https://www.upcitemdb.com

I had manually entered one UPC # we didn't have. I wonder if I should manually scan through some of the rarer Transformers or just leave the task of scraping it up to you.

I bought a wireless barcode scanner to help organize my collection. I don't know if there's a point in making barcodes for individual loose figures since I'd have to do it all manually, but I was considering that. Maybe it would only be worthwhile if I were doing a lot of buying and selling of loose figures.

[shmax]

Yep, that's the one I found. Their API only allows 100 free request per day, so the internal tool we have is currently only available to moderators, but you are certainly encouraged to research and fill-in any missing UPCs you can.

[Chaotic Descent]

.... I'm starting to have my doubts about using the data from this site. I wonder if some of them are just made up for a store's inventory purposes.
I thought I'd start getting #s from exclusives, and was getting them for BotCon products, but where would they get such #s? There's no UPC # on the bags, and I found a box that FunPub had used for one souvenir set, that while it had a SKU #, it didn't have a UPC #. Unless it was a smaller box from within a larger box, and only the larger box had the UPC #. Although I'd be surprised it wasn't more widely used than that. Considering how amateurish their forum was, perhaps they didn't use UPC #s to track inventory and only did it manually.

[engledogg]

.... I'm starting to have my doubts about using the data from this site. I wonder if some of them are just made up for a store's inventory purposes.
I thought I'd start getting #s from exclusives, and was getting them for BotCon products, but where would they get such #s? There's no UPC # on the bags, and I found a box that FunPub had used for one souvenir set, that while it had a SKU #, it didn't have a UPC #. Unless it was a smaller box from within a larger box, and only the larger box had the UPC #. Although I'd be surprised it wasn't more widely used than that. Considering how amateurish their forum was, perhaps they didn't use UPC #s to track inventory and only did it manually.

Ha, I was just looking at your submissions and, before I saw this post, I sent you a PM asking about the Club-related UPCs. 

I googled a couple of those numbers and got a few hits, but they were all from a single site that didn't really provide any more information.

We'd be interested in the UPCs only if they appeared on each toy's packaging since those are the only numbers people outside of FunPub would encounter.

Thanks for the submissions/help!

MIKE
engledogg

[Tripredacus]

.... I'm starting to have my doubts about using the data from this site. I wonder if some of them are just made up for a store's inventory purposes.
I thought I'd start getting #s from exclusives, and was getting them for BotCon products, but where would they get such #s? There's no UPC # on the bags, and I found a box that FunPub had used for one souvenir set, that while it had a SKU #, it didn't have a UPC #. Unless it was a smaller box from within a larger box, and only the larger box had the UPC #. Although I'd be surprised it wasn't more widely used than that. Considering how amateurish their forum was, perhaps they didn't use UPC #s to track inventory and only did it manually.

I learned early on that the UPC database sites (there are many, also in EU) are only good for finding leads on items and cannot be used for confirmation. When documenting actual physical products, I also learn to not blindly accept what is listed on any other website without photo confirmation. The reasons for this is that some products use multiple UPC/EAN and can be mismatched on store websites.
But regarding these sites specifically, the UPC/EAN come from various sources:
1. The actual UPC/EAN if the item has it
2. A reseller/disty resell of old stock. Think of it when you see an item that has a label over the original UPC/EAN and has a new one printed on it.
3. Multi-packs (same as new label)
4. Import/export versions
5. Distribution cases
For 3-4 they can have the same similarities as #2. For #5, there are instances where a case will have a barcode on it while the products inside do not, have a different code, or have a label code.