Calling Web Developers, I have an idea... Options

[McMark]

I had an idea that I can't implement, but I think is good. It would be cool if we could have a place where people could enter their used parts sale prices and condition. We could then get the mean value biased by condition to give a market value for used parts. There is a lot more complexity that could be added to the algorithm, but what do you think of the core idea?

[lapuwali]

How about something that scans ebay and records only the prices of parts that actually sell.. then you'll know the high end of things anyways. I do that often by looking at completed auctions, but that only goes back 30 days, so rare stuff is never there. If you made a dtatabase, after a year it would probably be fairly complete. Condition is another factor though, but you might be able to do something like olympic judging and throw out the highest and the lowest.

There used to be a small handful of companies that did just that. One Ebay sued out of business, the rest made nice with Ebay and essentially stopped doing it. I used to work for one of these companies (AuctionWatch, which no longer exists). A real pity, too, as the data was excellent. An honest, unbiased report on what everything from beanie babes to water pumps were worth on the open market.

Now, Ebay helps you do much of this yourself. Set up a My Ebay account (free), and hit the "add to watch list" link on items you'd like to track the prices on. The price stays visible on your tracking page after it closes. 2-3 items are often enough to get a representative price range. I can tell you, for example, that a clean set of four four-lug Fuchs will go for $400-500 (no tires), whereas a single wheel is about $80 (so buy four singles and get the fourth one free!). Takes a long time to get the data this way, but prices don't fluctuate all that rapidly.