Auction Results for PCGS Coins sold on eBay

hellerjk · February 8, 2009 7:03AM

My company has an integration with eBay and has been collecting statistics on PCGS graded coins sold on eBay. The report is provided monthly and contains the cumulative low, average and high auction prices realized for PCGS graded coins. The report also includes the number of auctions sold per coin.

There is a free sample of this report posted here

We would love feedback on the sample or the report in general.

For what it is worth. The eBay integration is with our website that is designed to help coin collectors. RegistryCollector.com

RBinTex · February 8, 2009 8:56AM

illini420 · February 8, 2009 8:56AM

Seems like an interesting product...

In looking at the sample provided, I really wonder if several of those early date Buffalo Nickels sold at $0.99 in PCGS holders!!! If they did I missed out on those for sure!! Maybe the prices need to include shipping or need to verify that raw coins aren't being included too... guess I'm not sure what's going on with all of the $0.99 PCGS coins.

sonoranmonsoon · February 8, 2009 7:12PM

<< Seems like an interesting product...

In looking at the sample provided, I really wonder if several of those early date Buffalo Nickels sold at $0.99 in PCGS holders!!! If they did I missed out on those for sure!! Maybe the prices need to include shipping or need to verify that raw coins aren't being included too... guess I'm not sure what's going on with all of the $0.99 PCGS coins. >>

I once accidently put down .99 as the "buy it now" price, instead of the starting bid. Of course, my item sold immediately for .99. The buyer understood, and gracefully let me out of the deal. I also recall Heritage making the same mistake on several auctions a few years ago.

Another problem is on the high side. 2 bidders put in very high snipes, thinking they will win the item at a lower price, and end up getting stuck overbidding each other. Or the super high bids that are never paid, that sometimes show up just to mess with the seller.

Unfortunately, these sales get worked into the statistics for ebay averages, and throw the numbers way off. To improve the accuracy of the list, and make it more usable for buyers and sellers, there needs to be a human eye reviewing the numbers, and throwing out the numbers that are skewed to low or high. Or, as an alternative to the human eye, all sales should be listed, so the user of the list can throw out the unrealistic numbers themselves.

Boom · February 8, 2009 8:35PM

Great idea. It may be something I should kick around with you.

Have you thought of kicking out the highest and the lowest realized results ....
working with the remaining numbers to arrive at a truer "Average" - per type, per grade?

Good Luck & Welcome,
BOOM ~

hellerjk · February 8, 2009 10:07PM

That's a good idea. We were contemplating this although right now there are a lot of items where we only have 1 coin sold. There are over 4000 coins listed representing some 8000 auctions. What would be a relevent number of auctions sold (per coin) where tossing out the lowest & highest would make sense? 20? 30?

sonoranmonsoon · February 8, 2009 10:26PM

<< That's a good idea. We were contemplating this although right now there are a lot of items where we only have 1 coin sold. There are over 4000 coins listed representing some 8000 auctions. What would be a relevent number of auctions sold (per coin) where tossing out the lowest & highest would make sense? 20? 30? >>

Seems to me, this is where only a human eye can make the changes. It would be difficult to program something in without hurting important sales of coins that have only a few sales. You certainly do not want those numbers thrown out. Is there a way you can just glance down the list and toss out the sales that make no sense and were obviously mistakes, then publish it. If you can do that, you may have a valuable product to offer.

RBinTex · February 8, 2009 11:57PM

Would be even cooloer if one calculated the volatility of each coin using it's average true range (i.e. previous high minus current low - for a period - as a percentage of the previous selling price). This would show the more/less volatile relative orice movements.

Connecticoin · February 9, 2009 1:30AM

The website says the reports are 99 cents, but then charges you $1.99 if you attempt to purchase one.

hellerjk · February 9, 2009 2:09AM

Thanks for catching this. We'll fix this right away.

hellerjk · February 9, 2009 2:25AM

That's a great idea. How much would you pay for something like that? I mean we can't give it away (we have to eat too)

The auction results report is $0.99 (despite the Paypal error denoted below, which we have to fix... tonight). We figured a buck would be a fair cost. Assuming folks by this one at a buck, would the volatility report be worth $2.99? I need to figure out the cost of the development to determine the break even point for that.

Thanks for the great idea. Maybe we'd give you that report for free for suggesting it.

Did you check out the main site? RegistryCollector.com

Silverstate · February 9, 2009 4:36AM

<< That's a great idea. How much would you pay for something like that? I mean we can't give it away (we have to eat too)

The auction results report is $0.99 (despite the Paypal error denoted below, which we have to fix... tonight). We figured a buck would be a fair cost. Assuming folks by this one at a buck, would the volatility report be worth $2.99? I need to figure out the cost of the development to determine the break even point for that.

Thanks for the great idea. Maybe we'd give you that report for free for suggesting it.

Did you check out the main site? RegistryCollector.com >>

OK, I took a stab at it.
I figured I wanted to see the FULL report.

I will let everyone know......

Boom · February 9, 2009 6:22AM

<< What would be a relevent number of auctions sold (per coin) where tossing out the lowest & highest would make sense? 20? 30? >>

Working with my suggestion, I submit that such should be done over a pre-determined time frame.

Obviously daily won't work because on some days not ALL grades nor all types will be offered at Venue "x".

The same statement holds true for a weekly average however a footnote would need to be included to point out which grades were used to arrive at such an average. (NOT A BIG ENOUGH WINDOW TO ARRIVE AT A TRUE NUMBER!)

I think I may have been misunderstood! Working with my suggestion, kick out THE HIGHEST ONE & THE LOWEST!
Use the remainder (working with MS grades - 1 average) ( using ALL offered - including Raw would surrender a totally different average)

Using Monthly, quarterly and yearly windows would prove "interesting". Several factors *(variables) would apparently need to be taken into account as well. (Feigned sales & returns - as examples).

This COULD prove to be quite interesting. I think it would work.

ProofCents · February 9, 2009 10:26AM

<< The auction results report is $0.99 (despite the Paypal error denoted below, which we have to fix... tonight). We figured a buck would be a fair cost. Assuming folks by this one at a buck, would the volatility report be worth $2.99? I need to figure out the cost of the development to determine the breakeven point for that. >>

If you want to know what your breakeven is then i would suggest a classical finance formula (Contribution Margin/Fixed Cost) = number of units to sell to break even.

hellerjk · February 9, 2009 10:56AM

Thanks.

We also fixed the report price. It is now $0.99 (as advertised)

hellerjk · February 9, 2009 10:59AM

We are also having a contest to give away a coin by using our RegistryCollector.com service

We're giving away three prizes during the Month of February!

A 1881-S Morgan Dollar graded MS63 by PCGS, a 1943 Walking Liberty Half Dollar graded MS63 by PCGS and a 1960-D Washington Quarter graded MS65 by PCGS.

It's easy to enter and win:
To be eligible just enable your eBay token and use your Registry Collector account to win a PCGS graded coin on eBay during the month of February 2009.
You can activate your account easily when you go to RegistryCollector.com and sign-in.

So be sure to visit your Account Information page and enable your eBay token. That's all there is to it. Winners will be selected at random and notified during the month of March 2009.

Silverstate · February 10, 2009 7:40AM

I purchased the 99c report and it was pretty long list of coins that have sold in different categories.
The main correction I would like to see is the

1) 99c listings that were ended early seem to affect a few lines in there.
2) This coin seemed to be listed in report @ $ 3299.95 MEl MS66 Adams Dollar in a store - Not Sold

So, the list seems to be items listed and or sold on eBay.
The list is large and saves lots of time at least seeing what has been listed.
Not sure about the accuracy quite yet.
I recommend you all try a copy on for size.
It's ONLY .99 !!!
With more good ideas to tweak this report, it will be awesome.

The Registry Collector Website
Great way to have some assistance in hunting for those coins to fill empty slots in your registry sets.
Couldn't load the king kong - complete Lincoln cent set yet. IT is very large and they need to have all of the numbers in the system to find those varieties!
Huge job.
Nice idea and very useful...And it is FREE!
I recommend you Try it out.

robkool · February 18, 2009 12:32PM

Thanks for sharing this valuable info... It sure helps greatly in buying & selling coins...

ajia · February 18, 2009 1:06PM

Something like this worries me....

Did a 1913 T1 Buffalo graded MS65 REALLY sell for 95 Cents??

OR is that the starting price & it was either removed or had a reserve and never got a bid?

Any chance of a link to that eBay auction??

hellerjk · February 18, 2009 9:26PM

Hi ajia!

First, I'd like to thank you for using RegistryCollector.com. Aija was one of our early adopters. I hope the site has been helping you.

For your question regarding

<< Did a 1913 T1 Buffalo graded MS65 REALLY sell for 95 Cents?? >>

Probably not. Based upon the terrific feedback from folks in this thread our development team dove into their eBay integration logic and found what might be a bug. It appears that for certain auctions (eBay has a weird concept of Chinese auction, which seems to be a subset of auctions that differ from things like Dutch, Normal, Buy It Now. I'm not sure that I fully understand this but our developer's do.) What seems to be happening (and ajia you found part of this early on) is that the "current sale price" is not being picked up or passed through eBay's API.

We expect an updated release for this logic in a week so the report's value will increase dramatically. I would say that folks should ignore the instances in the report where there is only 1 auction and the price listed is less than a dollar (for now).

We will be able to sweep back into eBay to collect the accurate values after the fix is made.

hellerjk · February 19, 2009 1:24AM

Good news. The team has fixed the eBay synchronization bugs:

The February results report will reflect these fixes.

ajia · February 19, 2009 4:05AM

Good news. The team has fixed the eBay synchronization bugs: The February results report will reflect these fixes.

Very cool, but now that I have your ear......

You know that CSV that we upload so that the system knows what coins we're missing from our registry sets?
I suppose that means that each time we buy a coin for that set a new CSV needs to be uploaded to reflect that purchase & delete it from the list of coins we need.
Otherwise we will continue to get listings for auctions that match a 'hole' in our registry set that is in reality no longer there.

Too bad the link couldn't be done in real-time.

Otherwise a nice way to keep up with auctions on eBay.

Any chance of working with other auction sites??

hellerjk · February 19, 2009 11:05AM

Actually, when you win a coin that is in your set(s) we automatically remove it from the watch list (set) itself. This functionality requires your eBay token to be enabled, otherwise we have no idea what you won & can not connect it back to the coin in your set.

ajia · February 20, 2009 3:10AM

Too bad PCGS doesn't have a 'token' to get the updated info from.

Any chance of other (coin) auction sites being added?
If that's possible, what would the site have to provide to make it work.
I ask this because it seems as though there are 2 or 3 members here that are involved in that endeavor, and I hate being locked in to just eBay.

hellerjk · February 20, 2009 8:54AM

That is indeed our strategy, however we need revenue to fund that expansion or at least a large active consumer base to generate interest in the auction site to purchase such an integration from us. Being able to track usage statistics (e.g. buy behavior vis a vie the secure token) helps with this.

We're on the path for this, we trying to come up with ways to move this along faster.

PawPaul · February 21, 2009 12:42PM

I enjoyed your product @ the .99 cent level - but under Franklin half $ for example ; your info is so skewed, so peppered with irregularities it is not of any value .

hellerjk · February 21, 2009 11:46PM

hellerjk · February 21, 2009 11:49PM

I'm sorry you are unhappy with the report. This thread discussed some of those irregularities. As commented on in a previous note, this has been fixed and will be reflected in our February report (which will be created March 1st).

We will be sending the Feb report complimentary to everyone who purchased the January report.

PawPaul · February 22, 2009 2:50AM

- thank you for the free report and of course you have to work the kinks out ;

good luck !

ajia · February 22, 2009 2:11PM

One thing I'll say about these guys, they seem to get on things right away.

I do hope the "large active consumer base" needed is soon a reality.

hellerjk · February 28, 2009 1:41AM

Our February 2009 Auction Results report is now available and is better than ever. We have corrected all of the problems that you helped us find and have also sent out complimentary copies to those who purchased the January Report.

There is a free sample of this report posted here

We hope you enjoy this much improved report!

hellerjk · February 28, 2009 3:22AM

Oh, for those who wish to buy the report you can do so by visiting http://www.quantifycorp.com/auctionprices.html

RBinTex · February 28, 2009 10:08PM

Auction Results for PCGS Coins sold on eBay

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