Here is a simple guide on how to use ebay as a price guide!
First, you are going to want to go to the ebay website by typing in “ebay.com” into your address bar. Simple enough, right?
Once ebay loads, it is time to find the card you are trying to price. To do this, type in the basic search queries into the ebay search bar, and then add any specifics to try and narrow down the results to what you want. For Pokemon cards, the basic search you are going to want to do is “Pokemon Card _______” where the Card Name will replace the ______. For this guide, we will use the ever-favorite Base Set Charizard.
I chose to search “Pokemon Charizard 4/102”. You can search for this card various ways, examples being “Pokemon Card Charizard”, “Pokemon Charizard Base Set”, “Pokemon Card Charizard 4”, “Pokemon Charizard 4” and the list goes on and on. The point is there are multiple specifics you can use to find the card. Try them all and use the one that gets the best search results.
Next, you are going to want to view all of the ended listings. You can do this one of two ways.
You can view only the sold listings. This is done by clicking the “Sold listings” checkbox on the left hand of the webpage. I prefer this option when checking for prices.
Or you can view all completed listings, which will show both unsold and sold listings. This is done by clicking the “Completed listings” checkbox on the left hand of the webpage. This is useful if you want to see what prices the item has not sold for, or for various other random reasons.
At this point, you can choose multiple other search refinements. The biggest one is the “Item Location” area. You can broaden the results by searching for sales from more than your area. I personally use the “Worldwide” option as it gives the most results, which gives the best pricing.
After you choose all of your search refinements, you are going to want to make sure that the search results show up in the correct order. The default order for the completed and sold listings searches is “End Date: recent first”. However, it is important to double check in case you may have switched away from the default.
Now you are all set to take a look at the listings that show up and find out the price of the item! There are two things you will want to know at this point: which items have sold and which items have not sold. Listings with red prices have NOT sold. Listings with green prices HAVE sold. This is very important to remember as mixing the two up will get you totally different price results!
How everyone calculates their prices from this point is of personal preference. I usually take the 5 most recently sold listings and average the prices to get a good price for the item. Make sure you check the conditions of the sold listings when pricing cards/other collectables as it can make a huge difference – you don’t want prices for cards in excellent condition when you are pricing a card in near mint condition!
Thus concludes Daelum’s guide to pricing stuff using ebay. Feel free to share this, just make sure to give me credit. Enjoy 