In previous years I would track completed eBay auctions for the select BotCon toys I wanted in order to get a feel for what I should target as a good price. This year for the first time I decided I wanted every toy offered. The box set was covered by an Iacon package, that left the Primus attendee exclusive and the souvenir sets. In previous years I considered monitoring prices past the point where I bought one, but was too lazy and didn't. Again for the first time this year, I have done so. In fact it's taken longer that I expected, though most of the toys were sold within a month, a handful held on beyond that. I've cut things off at the 10 week mark (Sept 1), but even now a few listings remain up. Included here is Slice/Slicer and the three full souvenir sets. Of course there were auctions for the box set with and without Slicer, all of the exclusives on an individual basis (including single Sharkticons), and a handful of auctions with everything together. But I figured just tracking the four would give a decent feel for how eBay prices play out, and as I found in previous years, unbroken souvenir sets are far more common than the toys individually. (The box set toys get broken up far more, but really, the best option on those hands down is to go Iacon and just sell off anything you might not want.) Notes: Shipping prices are included, auctions with calculated shipping is based on my location, but I don't think those vary too much within the continental USA. A lot of the eBay listings were Buy It Now or Best Offer auctions for multiples of the same item, how this works is the eBay search for completed items shows the date and price of the final item sold. The history details within the listing shows date and price of items sold Buy It Now (interestingly, some of them showed a decrease in price over time within the single listing), and dates of Best Offers and whether or not they were accepted. Since prices of accepted Best Offers are not actually listed, I went off the price shown in the completed items search, so it's either the Buy It Now price or the final Best Offer price, depending on how the final item sold. I decided to include the Best Offer numbers for completeness even though the data is a little skewed here. Characters seem to matter A LOT. Guys that were in a cartoon always bring more demand. Notably, the troop builder sets from this year and last year are well known guys from the G1 movie and after, so I suspect that inflates demand beyond what it would be anyway given that the troop builder sets are also sold in the lowest quantity. Slicer Sales opened to a range from $100 to $160, 10 days in it stabilized to a range of $80-$100, with a slight uptick as quantities began to wane. This one held on the longest as far as quantities available on eBay, though. 131 total sales tracked Rapido / Cindersaur Opened with a range of $130-$200, after a week it was down to $80-$120. Since this didn't sell out at BotCon, it turned up on the Club store for $80, a couple straggling 7 day auctions beat that, but the lesson is, if it doesn't sell out, wait a week or so and buy it from the Club rather than eBay. eBay sales, by the way, nearly vanished after the Club's listing went up. Only the Sharkticon set shows a similar thinning, but that had more limited quantities to begin with while Rapido/Cindersaur was plentiful. 107 total sales tracked Scorch / Ravage / Doublepunch This one has the larger toy, a lower quantity sold at BotCon, and the fan-favorite Ravage. Sales opened in a $160-$210 range, falling to mostly $120-$140 after a week. 153 total sales tracked Sharkticon 3-pack The troop builder, sold out very quickly at BotCon. Opened to a wide $150-$260 range, within 2 days settled out to a $160-$200 range, with a small number of sellers putting out a large number of sets at around $180 Buy it Now. 125 total sales tracked Overall There's a pretty clear pattern that waiting a week to 10 days after the onset of BotCon is best. The sole exception is the Sharkticons with the most limited availability and an early glut of Buy it Now listings at what still held as the average price weeks later, and even then, waiting a week did not put buyers at a disadvantage. 3, 5, and 7 day auctions tend towards the better prices overall. Buy it Nows are generally not great except for the handful that go up underpriced, but those aren't common and sell before you know it. The biggest message is that eBay supplies will last longer than you think and it takes most of that time for the prices to bottom out and start heading up again, and never ever buy before the end of BotCon itself. Even if you lose every 5, 7, and 10 day auction, the Buy it Now prices a month out are better than what most people paid during the first week. Contrary to the advice I just gave, I got nervous and bought everything fairly early, during or just after the convention. I know better for next year, now, which was the point of the endeavor. Here's my damage: Rapido/Cindersaur and Scorch/Ravage/Doublepunch Buy It Now on Saturday from the same seller for $150 each with a $6 combined shipping discount. Slicer on Sunday off a 3 day auction for $117. The Sharkticon set for $180 on Monday from the guy who had twenty of them up for Buy it Now. Paid just a little too much for Slicer and Scorch/Doublepunch, really took a hit on Rapido/Cindersaur. The Sharkticon set is the only one for which I feel totally okay about what it cost me. So how did you do?
Good sir, you are a genius, great work on this, I really appreciate how well thought out this is. Good work, but it'd be insane to see the prices of the Botcon 2008 set fluxuate.
Now what about the Bagged set of Clench/Spark and the rest? I have a set that I need to sell Good work on this though...it nice to see how things typically play out.
Very interesting, thank you for sharing with us I wish I could practise some patience, but I normally jump if the price is affordable to me. Fortunately later price drop doesn't make me too upset, or so I say to myself!
Hmm... So this means I should be safe having to wait to get Slicer and co. til later in the year when I have more disposable funds. Great research!
Week 2 is best but is my sanity of waiting that 1 week worth the extra $$$? Good analysis. Waiting until week 2 when all the information is out about which sets sold out and people getting back from Botcon can flood the market but it does not look like waiting past week 4 gets you any benefits. For the sharkticons, it was known that the set sold out on Friday but it's still better to wait until week 2 when all the gotta-have-them-all people have gotten theirs. I know you analysis was very detailed but if you decide to do this again it might also be nice to have data points for items that did not sell. Here's another nice-to-know. If you're a completist aren't you better off NOT buying the Iacon set and just buying a complete set off ebay? I think I saw those go in the range of $800-$900 which cost just as much as buying the items separately at the optimum price.
This, must have taken quite a bit of time to complie these charts. Though now I think these will be expected for every set past 2010's
Thanks, everyone. It did occur to me, but I decided I was already making enough work for myself (especially towards the end when there was a lot more stuff not selling then selling). Besides, most of the stuff further out from Botcon that wasn't selling at higher asking prices are reflected in the falling prices of what did sell. Of course eBay being eBay, there's always some bizarre stuff going on like somebody pulling a buy-it-now for a higher price than a five day auction that ended with no bids an hour earlier, but in general the data I got told me what I wanted to know. It's also a safe bet that all the unsold stuff got relisted, probably at a lower price. The other issue was auctions that were obviously pulled early by the seller, these also show up as "didn't sell", though probably those were only an issue during the first couple days while the genuine unsold ones started in after the second week or so. Well, maybe next time, if I do it again... It probably works out about the same in the end most of the time, yeah. That would be an interesting thing to track next year.
Niiiice. I love stats. If today was 3 years ago I would totally have brought this in as my "report on a statistics article" presentation.