1. Ensure the items were sold:

The first thing you need to look for is the final sale price for items that have actually sold.  If an auction is still open, or if an auction ended and the item did not sell, any pricing information is, for research purposes, irrelevant.  More specifically, if you only check the price someone is asking for (“the asking price”) in relation to an item, you will be misinformed. Someone can ask $1000 for an item (say, a Hummel figurine) that is only worth $20. It will never sell for $1000, but a seller can set whatever asking price they feel like.
When setting a high asking price, the seller is usually hoping for someone to buy the item at high retail, or make an offer that is close to that retail number.

To avoid this sort of confusion, when you begin your search, on the Search Bar, go to the Advanced section and switch the search parameters to “Sold Items”. This will weed out antiques with asking prices that are irrelevant for your purposes.

2. Confirm the items sold for the price listed.

This gets you to the tricky part of eBay research. Your search results will be in green. This indicates the items have actually sold. However, you are not done. You need to be sure the item actually sold for the price listed.  Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, that does not happen.

How can you figure this out?  One clue is that the price you see is a whole, evenly rounded number like $100.00 (as opposed to, say $137.00).  While a seller usually sets an asking price at this sort of rounded, whole number, during the bidding process, prospective buyers almost never place bids at those increments.  Instead, they try and top the previous bids by the smallest possible amount, sometimes just a few dollars or cents.  Thus, an even, rounded price listed for a sold item may be a sign that it did not sell for the price you see.

Another clue is when, below the price, the words “Buy It Now” appears. This means that $100.00 was the asking price. You can never know what the seller actually accepted, though.

A third clue: the item’s price will be listed as, for example, $100 with a line crossed through it, along with the words “Best Offer Accepted”. Obviously, in this situation, you will have no idea what the actual offer was.

3.Look at more than one item.

Once you are sure that the price of an item is the one the item actually sold for, you’ll want to make sure that this number is typical of what that item, or items similar to it, has recently sold for.   A selling price that is significantly higher, or lower, than others during a similar time frame may have come about because of a fluke and therefore may not reflect what your own antique could fetch.  To get a more accurate selling price estimate, look for multiple bids on the item. If no bids are included or only a single bid exists, keep looking for other examples.

Another tip: look for odd-numbered selling prices. A selling price like $125.31, for instance, is likely to approximate the item’s actual market value — but still check to see if more than one bid has occurred, and look for more than one item or auction. This way you have a few comparisons to get a better idea of an item’s actual value.

Keep in mind: crossed-out “sold” results means the seller took the best offer — and thus, the selling price is unlikely to reflect optimal market value for your antique.

As mentioned earlier, below is a visual guide that may help clarify the above.  By following these 3 steps, you will get far more accurate information about your antiques from eBay — and understand how to price your antiques, so that they successfully sell.  Enjoy your eBay auctioneering!