Tom S. writes:
<< I'm also willing to donate all my purchase/sale information (although
some of it would be duplicates). >>
Now folks know why I've asked for that over the years. I've sampled the
actual sales prices on the OM List, but it's a convenience sample which
primarily supplement data on the value of rarer items. At any rate,
Tom's data is very much welcomed.
<< Tell us more! >>
OK, see below . . .
Kelton writes:
<<Um, considering the investment of time this must have taken . . . how
did you pull this off?
Well, it was easy for a year after the eBay IPO. There was still a
smallish user base, so it didn't take so long. Now it averages 1 hour
work for each day of auctioning.
<< Are you funded by a third party to collect this data? >>
Nope, it was just time I took away from everything else in my life.
Guess it just became addictive. But I know others are doing it, too,
incl. for other camera systems. But I don't know of anyone getting
rigorous with condition grading, much less anxiety level grading. I've
posted comments here and there about sampling pitfalls, but I kind of
felt like they weren't being understood. My apologies to anyone slighted
by the approach. It was just peer review.
The data has been super useful in buying outfits, doing appraisals with
backup documentation and selling stuff. So there has been some modest
gain from the effort. But there just isn't enough Olympus OM gear to
justify the labor committment. An unrelated benefit is that I think I
have an understanding of what increases buyers anxiety levels, so I've
been trying to address those issues and minimize them in my own
auctions. Finally, we all know examples of high profile camera
businesses who are not giving much condition grade information in their
auctions. Boy, are they taking a hit on prices!
<< Do you have some kind of program that automatically DLs this
information? Have you (shudder) been doing it by hand? >>
Nope, and I can't see anything automated helping the task, which
requires interpretation of what is being sold, as well as what they are
saying/showing about it. So, yup, totally by hand.
Few sellers know the official names for accessories that they are
selling, even authorized Olympus dealers! It's comical sometimes what
they are calling things. The most comical comes when they call something
"rare," but is something that is a current production model product! We
all remember rextex@xxxxxxxxxx - when I e-mailed him that the Olympus
Winder 2 wasn't rare and is successfully actioned at just under 1 per
day, he told me that not even Winder 1 plus 2 sales came close. Duh, it
was obvious on eBay alone just by searching under Completed Auctions. He
had some of the highest anxiety level auction descriptions I've ever
encountered on a consistent basis from a single seller. Another was that
Schamburg, IL fellow named galeb or something. The one we collectively
got axed for all sorts of fraud.
<< How did this come about? >>
Same way the Lens Tests came about. When I first signed on to the OM
List, folks posted mostly subjective appraisals of lens performance. A
few of us got all the published lens tests compiled to provide something
concrete (objective). But there were gaps and a true statistician abhors
gaps. So I sought to fill them. Well, McBroom's has become pretty
irrelevant in the ecommerce marketplace and 20 day auction histories are
highly misleading, so I'm trying to fill a gap in knowledge.
<< Have you approached any publishers and told them about your dataset?
>>
Sure, I've been critical of McBroom's in the presence of the publisher
himself. I have a friendly standing invitation to "prove it." I'm sure
I'm not the only one being issued that challenge. Crunching all the
data takes some programming, though. I'll do it in Microsoft Access if
I get sufficient motivation.
In support of McBroom, though, one has to remember those are dealer
asking prices and I'm recording actual selling prices. Which would you
rather have?
Gary Reese
Las Vegas, NV
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