Hey All,
It's good to be spending a little time at the boards again. For the last quite-a-bit it seems like any free "hobby" time has gone straight to programming. But, I'm really excited several systems level upgrades which have been long in the planning and development are finally starting to materialize in a finished form.
One of the most important changes is a modification of my primary valuation algorithm. It now flags items which sold under any of the special conditions AP, Autographed, Low Edition Number, Mint or New Condition, Postage Discount and Item Damaged or Incomplete. Furthermore, the program weights items which carry these somewhat less strongly (and very much less strongly for the cases AP, Autographed or Damaged). The amount by which each is discounted in the calcuation is based loosely on some statistical analysis I performed of the price fluctuation correlated with each condition. Also, items from those three extreme categories are entirely excluded from the "last 5" and "15 days" sections. This should help prevent the false assignment of an extreme appreciation/depreciation trend arrow due to non-representative sales
Even better, the Custom User Average tool now enables you to easily include or exclude categories as a whole. Do you want to know the average price for Cave Trolls sold in EUROS during the last 3 Months, excluding Artist Proofs? Give it a
try here - your answer is just a few clicks away! I'm really proud of this tool
, and I hope you'll enjoy using it for custom-tailored value reports that fit your specific shopping or selling scenarios.
Also, be sure to notice that the front-page detail summary now appears when you hold your mouse over the value, rather than the magifying glass icon. A couple new categories are now visible, including All Time High Price and 60-Day Low Price. Within each detail-view page (click the magnifying glass), are now additionally reported Edition Size and "Range". This last one provides some idea of the "confidence interval" of the stated value. Note though, that value is designed to have some amount of historical memory, and if recent prices are in relatively rapid inflation or depreciation, the likely current trading price may then be several intervals above or below.
Finally, a quick note about my newest contest which will be opening up soon. It will be the biggest thing of this sort which we've ever done, by far. Two winners will be able to pick their own Grand Prize from one of nine available options: The Dark Lord Sauron, Aragorn on Brego, Legolas & Gimli on Arod, The Mumakil of Harad or The Morgul Lord by SideShow*Weta, as well as the Luke Skywalker 12-Inch Jedi Exclusive or Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader or Han Solo Premium Format StarWars figures by Sideshow Collectibles! A HUGE thanks to Sideshow for sponsoring half of this contest by donation of the Sauron Figure to the Site. I haven't let the cat out of the bag just yet as to exactly what the contest is about, but I think it should be a lot of fun. For now, a couple clues on how to get your name into the hat early are given at the bottom of the page
here.
Enjoy! - the SpaceMan