Automated Item Price Checker [Beta]

[JoePrime]

Hey guys,

I've been working pretty hard on getting a quick and easy to use Price Check Tool up and running, and I'm happy to announce today it's officially launching in "Beta"! At this point there is only the available data that has been provided by myself and my friends, so I need more users to help grow the database and make the tool more useful to a wider range of people. However, first let me take a moment to explain the concept.

Basically, every time you buy or sell an item, you would list the stats and how much it sold for within the tool. Then, when you wanted to sell an item, you simply punch in the stats for that item and it compares it to all of the items sold that are similarly statted, and generates an estimated value based on how much the other items sold for.

This provides a quick one-stop check to see what an item is worth, not based on what ridiculous price people may be asking for on the Auction House, but based on what people have actually sold similar items for. Thus providing you with a clear-cut easy to use idea of how much the item in question will sell for right now.

As I touched on above, it's currently in Beta, still a little buggy perhaps, and certainly lacking sales data. At this point I'm looking for as many people as possible to start logging all of their purchases/sales in order to fill the item comparison database with real-world live data.

So please take a moment to check it out, and if you want to start logging your sales and helping grow the tool -that would be great! If you just want to wait until it becomes more popular and use it to price check items, that's also great!

Thank you!

[zaxmazr]

I'm on my phone, but that looks pretty sweet dude!

Sent from my DROID RAZR MAXX using Tapatalk 2

[aj2000]

Great idea!

Some features I'd love to see on it:

1) Allow user to define how much data is used to generate the estimated value, so I can generate a value using data no older then 7 days if I wanted, or say 1 months, or use all available data up to now...etc. Since price shifts, if you default and fix the data used to all data available to date it might gradually become more and more inaccurate as time goes on.

2) Segregate HC, SC and realm, not sure if this is already there =3 They can render the utility meaningless if mixed.

3) Add an option to toss out outliers, maybe let user set it themselves if they like. Say if I set lower adjuster to 5% and upper 1%, the cheapest relevant 5% of sales data used in this value reading is tossed out, same for the highest 1%. Since people to occasionally under-price the buyout, sometimes by a lot (Every time you pick up a deal, which is not all that uncommon).

4) I'm very curious as to the algorithm used to calculate the value using other data points, since the vast combination of different mods has a pretty complex effect on value and on top of that how close they are to perfection changes the price exponential rather then linearly. How close in mod types and stats do items have to be for it to be used for reference in the algorithm?

[JoePrime]

Great idea!

Thank you! I've been trying to spread he word on a few different forums/reddit/n4g/etc - and so far the response has been very positive. It's very encouraging to me to see people actually exciting to use my creation!

1) Allow user to define how much data is used to generate the estimated value, so I can generate a value using data no older then 7 days if I wanted, or say 1 months, or use all available data up to now...etc. Since price shifts, if you default and fix the data used to all data available to date it might gradually become more and more inaccurate as time goes on.

Absolutely! This is actually an already in-development feature. Currently the tool defaults to what I call "Simple Mode" and there is a planned "Advanced Mode" which will allow the searcher much more control over the available dtatbase options. Currently in "Simple Mode" the search defaults to data within the last 30 days, and I'm planning to have a drop-down in "Advanced Mode" allowing to search by last 1 day, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days (default), 60 days, and All-Time. I may even take a step further down the line to allow a calendar-esque selection of specific start-date/end-date searching.

2) Segregate HC, SC and realm, not sure if this is already there =3 They can render the utility meaningless if mixed.

Currently the search is segregated via HC and SC - even by a few different markets. You can search SC Auction House, SC RMAH, and SC "Other" (which would be like, buying/selling on Trade Chat, or in these forums, etc). These sections are also available for HC, minus the RMAH of course. To be honest I hadn't really considered segregating by realm. At this point I don't really think a lot of non-US server players would use it, but if that starts to change it shouldn't be too hard to update with additional realm options.

3) Add an option to toss out outliers, maybe let user set it themselves if they like. Say if I set lower adjuster to 5% and upper 1%, the cheapest relevant 5% of sales data used in this value reading is tossed out, same for the highest 1%. Since people to occasionally under-price the buyout, sometimes by a lot (Every time you pick up a deal, which is not all that uncommon).

This is a great idea! I had a rather long discussion with a few of my friends who are helping me develop it about setting perhaps a flag option if you think you bought something at a particularly low-price, that way it could have the option when searching to ignore "special deals" or some such. However setting a threshold limit may even be an easier way of handling the search parameters. I will certainly look into this idea more, and it'll make it's way into "Advanced Mode" as well.

4) I'm very curious as to the algorithm used to calculate the value using other data points, since the vast combination of different mods has a pretty complex effect on value and on top of that how close they are to perfection changes the price exponential rather then linearly. How close in mod types and stats do items have to be for it to be used for reference in the algorithm?

This is, of course, an ever-evolving development step, and probably the main reason (outside of "Advanced Mode" not being ready) that I say it's in Beta. Until there is a significant amount of data available to see how different options can be truly affected, it's very difficult to test. However, right now in "Simple Mode" the search looks for +/- 5% on Armor/DPS and +/- 15% on all other Mods when searching for items to compare to. I started that at +/- 15% for Armor/DPS and +/- 35% for mods, but found it be far too overzealous in it's searching. Again though, it's changing as more data points become available and as I get more ability to refine. Also, this will be manually adjustable per mod in "Advanced Mode" - so you'll be able to say, "Ok, the item I want to sell has 100 Vit, but show me items within +/-50% of that. It also has 250 Dex, so limit comparison to items within +/- 5% of that." - I just hope it won't make the user-interface too confusing.

"Advanced Mode" will bring a lot of user-control to the tool, including searching by all eight possible affixes, and even searching by embedded gems, it's just something that I want to take a little slower then the rest of the tool, because it's going to be more confusing to jump into for the user, and I'm thinking if I can soft-launch and get a few people using Simple Mode first, the addition of "Advanced Mode" will be easier to manage.


Additionally, I'm planning on setting up a sort of "Community Moderation" aspect to the tool, allowing a user to click a "Report" type of button on an item, if they feel the sale information is innaccurate or erronieous in some way. Once an item reaches a certain threshold of reports, it's sale data will no longer be calculated into searches for comparable items. I don't plan to delete the sale info, it'll just be marked as "unverified" or so, and no longer calculated. If they get marked "unverified" they'll be albe to post on the site forums a screenshot of proof of the sale, or some such, and I can "verify" the sale and it'll go back into the searches. This should provide an elegant solution to people trying to troll or alter sales data.

[Azzure]

Really cool stuff

[Terenas]

Hey guys,
Basically, every time you buy or sell an item, you would list the stats and how much it sold for within the tool. Then, when you wanted to sell an item, you simply punch in the stats for that item and it compares it to all of the items sold that are similarly statted, and generates an estimated value based on how much the other items sold for.

Nice.
Did not register yet to access sales/purchases listings but:
When you feed the tool with sale data (i.e. you sold the item) you'd have to input the price before 15% wouldn't you ?
When you feed the tool with purchase data (i.e. you bought the item) you just enter the price you paid and you should be ok.
But maybe you already handle this.

[JoePrime]

When you feed the tool with sale data (i.e. you sold the item) you'd have to input the price before 15% wouldn't you ?
When you feed the tool with purchase data (i.e. you bought the item) you just enter the price you paid and you should be ok.

Correct on both counts. I had considered adding a checkbox next the item price field to "Add 15%" automatically, will likely make it into the next update. Of course, it's not technically as simple as adding 15% to the shown price, because that's going to be a little less than the actual sale price, however it hits pretty close. If anyone a little more math-oriented can give me a good algorithm for getting the accurate amount, I'd love to add that feature in.

Thanks for checking it out!

[accnamex]

rofl so many of the posts i see of items are underpriced as hell lol its like looking at a gold mine to me

[JoePrime]

rofl so many of the posts i see of items are underpriced as hell lol its like looking at a gold mine to me

See, that's kind of one of the things I expected to see. The tool shows what items are selling for, not the ridiculous price people are asking for. Just because people listed something for 2million, you can see it only actually sells for 500k or so. That's the difference between checking the AH for current asking price, and checking the tool for actual selling price.

I'm sure as even more data becomes available, it'll start to balance itself out, but time will tell of course.

[wumbabum]

Correct on both counts. I had considered adding a checkbox next the item price field to "Add 15%" automatically, will likely make it into the next update. Of course, it's not technically as simple as adding 15% to the shown price, because that's going to be a little less than the actual sale price, however it hits pretty close. If anyone a little more math-oriented can give me a good algorithm for getting the accurate amount, I'd love to add that feature in.

It's pretty simple. Instead of adding 15% (giving you 115%), you want to divide by .85 (because sale price = .85 * purchase price), giving you (117.6470588%). Better to just divide by .85.

Also, are you creating a value for each stat, then just adding the sum of the values of each stat?

I just wanted to know if you account for the value of having multiple valuable stats on the same item, because certain relationships and core stats are always important to have together, and are worthless apart. Also, what about rarity? do you account for having the max/near the max value of a stat? For example an item with all the right affixes and average stats can pretty much double in value if one of the stats is perfect, like having 80 all resist.