Playing with the ebay api

Discuss Christopher Ward watches
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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

Sifion wrote:am i supposed to get a Google streep view shot instead of the actual watch when i click on the location icon?

I really like the map thing, even though i dont think i will ever find one anywhere near me, i think it might help you guys a lot.
yes - at the moment :) though that will be changing - I dropped in a pre-coded bit of code for the maps last night at midnight - so decided that I would change that bit later - the aim will be to include the sale image & some details...

I am hoping to expand the code to ebay sites around the world - not just the UK, but at the moment the map is generally sold / finished items as the ebay api doesn't release the post code until the end of the sale - so more tricky for items currently on sale - though probably not impossible!

Alasdair
Tracking Christopher Ward watch prices on ebay globally at Watchroll
Tracking Bremont watch prices on ebay globally at Watchtrace
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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

UPDATE:

the search now hits ebay sites in:
- Austria
- Australia
- Switzerland
- Germany
- Canada (French & English)
- Spain
- France
- Belgium
- UK
- Hong Kong
- Ireland
- India
- Italy
- Malaysia
- Netherlands
- Belgium
- Philippines
- Poland
- Singapore
- USA

The map has been updated to include these (might be interesting over time...)
the auctions now show them - show the price in the correct currency - show flag for the site...

Alasdair
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wbilly
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by wbilly »

This is way cool! I would love to see it expanded to include other brands. Like a Watchrecon for ebay.
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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

wbilly wrote:This is way cool! I would love to see it expanded to include other brands. Like a Watchrecon for ebay.
In the plans already :)

easiest though to test it with something without thousands of results...

I just have to change one line of code to inlclude more...

Alasdair
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Tracking Bremont watch prices on ebay globally at Watchtrace
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by chrisjohnson »

Al

how about a map with forum members locations on it?

I'd do it but only by putting a pin on my map and taking a photo, apparently other technologies are available!
Chris

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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

Chris,

very easy to do that - as long as I had a postcode for each person (US a zip code / Australia a postal code) as I can geocode those automatically and plot them on Google maps...

whether all members would want that is perhaps another matter :)

can do it from a csv spreadsheet - or if there is a field in a database for the forum with the relevant information it could be done automatically (members could then change their location each week :) )

Alasdair
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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

UPDATE:

I have now moved to the pages to a new domain: http://www.watchroll.com
Currently still just grabbing Christopher Ward watch results - but looking in the New Year to move it to a wider remit of all watches (easy to grab the data - one line to change - but a lot of coding changes needed on how to pull it out...)
NB - using the previous link will simply redirect you - but if you are one of those who saved the link - may be worth updating it...

Each sale item now clearly shows country of ebay site with a country flag flash at the bottom of each item - currently mainly UK!

I have also changed the popup which showed the auction description (flakey code) so that it now slides in the description in a window on the right...

there is an info button now to start giving explanations... :) I suspect that this will be more and more necessary as I show more data!

the system is now collecting information from every ebay site (note a site may have no auctions, but still show them under an 'international' label from another site - esp. UK / USA - I try to filter this to show them against their home site).

the price is now shown in the correct currency

Alasdair
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by Mr Fix It »

That's really good :D
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

Thank you Mr Fix It :)

UPDATE

I have made the pages and code more generic to allow me to expand the ebay polling to any make of watch...
so pages now are no-longer called christopherWard.php etc. but generic titles such as live.php / finished.php etc.
all previous pages auto-redirect to the new ones...

I have added a search facility:
- enter something in the box at the top and it will search the system and bring back live / finished results based on yoru search - you see the ones relevant to the page you are on, but the button fot he other page shows how many results there would be and when you click on it you get a filtered view...
- e.g. search on 'black' for black faced watches / c8 for the C8 model / leather for those with leather straps / voucher to see who is selling vouchers!

This is the start of being able to see trends...
if you put C8 into the search box:
http://www.watchroll.com/finished.php?s=c8
you will have 11 results from the 97 we currently have recorded since starting...
- 4 are active - 2 in the UK and 2 in the US
- 7 are finished - all in the UK
obviously the version of the C8 and its condition etc. will vary but we see a range of prices from £215 to £350 (more expensive than new minus the voucher and it is a 2010 watch) for those finished and a variety of starting prices for those still live...

you do need to think through the searches - e.g. if you put in voucher there is a sold item in the second row for £215 - no, not a voucher sold for that, but a watch, and in the description the seller mentions including a voucher...

Any thoughts / comments welcomed...

Alasdair
Tracking Christopher Ward watch prices on ebay globally at Watchroll
Tracking Bremont watch prices on ebay globally at Watchtrace
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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

You might all be getting bored with this ;) though the hits on the website seem to be increasingly rapidly!

I have spent a few days recently (with a break for Christmas :) ) gathering some back data - the ebay API only allows you to query c. 30 - 90 days of historic data automatically - but you can see historic data on their website for up to c. 2 years - so I manually added the older item numbers from relevant sales and then ran a series of queries against the API -the result was to increase data from 97 items to 681 items :D

NB my apologies - no pagination yet - on the task list - so for now you will get 674 results on the finished page (however most don't have photos yet, so not too slow to load)

This means that there is a lot more data in there now to start seeing patterns / trends and we can see nearly two years of ebay sales... some quick points:

I need to run some separate queries to pick up sale photos where available - in hand, but not there yet...

- the vast majority of sales are on UK ebay, of the 681 sales:
UK = 650 (95%)
USA = 25 (4%)
Australia = 4 (0.5%)
Canada = 1 (<0.5%)
Poland = 1 (<0.5%)

Because of this - I am not doing anything yet on currency exchange (too complex to try and pull in historical exchange rates) - when you see the USA as only 4% of results - and therefore the significance of the currency means an accuracy of only 1% / 2% I am currently treating $ as £ :) as I am starting to look at indicative trends I think this is fine... I have the raw data stored, so we can always make it mroe accurate later...

I have added an average price on the finished screen (obviously on the live page it isn't really relevant as the sales are constantly changing...) This averages price on all items on the page, whether everything, or based on a search...

So... searching on c15 for example gives you 16 items (1 not sold) with an average price of £188.95
put into a chart you get:

Image

this would suggest an initial drop and then a gradual climb in value...
of course there are lots of factors that influence price - from condition to alligator straps / how many are sold in one time period to time of year or life cycle of the watch...
but the rough suggestion fits with perhaps a pattern of a drop in value during the watch lifetime - with a gradual climb in value afterwards... if this is a true pattern and went across lots of models then that would start to suggest that the watches are a good investment (therefore we can justify buying more :D)
it will be interesting to start to plot these and see which are good / bad investments...

I hope to start automating charts over the coming weeks... now that we have a more reasonable bank of information it makes sense to start analysing it...

any thoughts / questions, do let me know

Alasdair
Tracking Christopher Ward watch prices on ebay globally at Watchroll
Tracking Bremont watch prices on ebay globally at Watchtrace
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akirk
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by akirk »

UPDATE:

all extra historical sales (where a postcode existed) have been geocoded and lat / lng recorded - they now appear on the map... distribution of sales for the USA / UK (603 sales mapped) below (only 3 sales in AUS).
Image
UK
Image
USA

good distribution across the UK :)

Have also now picked up historical currency exchange rates since the beginning of 2011 and have the system grabbing it each day - I should therefore at some stage be able to run currency exchanges against the dollar / pound figures and more importantly - give acurate stats across all sales by normalising the currency...

Alasdair
Tracking Christopher Ward watch prices on ebay globally at Watchroll
Tracking Bremont watch prices on ebay globally at Watchtrace
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by MiniMpi »

Outstanding work :) :)
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by image_doctor »

Excellent work!
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by Sifion »

It's amazing work, mate.

Great job.
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Re: Playing with the ebay api

Post by Mortis »

This is very cool and surprisingly interesting!
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