Pricing Guides
Sold Prices vs. Listed Prices
Why asking prices are systematically inflated, and why our reports are built from cleaned multi-platform transaction data instead.
The Inflation Problem
Listed prices — what sellers are asking — are not market prices. They are aspirations. Across every resale marketplace we track, asking prices run 20–40% above the prices at which identical items actually sell. This is not a marginal discrepancy; it is a structural feature of how resale markets work.
Sellers list high because they can always come down. There is no cost to starting at $400 and accepting $300 after a week of negotiation. The result is a marketplace surface littered with stale listings at inflated prices — listings that may never transact at all.
If you price your item by looking at what others are asking, you are pricing against ghosts.
Why Sold Data Is the Only Reliable Signal
A sold price represents a moment where a buyer and a seller actually agreed. It is a cleared transaction — the market's verdict on what that item, in that condition, on that platform, was worth on that day. Asking prices carry no such guarantee.
The challenge is that sold data is harder to get. Most marketplaces surface active listings prominently and bury or omit completed sales. StockX publishes last-sale data, but only for items that transact through its own platform. eBay's completed listings are accessible but noisy — riddled with miscategorized items, incorrect sizes, and outliers.
This is why we do the work of collecting, cleaning, and cross-referencing transaction data rather than scraping asking prices. For the full pipeline, see our methodology page.
Multi-Platform Cleaning, Not Single-Platform Asks
Our reports aggregate listing data across five marketplaces: eBay, StockX, GOAT, Grailed, and Mercari. Each platform has its own buyer demographic, fee structure, and pricing dynamics. A single-platform view is a sample of one — it tells you what that platform's users are doing, not what the broader market is doing.
For example, the Nike Dunk Low Panda report shows 7 listings on Mercari and only 1 on GOAT. If you only looked at GOAT, you would see a tiny sample and draw no meaningful conclusion. By aggregating across all five platforms, we get 20 listings — enough to calculate a meaningful median and range.
Each report also publishes the platform breakdown so you can see exactly where the data comes from. No black boxes.
Demand Signals: Reading Market Temperature
Every product and report on this site carries a demand signal — a single word that summarizes the temperature of the market for that item:
| Signal | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Hot | Prices rising rapidly, high volume, strong buyer competition |
| Warm | Upward trend with healthy volume |
| Neutral | Stable pricing near equilibrium, moderate volume |
| Cool | Softening prices, declining volume |
| Cold | Prices declining or below retail, low buyer interest |
The Air Jordan 1 Lost & Found currently reads neutral — an 86% premium over retail with a recent sharp 7-day price move that bears monitoring. The Nike Dunk Low Panda reads cold — trading 20% below retail with flat momentum.
A cold demand signal does not mean you cannot sell — it means you should price aggressively (near P25) and expect a longer time-to-sale. A hot signal means you can price near P75 and expect fast movement. The demand signal is your pricing posture. For more on applying it, see our guide on how to price items for resale.