[meteorite-list] Data in auctions

From: Jamie Stephens <j.stephens_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:36 2004
Message-ID: <3FA12680.6090007_at_morphism.com>

Listees,

Many folks have asked me for finer-grained pricing data.
Examples:

   1. What's the $/g range of Howardites in some time period?
   2. $/g for unclassified NWA's?
   3. $/g for NWA 482?

It's easy to imagine nice graphs with time as the X axis and
the stats of your choice plotted over time. "In trading this
week, Howardites were down sharply -- after rising over the
last month. Matt Fammer, the prominent hunter/dealer,
attributes the sell-off to rumors of a new large find."

Though I can't find the postings, I think somebody recently
suggested a standard format for auction titles. The goal
was to help buyers find what they are looking for. A side
benefit would be the ability to help gather the data above.

Possible title format:

   Meteorite NAME CLASSIFICATION SPECIMENMASS CUT COMMENTS

For example:

   Meteorite DaG 609 EUC(S3)(W2) 2.3g Partslice Pretty

It'd be easier for a program to parse if the fields were
delimited unambigously -- say with a '|'. But delimiters
in a title could be too ugly:

   Meteorite|DaG 609|EUC(S3)(W2)|2.3g|Partslice Pretty

Works for me, but novice collectors might run away screaming.

To get the data, it'd suffice to have a standard data format
somewhere inside the item description. The format could even
be invisible to people (say via HTML comments, which programs
can still see). For example, the data below could be structured
as a little HTML table. (I could provide the actual HTML
boilerplate.)

    Name: DaG 609
    Classification: EUC(S3)(W2)
    Specimen mass: 2.3g
    Cut: Partslice or Fullslice or Individual or
                    Frag or End cut or Specks or Dust or Vapor
    Misc: IMB or whatever

With this data in the item description, the titles wouldn't have
to change if they didn't want to.

If any seller is interested in using this structure in an item
description -- even invisibly to people -- please let me know.
I'll publish boilerplate HTML. Then some enterprising person
could gather fine-grained pricing data -- and not publish any
names.

Comments please.

--Jamie
Received on Thu 30 Oct 2003 09:56:00 AM PST