[meteorite-list] Literal Meteorite Price Lists...I got some--want em?

From: Jamie Stephens <j.stephens_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Nov 9 21:06:46 2004
Message-ID: <419177AE.9070301_at_morphism.com>

Martin and List Members,

Martin wrote:

> Frankly, I think an ebay archive would be easy. Just build a progam
> to crawl the meteorite auctions after their completion and store the
> data in a searchable datab ase. The upfront time might be a touch
> high, but after that it would run forever with minimal
> tweaking.

I experimented with just this approach. It wasn't quite as easy as it
sounds, but definitely feasible. (Example: the challenge of
extracting specimen weights from titles and/or descriptions.) I
collected comprehensive data for several months, but I stopped
maintaining the crawler after EBay made some changes in its pages.

> However, I suspect it might violate the ebay user agreement.

I studied the EBay's user agreement and I even sent a question
to EBay. I think I summarized what I concluded in notes to the
List last year. (I also recall -- well -- vigorous discussion
about some of the summarized data I distributed. One of last
year's longer threads, I'm afraid.)

Example data below. (Note that I do NOT disclose the real identities
of either the top buyers or sellers!)

--Jamie

** Data is PRELIMINARY. These stats have NOT been checked rigorously.

** Summary
reportdate 2003-12-16 19:37:00 -0600
starting 2003-10-10 17:06:03.0
ending 2003-12-12 09:35:33.0
auctions 8037
trans 5275 (auctions resulting in transaction)
totalmoney 264888.90 ($1.5M per year?)
listers 325
sellers 253
winners 1389 (indicates customer base)
bidders 2277
avgprice 50.22
maxprice 6736.00
pricedev 189.19
imca 1648
Notes
   * Data is PRELIMINARY. These stats have NOT been rigorously checked.
   * 'imca' is the number of items mentioning 'meteoritecollectors'.

** Selected Specimens
(Just a few of the search expressions used in post-processing the
raw data. Could easily be much more specific (e.g., Seymchan,
NWA 1110, etc.)
Regex Auctions Trans Total Massed MinPPG AvgPPG MaxPPG DevPPG Med Sellers Winners Bidders
ALLENDE 62 47 1380.21 14 1.32 4.25 11.72 2.41 3.49 17 36 86
ATAXITE 41 36 6394.18 22 0.02 0.21 0.44 0.14 0.25 8 29 109
AUBRITE 29 18 375.30 0 #f #f #f #f 0 4 16 44
BOOK 103 60 1969.65 0 #f #f #f #f 0 18 48 91
BRAHIN 117 109 23030.04 96 0.36 2.05 11.78 1.79 1.51 12 74 267
CAMPO 203 143 22970.67 65 0.01 0.52 9.68 1.38 0.23 27 118 296
CANYON DIABLO 310 215 9275.40 161 0.16 1.03 73.95 5.81 0.36 22 142 269
CARBONACEOUS 48 41 950.92 11 3.28 8.63 13.33 2.63 8.76 9 29 78
CR2 28 16 820.39 6 11.00 18.41 33.66 9.70 13.05 6 13 42
CV3 17 13 1104.24 7 4.31 28.60 78.61 28.04 17.78 8 11 28
EUCRITE 119 85 2386.24 22 0.83 25.22 179.32 37.98 13.29 15 50 103
HOWARDITE 43 31 2456.99 12 17.86 43.74 66.00 17.29 43.95 9 27 92
LUNAR 97 61 11852.48 22 135.67 3609.22 9250.00 2785.60 2909.38 8 41 100
MARTIAN 113 62 5263.24 21 179.95 1673.16 10250.00 2266.99 789.44 12 37 99
MESOSIDERITE 26 21 587.32 2 0.96 1.51 2.05 0.77 2.05 12 15 59
NANTAN 374 268 6087.39 158 0.01 0.32 1.83 0.30 0.26 26 146 244
NWA ?869 195 148 2102.87 121 0.08 0.24 1.76 0.20 0.16 10 89 153
PALLASITE 99 84 16712.03 44 0.57 4.18 23.07 5.43 1.74 25 68 257
SIKHOTE 409 354 29797.16 309 0.00 0.55 9.55 0.79 0.36 31 183 506
TEKTITE 533 264 5791.12 83 0.04 1.26 14.91 2.11 0.42 49 172 313
THIN SECTION 69 48 879.64 0 #f #f #f #f 0 4 20 34

("Massed" means the number of auctions from which the program could
extract the weight of the specimens. Can't figure $/g without
knowing the weight. "PPG" means "price per gram" in USD.)

** Top Sellers
rank seller trans money
1 X1539499 288 35765
2 X9907212 572 16008
3 X8112569 102 15408
4 X9435596 56 12643
5 X6888775 68 11479
6 X2334472 23 10515
7 X3475916 27 9369
8 X8822178 172 7175
9 X5456796 125 7112
10 X5317320 342 5823
11 X9065499 129 5656
12 X9433182 61 5650
13 X2283240 11 5296
14 X3611178 91 5105
15 X4007010 25 4981
16 X1799037 140 4903
17 X3903232 28 4052
18 X1635718 3 4022
19 X9759590 62 3594

** Top Winners
rank winner trans money
1 X5038907 25 16172
2 X9590520 49 9788
3 X1635718 5 6966
4 X6827425 4 4648
5 X7512866 1 4617
6 X5969083 5 3853
7 X3529439 20 3812
8 X8190796 18 3199
9 X9759590 81 3193
10 X6795035 5 3022
11 X7945847 36 2628
12 X8017343 39 2599
13 X8112569 15 2436
14 X8867791 22 2373
15 X2960920 5 2338
16 X8448373 8 2232
17 X9487340 2 2188
18 X9440101 4 2149
19 X5252015 56 2088





martinh_at_isu.edu wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Actually Nick, ebay is totally different world than decade-old dealer listings. First of all, the posted prices are fixed whereas ebay is at the whims of the bidders who all have their own reasons for their bid amount.
>
> Second, most (but of course not all as some of you know about) of the dealer's stock is listed giving an indication of the type and sizes available at that point in time, with many much larger than the usual material on ebay.
>
> And third, there were many pieces of many rare meteorites offered through the years and the lists give a snapshot into the distribution of rare material over the years. It is really something to read through pricelists containing howardites, ureilites, carbonaceous chondrites, type 3s, eucrites, etc. and many of them are witnessed falls and none are NWAs or the like.
>
> Frankly, I think an ebay archive would be easy. Just build a progam to crawl the meteorite auctions after their completion and store the data in a searchable datab
> ase. The upfront time might be a touch high, but after that it would run forever with minimal tweaking. However, I suspect it might violate the ebay user agreement.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Martin
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Nicholas Gessler <gessler_at_ucla.edu>
> Date: Monday, November 8, 2004 9:41 pm
> Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Literal Meteorite Price Lists...I got some--want em?
>
>
>>This would be a good idea. So would archiving all of eBay's
>>meteorite
>>auctions. However, it's an enormous task: Let's see...
>>400 auctions per week times 52 weeks is around 20,000. Times 10
>>years, is
>>about 200,000. With 300x400 images or 100k pixels times 3 bytes
>>per pixel
>>is 300k bytes per auction (minimum). Times 20,000 is 6 megabytes
>>for one
>>year, or 60 for 10. It's late. Someone please check my math.
>>Maybe it is
>>feasible? Especially by someone who can write the code to do this
>>automatically. But not by me...
>>
>>And then what have we got? Does the fact t
>
> hat someone paid $100
>
>>for xyz
>>two years ago mean that $50 is a fair price today? Or $200? Oh
>>well. Actually, I think the collection of photographs would be
>>worth much
>>more than the collection of prices!
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Nick
>>
>>
>>______________________________________________
>>Meteorite-list mailing list
>>Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
>>http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
>>
>
>
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>
Received on Tue 09 Nov 2004 09:06:38 PM PST