purchase history

[bmwe46parts]

hey, i am trying to work out how often particular items sell, i click on a link of a listing to a similar item and on the listing it will say for example "108 sold" than i click it and it only shows 2 to 5 sales, why does it not show the 108 sold, it is hard to get an understanding of how often the item is selling for like this.

[twyngwyn]

is it a multi-listing?

[imastawka]

Does it have a best offer attached to it?

Best offer acceptances are further down the page

[digital*ghost]

I get this on some of my listings - I've never been able to figure out why.

I have some listings where it shows all sales dating back to  April, 2013, but on others that have been around just as long, it will only show a few of the more recent sales. 

[digital*ghost]

Forgot to add....

If you really want to get an idea how often something sells, either look at the listing revision history (the earliest dated revision will give you the minimum amount of time the listing have been active for), or view all of a seller's items, sort them by newly listed, then check for the listing you're interested in, as it will display the date the item was listed.

Then, if a listing has been active for say 8 months and 108 were sold in that time, you can see they sell an average of 13 a month (it really will only give you a rough idea, in either case, as a listing could have been created in January, but you won't be able to see if it was available for sale the entire time since then - eg sellers can put their stores on holiday mode and hide items from the site, or they could have been out of stock several times for who knows how long in total). 

[chameleon54]

I suspect it may be another ebay glitch that sometimes applies to GTC listings.  These relist automatically every 30 days. If the listing has been running for 3 years, it could have sold 108 items in total in that time. When you click on the listing, the 2-5 sales shown may reflect the sales for that 30 day listing cycle. 

[englishrosegardens]

They usually go back further than 30 days. I don't know how it's supposed to work but sometimes they go back months and other times not.

I can think of other ways to check how often a seller has sold that item but I'm not going to say how. I have someone who watches one of my items almost permanently so that they can check my sales and I get a bit annoyed that I have no privacy. I understand that we need to be able to do some research on prices so we know how much to ask, but I honestly don't think it's right that other sellers can see so much of my business, and so easily. It's like a b&m shop putting their sales records on public display!