Sold listings versus completed listings
A sold listing ended with a buyer. A completed listing ended, full stop: it may have sold, run out of time with no bids, or been ended by the seller. eBay's results show sold prices in green and unsold ones struck through or in black. When you want to know what something is worth, filter to sold. When you want to know how often it fails to sell at a price, look at completed and count the strike-throughs. Our guide on how to see sold items on eBay covers the filters.
What the sold price includes
The green figure is the item price the buyer agreed to. It does not include shipping, which is shown separately and can be the difference between a bargain and a normal price. A $20 item with $15 shipping cost the buyer $35; the next seller pricing against the $20 will be surprised. Compare item price plus shipping, or compare items with free shipping only.
Condition matters as much. A "Used" sale and a "New" sale of the same product are two different markets, and the same goes for "For parts or not working". Filter to the condition you are selling before you read a single price.
Best Offer sales hide the real figure
When a listing sold through Best Offer, eBay shows the seller's asking price with "Best offer accepted" under it. The amount the buyer actually paid is not shown and is often well below. On a product where many sellers accept offers, a list of asking prices can run ten or twenty percent above what is really changing hands. Treat those rows as a ceiling, not a comp, unless you have a source that records the accepted amount.
Turning comps into a number
"Comps" are comparable sales: the same product, in the same condition, sold recently. Reading them well is a small routine.
- Match the item exactly. Model, size, capacity, edition, grade. "iPhone 15" sales tell you nothing about a 15 Pro Max.
- Throw out the strays. A lot of three, a bundle, a damaged unit described in the title, a sale to a buyer who clearly made a mistake. They are in the list; they are not comps.
- Use the median, not the average. With ten sales, one odd result moves the average a lot and the median almost not at all. The middle sale is the typical sale.
- Look at the spread. If the middle half of sales runs from $80 to $120, you can price at either end depending on how fast you need it gone. If they all sit at $99, there is no room to argue.
- Check the dates. Ten sales in the last week and ten in the last three months are very different markets. Velocity decides how long your listing will sit.
How far back eBay's sales history goes
About 90 days on the site and in the app. For most electronics and current products that is plenty. For collectibles, seasonal goods and anything that sells a few times a year, it can be two or three sales, which is not a market. Listing pages used to link to a product's longer sales history; those links are gone, and the research tool inside Seller Hub, which used to be Terapeak, no longer shows the totals either.
What SoldPeak adds
SoldPeak records completed eBay listings and keeps them, so the routine above is one search. It returns the number sold and the total sales in the window, the average and the median, the middle-half range, a trend by day, week or month, breakdowns by condition, format, category and location, the top sellers by name, the words in sold titles, and the sold listings themselves with a link to each. On the listings a page was read for, it also holds the accepted Best Offer amount, so those rows become real comps. Professional reaches back to July 2026 and keeps every day from here on; the Free plan covers the last 30 days, five searches a day, no card.
Try a live search on the home page, or see what sells best on eBay this week.