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Price Distribution: TB Classifieds

#41
Here's the July data; time flies when you're having fun! The median price is the same as at was for June, but the $200-$400 price bin continues to increase in popularity. Again, my analysis loads only the 20 most recent pages of the classifieds, which corresponds to 600 threads. That means 133 of the threads do not have a price listed on the link. These threads may be older than the site upgrade or perhaps the OP is looking for a trade.

If you're wondering, here's the link to the ,000 bass. She's a beaut!

prices_07_01_2014.png
 
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#42
Okay, I'm a day early with this post, but I'm going to be traveling and am uncertain when I'll be able to post again. Also, I made some significant edits to my code, and I wanted to test them out (Regex + PyQuery FTW).

The median price climbed this month to $1,195, and we have a new most expensive bass for sale at $11,500. It looks like the vintage P-bass that held the top spot since I started this project may have sold, or at least hasn't been bumped in a while. The $200-$400 price range continues to hold its own agains the $1000-$1200 range, in contrast to my first post.

prices_07_31_2014.png
 
#43
bassrunner...awesome... but you have too much time on your hands.
It seems us on TB know the true value of a bass and this is a great place to sell it fairly without ridiculous fees. We also take care of each other.
I sold a bass here and the buyer wanted to return it for a rather small reason. I took it back because he was a TB brother... on Ebay he would have been SOL. I think the fact that there are so many high $$$ basses here is 1) the site itself causes GAS and 2) we have a great audience to sell that bass to when we decide it is not right for us or our real life gets in the way of our fantasy bass.
 
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#44
As an economics/statistics/graph nerd I find this pretty fascinating. Excellent work! :thumbsup:

I'm not surprised at the results...whenever I look at the TB Classifieds I find myself saying, "wow, I wish I could afford that," a lot more than I find myself saying, "I could realistically buy that," (granted, being a college student with little disposable income makes me a fairly bad sample). If I had the money I wouldn't hesitate to buy an expensive/exotic bass on TB as opposed to eBay or Craigslist; the sellers (and buyers) here are more knowledgeable and (from what I've seen) take better care of their gear than the Average Joe on eBay or CL does.

The reason the TB Classifieds are flooded with expensive basses is because we're a knowledgeable group of hobbyists/professionals that own (and can afford) expensive basses. We're also not stupid...the demand for a Fodera/Zon/Vintage Fender/USA Lakland/Ritter is a lot higher on TB than it would be on eBay/CL, because we have an extensive amount of knowledge about these models. As said earlier in the thread, the Average Joe is bound to think that a USA Fender is the Holy Grail of basses, mostly because it's "top shelf" at many GC locations. Plus, the goal of CL is about selling something you no longer need/use ("I bought this MIM Fender to pick up chicks but it didn't work...") to someone who wants a cheap item they don't know if they need/use ("Maybe if I buy this MIM Fender I'll pick up chicks"). CL to me is a lot more casual, hence the lower prices. Plus it's local, so you don't have to pay $80 to ship a $250 bass to your buyer, resulting in more profit.

And, because I was curious, I calculated the median price of all the basses on TB's first page in the classifieds...$2285 by my calculations :greedy: (although I do admit to accidentally clearing my calculator of the final result, so that number is from memory :banghead:). The outliers at the time were an $8000 Fodera and a $300 (Upgraded) Squier...interesting stuff.
 
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#46
verycoolname said:
I'm not surprised at the results...whenever I look at the TB Classifieds I find myself saying, "wow, I wish I could afford that," a lot more than I find myself saying, "I could realistically buy that,"
Click to expand...

This was one of several of my motivations for starting this project, I'm in the same boat. I figured, surely there are tons of MIM Fender type basses out there, why aren't more for sale on TB? Like you and others have suggested, shipping costs make selling these basses online less worth it.
 
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#47
Ok, here's the September update. Not much to report on except the median price has fallen by about $100, and the two $11,000 basses in the July sample are no longer present. Looking forward to November and December, when things might change a little due to holiday spending. Stay tuned...

prices_09_04_2014.png
 
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#51
No problem, @EliasR. First, I used the Firefox Web Console to identify where in the html the price strings are located. Then I use a library called PyQuery (which emulates the JavaScript library jQuery) to collect the price information based on its position in the html. Finally, since a seller can write whatever (s)he wants in the price field (which is not always an actual price (grrrrr!)), I use a regular expression to ensure I can convert the string to a floating point value for the purposes of plotting. I've placed the code up on github if you'd like to have a look. And feel free to pm me if you have further questions.

I too use Python primarily for scientific computing, so this was my first project aimed at broadening my Python horizons.
 

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