Price guide

[vksnr]

Hello all!

I have been collecting CPUs for awhile, but really got the itch back in September. I could not find any guide that told me what I could reasonably expect to pay for chips I was interested in on Ebay, so I began collecting the information myself. Currently my database has about 900 entries. If anyone is interested, the URL is http://www.vksnr.com/priceguide

The site is hosted on one of my machines in my home office. My cable provider occasionally drops my connection, so if the page is unavailable, try again in a couple minutes - I normally notice fairly quckly and get it setup again.

I sure hope this kind of information is useful to somebody - it is for me. The real fun is seeing how much prices can differ for the same part.

I intend to add the ability to generate graphs of price over time for parts. One of these days in my spare time I'll get to it.

Let me know what you all think. Good idea or bad? Any suggestions?

VKsnr

[metalmaker]

awsome idea and nice setup. This is valuable data.

Suggestions:

1. Burn this on a CD so I can buy it! - I am serious.

2. If you don't do number one then set this up on a reliable server and charge a nominal fee for access. Set up a way for others to submit ebay data to increase size and depth of the data base more rapidly than you can do it alone.

3. Ask some of the collectors on this site that are also big ebay sellers if they can get you additional data to add.

Metalmaker

[vksnr]

Glad you find it useful.

One of the ideas I had was to sell a "standalone" version, and then for some small fee (really - nothing too much) allow you to download updates to the database as often as you want for a year. I have no idea what this info is worth - how much would you pay for it for one year? $20, $10, or what?

Maybe I should just charge a small subscription fee on a yearly basis for the web interface..

I first built this thing just using the command line with mySQL, and then decided I needed a better front end. So I hammered out a prototype in VB, which I am still using. Actually the database also contains a listing of every partnumber I have run across, and I add more to it here and there, as I come across new ones. That part of the db currently has 1206 chips listed in it, along with the manufacturer, common name if I know it, and notes about it, if any. It's nothing compared to what gmphillips3 has compiled! Whew!

Additionally, I have a section that keeps track of chips in my collection, with things like stepping, datecode, obverse and reverse text, notes, etc. If any of this sounds like something you may want in the application, in addition to the priceguide, let me know if it is worth building. That part needs some work for sure -right now I use it just cause I made it, but it is for sure only an alpha version. You know how it is: "The cobbler's children have no shoes".

Thanks for the feedback.

VKsnr

[CPUShack]

[vksnr]

Yes, they do include shipping. I figure that if the sale price is $3 and the shipping is $12 (!) that you are willing to pay $15 for the chip - so that's the price I enter. In addition, I round in the following way: > .5 = 1, <.49 = 0

It gets kind of sticky when more than one type of chip is sold at a time. A recent example, a C8008 and a C8008-1 that went for 84. The data shows that around $40 is reasonable for these, each. So I just split the price to $42 each. But then sometimes it's harder, like a batch of white ceramics that contains, among other support chips, an INS4002 hiding in the corner of the photo. That lot went for 137. Looking at prices for 4002s, it seemed that the purchaser was really after that one, and the others were just bonus icing. Other times it's too hard to tell and so I do not enter anything. Mostly I try to err on the side of accuracy rther than speculation.

VKsnr

[vksnr]

Oh yeah, one other thing - if you are the purchaser of a batch of chips, you can always send me an email telling me which one you are really after, or how you view the price breakdown per chip, and I will enter the data that way.

VKsnr