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Q: Discogs Stats


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Anyone else meticulous about updating their Discogs?  I try to keep up on it and at least once a year I find myself skimming my collection for fun. Sometimes to check for items I’ve sold but hadn’t removed from the collection, sometimes to remedy items I accidentally added to my library instead of my want list – which has legitimately happened 3-4 time over the years – and then, of course, to see what the estimated running totals are.  It can be both fun and dizzying to quantify the time and energy you’ve spent in The Hobby with those grand totals.

 

That being said, anyone else notice that these totals shift and sway over time?  They don’t just increase; they most certainly dip.  I’m 100% certain that albums have sold for $200+ a few years ago... and checking their sale history, today, reveals something like a $80 maximum sale.  I don’t know enough about Discogs, but do stats get pruned within a rolling time window or something?  It’s been a while since I last checked – and I don’t log the values or take screen shots or anything – but even after adding more to the collection, I recently found a $3,000 dip in the max value and thought that was interesting.

 

I’d understand if I was looking at just the medium.  Because rare records previously sold for triple figures may someday go for dirt cheap, and lower the overall value significantly – per Discogs anyway – and that’s one thing.  But I’m talking about sale history vanishing, and maximums shrinking.

 

I’m not in the resale game and I don’t get off on flashing my stats, nor am I watching my collection’s value like a ripening fruit waiting to be plucked.  So please spare me the “muh value!  Seriously dude, who gives a shit?” replies.  I just know for certain that I’m not imagining these stats fluctuating, and I wanted to see if anyone else has encountered the same thing.  Feel free to move this topic to Everyting Else if it needs to go there.

Edited by Derek™
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I'm the same way. Every month or so I check the stats but I don't think too much about them, I just like to see. I also like to see what my top valuable records are and how often they change. I get surprised when I see a fairly recent release end up in my top 50.

 

I also love looking through artists catalogues and seeing what I'm missing and if it's worth picking up simply for collecting purposes. 

 

I wish they would make the info fields a little longer when looking for variants because sometimes it's a real pain in the ass. 

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1 minute ago, youspinmeround said:

I remove from my collection as soon as I sell and add as soon as purchases are in my hand. 

 

The pricing model is based off the last 10 items sold of that exact entry so it does change the low/median/high

I’m really good about adding them when they show up, but for whatever reason the sales slip on me.  I only sell a handful of things each year though.

 

Had no idea about the “last 10” rule though, that would explain it.  Mystery solved I guess.

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5 minutes ago, Buffbloom said:

I'm the same way. Every month or so I check the stats but I don't think too much about them, I just like to see. I also like to see what my top valuable records are and how often they change. I get surprised when I see a fairly recent release end up in my top 50.

I find myself dumbfounded sometimes when I scroll through the list and see a random record that was readily available (and constantly selling for $20) suddenly fetch $100+.  Never enough to make me side-glance my copy on the shelf and wonder how a resale would work in my own favor, but still a nice surprise nonetheless.

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7 minutes ago, youspinmeround said:

The pricing model is based off the last 10 items sold of that exact entry so it does change the low/median/high

Ohh crazy. Didn't know/never paid attention to that. 

 

Just bought a pricey record on ebay today and was looking at discogs to get an idea and it was strange that it only went back to 2015.

 

Good to know. 

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Just going to add to this since I find discogs fun to look at as a record collector. I also add and remove as soon as I receive/sell, etc and I won't file a new record until it's properly recorded otherwise I'm afraid I'll forget. I can't speak to median value, it may fluctuate wildly if you have thousands of records (as I suggest you might) but I have also noticed that sometimes recent sales fail to record for an album on discogs. I'm not sure if they all get registered eventually but it's just something I've noticed from time to time.

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22 minutes ago, Derek™ said:

I find myself dumbfounded sometimes when I scroll through the list and see a random record that was readily available (and constantly selling for $20) suddenly fetch $100+.  Never enough to make me side-glance my copy on the shelf and wonder how a resale would work in my own favor, but still a nice surprise nonetheless.

You can click on the sales history to view the listings and what they sold for. Usually when you see a weird jump like that it's because the listing was different than most(test press, still sealed, autographed, etc)

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20 minutes ago, pepperonigin said:

Just going to add to this since I find discogs fun to look at as a record collector. I also add and remove as soon as I receive/sell, etc and I won't file a new record until it's properly recorded otherwise I'm afraid I'll forget. I can't speak to median value, it may fluctuate wildly if you have thousands of records (as I suggest you might) but I have also noticed that sometimes recent sales fail to record for an album on discogs. I'm not sure if they all get registered eventually but it's just something I've noticed from time to time.

I believe any sales record and post after the seller has paid his monthly invoice(sent out first of month for sales through the 15th of prior month) and not actually when they occur

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1 hour ago, youspinmeround said:

The pricing model is based off the last 10 items sold of that exact entry so it does change the low/median/high

I wonder why they would do that. I can't believe storage is that expensive, so keep all records.

 

In one way last ten could be more relevant in the short term, but what about anything that changes hands quickly?

 

More data is better.

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2 hours ago, Derek™ said:

Anyone else meticulous about updating their Discogs?  I try to keep up on it and at least once a year I find myself skimming my collection for fun.

I keep mine up to date and have actually finally started feeling comfortable adding releases somewhat regularly. I hate adding stuff, but if I've had something new for a few days and no one else does it I add it now.

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56 minutes ago, ZeroNowhere said:

Yeah, the first couple of times I added releases I felt like I was writing code.  After you get the hang of it, it's not so bad.  Definitely tedious, though.

The other day was a first. I added the clear copy of The Promise Ring - The Horse Latitudes and had to make a master release.

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4 hours ago, Plarocks said:

When does Discogs update the stats?

 

I “believe” I am the first person who bought the single LP Classic Clarity pressing of PG3 on there, and it is still being shown as “never” in the stats. 

Selling stats are being updated as soon as the seller paid the monthly invoice with the selling fees regarding your purchase.

More details here  or here

Edited by Iggy_Pilot
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13 hours ago, Metal Mike said:

I wonder why they would do that. I can't believe storage is that expensive, so keep all records.

 

In one way last ten could be more relevant in the short term, but what about anything that changes hands quickly?

 

More data is better.

It is used as a sales tool. It is helpful because when setting a price as its not really relevant what that record might have sold for 8 years if its sold 200 times since for different amounts

 

 

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24 minutes ago, youspinmeround said:

It is used as a sales tool. It is helpful because when setting a price as its not really relevant what that record might have sold for 8 years if its sold 200 times since for different amounts

 

 

The argument is that why not provide the data for all 200 sales

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30 minutes ago, youspinmeround said:

It is used as a sales tool. It is helpful because when setting a price as its not really relevant what that record might have sold for 8 years if its sold 200 times since for different amounts

 

 

If that’s the case then shouldn’t the stats just be a period of time instead of a number of sales?

 

For example, the high/low/average of all sales from the last two years (whether that’s 1 transaction or 1,000+ transactions) and not the last 10 sales which, for some rare albums, could go back five years or more?

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I imagine a goal for Discogs' marketplace is to get people to actually move what they're selling and I could see how only showing the last 10 sales being a universal rule would encourage the most sales? RocAndRolla78 is less likely to have his VG $15 record listed at $181 until the end of time if the $180 sale of a NM sealed, perfect copy from 2008 isn't highlighted in the sales stats box. This is purely a guess though, so who really knows.

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I've noticed that if somebody makes a duplicate entry and they're merged together in time, the values of one completely get wiped. The release that keeps the ID keeps the sales value, but the one merging with it doesn't transfer over. That could be the problem. Here's an example:

https://www.discogs.com/Silverstein-Discovering-The-Waterfront/release/12012086 (sold for $35)

https://www.discogs.com/release/10776820 (sold for $23.90. no evidence of every selling for $35)

 


It sucks too, because often times the release that is merged into (not merged with) ends up being the original, more complete listing. Just like in the situation above. People choose to keep the incorrect ID and the value of the other is lost.

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I own about 5k records, but on discogs I 'own' about 20. I don't know why I don't keep it up to date, it would help me out.

 

And as for the sales history, I had noticed that. I've bought things, then noticed they have no sales record at all, but someone above explained that it is to do with invoicing sellers etc. Which sounds reasonable. Be a shame if that feature just didn't work at all.

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On 3/12/2019 at 8:51 AM, backpackoat said:

This is by far my biggest qualm. Just make it easier to discern between the many variants, seems like an easy change to make.

On top of this, I wish they'd add certain factors like "gatefold" and "180 gram" to the list of checkboxes that are default instead of freetext descriptors so that when you're looking at the list of variants that are all different colors you don't run into a bunch of the same "first-three-characters" on the list of descriptors

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